“You could have said no.”
“Hmm” was all she said, and I suddenly understood that there’d been an inevitability to Bryce and me all along. As I stood before my aunt, I inexplicably found myself back on the beach again with Bryce in my arms. I felt an undeniable surge of heat up my neck and began to remove my jacket in the hope she wouldn’t notice.
“Don’t forget that we have church in the morning.”
“I remember,” I confirmed. I stole a peek at her as I walked past her toward my bedroom, noticing that she’d returned to reading her book.
“Good night, Aunt Linda.”
“Good night, Maggie.”
*
Lying in bed with Maggie-bear, I was too wired to sleep. I kept replaying the evening and thinking about the way Bryce had gazed at me over dinner or how his dark eyes had caught the firelight. Mostly I remembered the taste of his lips, only to realize that I was smiling in the darkness like a crazy person. And yet, as the hours ticked by, my giddiness gradually gave way to confusion, which also kept me awake. While I knew deep down that Bryce loved me, it still made no sense. Didn’t he know how extraordinary he was? Had he forgotten I was pregnant? He could have any girl he wanted, while I was nothing but ordinary in all the ways that mattered and a definite screwup in one of the biggest ways of all. I wondered if his feelings for me had more to do with simple proximity than with anything particularly unique and wonderful about me. I fretted that I wasn’t smart or pretty enough, and even momentarily questioned whether I’d made the whole thing up. And while I tossed and turned, it dawned on me that love was the most powerful emotion of all, because it made you vulnerable to the possibility of losing everything that really mattered.
Despite the emotional whiplash, or maybe because of it, exhaustion finally won out. In the morning, I woke to a stranger in the mirror. There were bags under my eyes, the skin on my face felt like it was sagging, and my hair seemed stringier than usual. A shower and makeup allowed me to be somewhat presentable before I emerged from my room. My aunt, because she seemed to know me better than I knew myself, made pancakes for breakfast and avoided any doublespeak. Instead, she casually steered the conversation to the date itself and I walked her through most of it, leaving out only the important things, although my enraptured expression probably made the remainder unnecessary.
But the easy conversation was exactly what I needed to feel better, and the trepidation I’d experienced overnight gave way to a warm sense of contentment. On the ferry, as we sat upstairs at the table with Gwen, I gazed out the window and watched the water, lost again in the memories of the previous evening. I thought about Bryce while I was at church and again when we picked up supplies; at one of the garage sales, I found a kite for sale and wondered if it would fly if I added Christmas lights to it. The only time I didn’t think about him was when it came time to shop for larger bras; it was all I could do to hide my embarrassment, especially when the owner of the shop—a stern-looking brunette with flashing black eyes—gave me the once-over, pausing at my stomach, while leading me to the fitting room.
When we finally got back to the house, the lack of sleep had caught up to me. Even though it was already dark, I took a quick catnap and woke just as dinner was about to be served. After eating and cleaning up the kitchen, I went back to bed, still feeling like a zombie. I closed my eyes, wondering how Bryce had spent his day, and whether being in love would change things between us. But mostly I thought about kissing him again, and right before I finally dozed off, I realized that for me, the moment couldn’t come soon enough.
*
The dreamy feeling persisted when I awoke; in fact, it permeated every waking hour for the next week and a half, even when I had my next sit-down with Gwen concerning my pregnancy. Bryce loved me and I loved him, and my world pretty much revolved around that thrilling idea, no matter what the two of us were doing.
Not that our day-to-day routines changed much. Bryce was nothing if not responsible. He still came over to tutor me with Daisy in tow, and he did his best to keep me focused even when I sometimes squeezed his knee before giggling at his suddenly flustered expression. Despite my frequent attempts at flirting when I was supposed to be working, I nonetheless continued to forge ahead in my studies. On the exams, I extended my pretty-darn-good streak, even though Bryce remained disappointed in his abilities as a tutor. My photography lessons didn’t change that much, either, except that he also began teaching me how to take indoor shots using a flash and other lighting, as well as the occasional nighttime shot. Those we usually did at his house, because the equipment was right there. For evening shots of the star-filled sky, we used a tripod and a remote, since the camera had to be absolutely stable. Those shots required a super-slow shutter speed—sometimes as long as thirty seconds—and on a particularly clear night when there was no moon in the sky, we caught part of the Milky Way, which looked like a glowing cloud in a darkened sky illuminated by fireflies.