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Just Water Weight
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All Grown Up Hung Up
JesseJoe laughed as I totally missed the ball I was shooting for and sank the cue ball in one of the pockets. I swore loudly, knowing that I had basically just handed him the game. Sure enough, Joe carefully placed the cue ball where he wanted it and managed to sink the eight ball. “Come on, you didn’t actually think you were going to win, did you?” he teased.I rolled my eyes at him and glanced around Gabby’s. The place was crowded on a Saturday night, but I didn’t see anyone else floating around like they were waiting to take over our pool table. I started racking the balls. “Let’s go again,” I told Joe, even though I was sure that I would just lose again. I could count on one hand the number of times that I had beat him at pool, and we must have played thousands of games over the years.Joe clapped me on the shoulder. “Sure thing,” he said. “You might get us a couple of beers first, though. Loser pays.”I snorted but grabbed our glasses, heading up to the bar. Annabelle was workin
All Grown Up Like Crazy
JesseI shrugged. “Of course I am.” Joe knew the whole story. He knew that I had liked Audrey back when we were still in high school, but had held off dating her because we had found out that our parents were dating. He knew all the recent history, too: that once Audrey came back to town, I found myself unable to keep away from her, even though I knew that she was planning on leaving in six months at the most, as soon as her injured ankle healed back up.I had admitted to him that I loved her. He knew all of this. So of course, I was still hung up on her. I missed her. That was just the way that things were.I knew what Joe was about to say before he said it. Whatever chance I might have had with Audrey, I had lost it now. She had gone back to the world that she belonged in, and I had just let her go.Well, not ‘just.’ The truth was, I had been thinking about all the ways that we could make things work between us. The only thing that I could think of was for me to go with her to Paris
All Grown Up It's Only Water
AudreyI looked wistfully at the almond croissant that the waitress set down in front of Madeleine. “God, I would kill for one of those,” I groaned. It wasn’t just that this café did some of the best pastries in all of Paris. Or the world, really. I was also just hungry, like I seemed to always be these days.I wrapped my hands around my plain green tea, as though I was trying to keep myself from reaching out and snitching a bite of the other dancer’s dessert. There was a reason that I hadn’t ordered anything other than tea for myself, I knew.It was strange. It used to be second nature for me to stick to the strict diet that they had me on for dance. I had always known that I wanted to land lead roles in global productions. I had always known that I wanted the spotlight. That had always comforted me when I had to give up sweets and treats and other things that I wanted.Things had been much harder since I had come back from North Carolina. Maybe it was the fact that I had cheated on
All Grown Up Symptoms
AudreyAll the same, I grimaced when I heard someone else enter the stall. I quickly flushed the toilet and stood up, wincing as nausea roiled through me once more. Trish raised an eyebrow at me. “You all right?” she asked, looking concerned.“Yeah, I must have drunk that tea a little too quickly or something,” I said, trying a weak smile.Trish held out a glass of water, and I gratefully took a slow sip, trying not to upset my stomach again. From the considering look that she was giving me, I knew that I wasn’t going to like whatever it was she was about to say.“Nausea, weight gain, those fabulous boobs,” she slowly began. “A couple of bad headaches lately too, right?”“It’s nothing,” I said stubbornly. “I’m just under a lot of stress with the show. Nothing that I can’t handle, though.”“Are you sure you’re not pregnant?” Trish said, and I stared at her in shock.“Pregnant?” I echoed dumbly. “Of course not!” The moment the words were out of my mouth, I felt a little prickle of doubt
All Grown Up Thinking of Her
JesseI glanced over at Chance a couple of times as I stacked paint cans on the shelf. He was sorting some hardware at the counter, his tongue stuck between his teeth as he concentrated. He had finally become a relatively competent employee over the past couple of months. It had taken a lot more hours of training than I had planned on, and he still had weird little lapses, but overall, I was glad to see the kid get his act together here. I was glad that I had given him a chance, when the rest of the town didn’t seem ready to.He still drove Joe crazy, of course, and there was part of me that thought that maybe I should have hired someone different just so that they wouldn’t be at odds all the time. Joe was my partner in the business, after all. If I left, he would be in charge, and I wanted him to have an employee that he could work with.If I left. That wasn’t going to happen now anyway. Audrey had made it clear that she saw me here, even while she was off in France performing. There
All Grown Up The Test
AudreyI took a deep breath and stared at myself in the mirror. Truth time. All I had to do was flip over the little white stick that was resting on a paper towel there on the edge of the sink. Then I would know.I still didn’t know what I wanted to see there. None of this felt real to me. It felt like something out of a movie, or like something that happened to a friend of a friend. Not the kind of thing that could happen to me. Could I really be pregnant?Of course, I knew that birth control wasn’t foolproof. That no matter how careful we had been, there was a chance that I had still gotten pregnant. I kept going over it in my head, trying to remember if there had been a day when I had forgotten to take my pill, or a day when I had even been late taking it. I knew that it didn’t really matter, though. Whatever the reason for it, this was where we were now.Was I pregnant or not? All I had to do was look.I knew everybody was waiting out in the living room. Trish had asked me if I wa
All Grown Up Maternal Instincts
AudreyI gave myself one last look in the mirror, nodding as though that was some sort of pep talk. I threw the test in the trash and washed my hands. Then, I opened the door. “I’m pregnant,” I announced.Trish gave me a big hug. “Oh Audrey,” she said. She looked like she had a million questions. She tactfully didn’t ask any of them, though, waiting for me to say more.I slumped into a seat in the living room. “I’m pregnant,” I repeated. I looked around at them. “I think I’m going to keep it.” My hand came up to protectively rest against my belly, not that I was showing any signs of the pregnancy there yet. When it really came down to it, there wasn’t a question in my mind.I hadn’t prepared to have a baby yet. I wasn’t married, and I wasn’t settled down. This would shake my world down to its very foundations. At the end of the day, though, this baby had been created out of love. This baby was mine and Jesse’s, the culmination of all those years of friendship and more. I could never g
All Grown Up Rebound
JesseI carefully measured the board and marked it with a pencil, adding the piece to the pile of boards that were ready to be cut. Joe was doing some renovations on his place, and I had offered to help him out in exchange for beer and pizza. It was good to have a project to turn my attention to in the evenings after work, rather than going home and thinking about how much I missed a certain blonde.“There,” Joe said, fitting together one last piece on the left-hand side of the mantle. “Looks good, doesn’t it?” he asked.“Yeah, looks great,” I said appreciatively. Personally, I kept things pretty minimal when it came to furniture and decorations, so when Joe told me that he wanted these two shelving units, one on either side of the mantle, I’d been a bit skeptical.“What the hell are you even going to put on them?” I scoffed. “It’s not like you read, man.” Joe guffawed. “Books are a huge chick magnet,” he said. “Bring them home to a house full of books and they’re sure to sleep with
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