Quadruplets Make Six

“Mozart, you can’t have any of my ice cream. Don’t look at me like that. It’s not my fault you can’t eat chocolate.”

I was flipping through my latest book as I ate ice cream straight from the pint. It was a wonderful story, full of adventure and betrayal and the eventual wedding of two very unlikely characters. I loved stories like that. Stories where two people who were seemingly opposite for each other found their way into the arms of the person they thought they would hate the most. Those stories reminded me a bit of myself and Graham. How we came from seemingly opposing worlds, yet still found a way to enjoy one another.

Things had been going smoothly, but it had been a couple of weeks since I’d heard from him. He was off on a business trip that was taking longer than expected and I was swamped with work. Tutoring had ramped up because of the flu season—kids needed help getting caught up from being out—and there seemed to be more paperwork in the law firm I worked for. I was bringing work home with me for the first time ever and it was becoming a bit too much.

Which was why I was stress eating ice cream from the tub.

“Mozart! Stop that. You can’t have my ice cream. Cut it out.”

He was meowing relentlessly, pawing at me trying to get a bite of my food, but I wasn’t having it. Joanna’s ice cream had still been in the freezer from the last time she had been over, and it needed to be eaten before it went bad. Ice cream could only sit in a freezer for around three months before it started getting freezer burn, and there was no way I was letting a half a pint of ice cream go to waste.

I crunched down into a nut as I grimaced. A nut? What kind of ice cream was I eating? I hated nuts. They were not a thing I enjoyed.

And yet, this one didn’t taste so bad.

I looked down at the carton and realized I was eating rocky road ice cream. Yuck. No. Why in the world had Joanna bought rocky road ice cream? I had never seen her eat it in all the years I’d known her. How in the world had I been sitting here mindlessly eating an ice cream I couldn’t stand?

It boiled down to stress.

I was stress eating so badly my body didn’t care what I was eating.

I got up from the couch and went to go throw the pint away. There was no use in putting it back and there was no way I was finishing it. Nuts in ice cream? Whoever came up with that idea needed to be buried alive with crushed peanut powder. The lid of the trash can popped up and I threw it away, then my eyes haphazardly scanned up to my calendar.

There was something off about my calendar. I didn’t know what it was, and I wasn’t sure what was missing, but it gave me pause. Something didn’t look right with it and I felt panic rising in my veins. Was there a date I had forgotten? Something from my bosses? My brain was clawing at me, trying to rise up from my subconscious and scream into my ear. I took my calendar off the wall and flipped it back a couple of months, trying to see what color was missing.

I color-coordinated everything. It made me feel like I was more organized. Writing highlighted in blue was tutoring, writing highlighted in yellow was for the law firm. Writing highlighted in green were personal plans I made with people and writing that was highlighted red was to chart my period.

I figured it was an appropriate color for that time of the month.

I scanned the prior months before I flipped to the current one. Nothing seemed out of place or wrong about it. But something still wasn’t sitting well. I sifted through my mind for all the possibilities it could be. Maybe there was something in my email that would alert me to what I was missing. Maybe there was something sent to me I had read in passing and now my mind was trying to conjure it.

I went over to my phone and picked it up right as a notification came through.

My blood froze in my veins.

You are eleven days late for your period. Have you forgotten to log in?

It seemed asinine, but I had a period tracking application on my phone. It helped me during my doctor’s appointments when they asked me the date of my last period, because I could never remember. For as long as I could think back, my periods had been irregular—two periods in a months or seven weeks in between them. My cycle was a mess, and it had been all of my life. It shouldn't have shocked me that I was eleven days late. In my world, that was nothing.

But as I looked back at my trash can, worry settled into my gut.

I dropped the calendar, grabbed my phone, and rushed out the door. I ran down to the pharmacy on the corner and barreled into the store. I dashed straight for the family planning aisle and grabbed a box with two tests in it. I yanked a bottle of water out of the cooler before I ran up to the cashier, and I threw some money at him before I left. My legs were carrying me as fast as they could as the nuts stuck in my teeth taunted me. My stomach was growling for them. Craving them. Wanting more of them.

I hated nuts.

I’d always hated nuts.

I pushed into my apartment as Mozart jumped up onto the counter. He hissed at my loud intrusion as I slammed the door, locking it shut behind me. I didn’t want anyone disturbing me during this. Especially Graham. I didn’t want some surprise visit popping up or Joanna popping her head in thinking she was doing me a favor by randomly stopping by.

I wanted peace, quiet, and alone time for this.

Mozart was pawing underneath the slit of the door, like he knew something was in there for him to knock over. I paced back and forth, running my fingers through my hair. What the heck was I going to do if I was pregnant? I couldn’t be pregnant. There was no way. Women with periods like mine struggled to get pregnant. This wasn’t something that should’ve been an issue for me. I didn’t lead the kind of life a child would want to be raised in. I had a one-bedroom apartment with grand plan for a child. Not right now anyway. I had no savings, no medical insurance, and no money to buy anything a child would need!

I looked up at the clock before I drew in a deep breath. The moment of truth. I gently pushed Mozart out of the way with my foot, then creeped the door closed behind me. He was pissed. I knew he was. I could hear him hissing and scratching at the door. He wanted to know what all of the fuss was about, the nosy little cat.

But this was a private moment.

A moment that could possibly change my life.