Love and Marriage
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Five minutes. That's how long she had to wait until she found out if she was pregnant. Just five incredibly long minutes. Then she would know once and for all. She was lucky that she got to go home early today. Since Claire was in her room playing with her dolls and she wasn't expecting Martin to come home from work for at least another hour, she decided to get the pregnancy test done now. So she was sitting on the edge of the bathtub waiting for the timer to go off and signify that she could look at the test strip.
She tapped her fingers on her leg nervously as she continued to wait. Looking at the timer, she saw that now she only had four minutes left. She wasn't sure if she could handle the suspense and decided to go check on Claire while she waited.
"Hi mommy!" Claire greeted when she entered the room.
"Hey there. Having fun?" Sam asked, stroking her daughter's hair.
"Yeah." Claire nodded as she moved the doll around the dollhouse. "Mommy?"
"Yes sweetie?" Sam answered.
"Do we really have to move without daddy?" She still wasn't completely happy about leaving him behind.
"Yeah sweetie, I'm afraid we do." She pulled Claire into a hug. "But I promise that everything will be ok. Daddy will come and live with us."
"When?" She asked, hoping that they wouldn't be separated for too long.
"I don't know yet." Sam answered honestly. "But it doesn't matter where we live. I promise that your father will come and live us again. Ok?"
"Ok." Claire nodded.
When Sam re-entered the bathroom, she saw that the timer had run out. She could go look at the test strip now and find out if she was pregnant. Although she was tired of being kept in suspense, she found that she was having trouble making herself move because she was afraid of the results. She finally couldn't take it anymore and walked up to the counter.
Biting her lip, she took a deep breath before looking at the test strip. It was negative. She picked up the box and checked it to make that she was reading the strip correctly, finding that she was right. It was negative. That meant that she wasn't pregnant.
She had thought that she would be overjoyed if the test came back negative, but she wasn't. Instead she felt like crying, which was silly because she shouldn't mourn a child that never existed. But that's how she felt. A part of her had been hoping that she was pregnant because maybe it would force her to confront her anxieties and move forward with her life.
But that apparently wasn't going to happen—at least not right now. She sat down on the edge of the bathtub and held her hands awkwardly in her lap. All the signs had pointed to her being pregnant, and although she had been scared out of her mind that she was actually pregnant, it really hurt to find out that she wasn't. It was probably for the best though. Now would have been a horrible time to be pregnant anyway. That's how she would rationalize it.
Without hesitating she stuffed the test back into the box and wrapped it up in the small paper bag that she got when she bought it at the drugstore. Then she went outside and buried it deeply within the trash so that Martin wouldn't find it. Since the test was negative, he had no reason to find out about it. Why tell him that she suspected she was pregnant when she really wasn't? That would just be mean. She'd keep it to herself and spare him the same feeling that she was having right now.
Later that evening, Martin offered to help her with washing the dishes as Claire played in the backyard. He thought it would be a good time to talk to her alone while still keeping an eye on Claire since there was a window in the kitchen that showed them a view of the backyard. He had noticed that Sam looked a little sad and out of it at dinner, and had made a mental note to talk to her about it later. Now that it was later, he decided to call her on her mood. "Is something wrong?"
She looked over at him. "No." She lied. "Why?"
"You seem out of it tonight." He explained.
"I'm fine." She shrugged off his concern even though the truth was that she didn't feel fine. She was still upset from the negative pregnancy test she took a few hours ago.
He could have let it go and in fact, a few months ago he would have let it go. He would have let her get away with lying to him about her feelings and wouldn't have pressed her on them. But now, through therapy with Leslie, he realized that they needed to talk about whatever was bothering her. And he knew exactly what it was. "I know what's wrong."
She looked over at him with a shocked look. How could he know? She hadn't left any trace behind of the pregnancy test, right? "You know?"
"Of course." He replied, drying off a plate that had just been rinsed off. "It's written all over your face."
"It is?" She wondered briefly if he really did know what she was upset about or if he had a different idea.
"Yes." He replied. "You're thinking about how much you're going to miss the team. That's it, right?"
"The team." She repeated. Of course he didn't know about the pregnancy scare. How could he have known? She kept it well hidden. It was only logical for him to think that she was upset about having to leave Jack, Danny, and Viv behind, especially since she had to say goodbye to them today.
"Yeah." He replied. "That is what you're upset about, right?"
"Yeah." She answered. It was only a partial lie. She was upset about having to leave her closest friends behind. She was just also upset about not being pregnant. "It's like you read my mind."
He smiled, proud that he had been able to figure out what was bothering her. "It's only natural for you to be sad about it."
"Yeah." She nodded. "I guess so."
"It's never easy to leave friends behind." He noted.
"No, it isn't." She agreed.
"But," he chuckled, "you can still keep in touch with them. And I'm sure you'll make a bunch of new friends in Houston."
She looked over at him and gently slapped his arm. That was the same thing that they had been saying to Claire. "Are you patronizing me?"
"Who me?" He asked, throwing his hands up in mock defeat. "Never."
"You are!" She accused playfully, putting down the pan that she was cleaning and crossing her arms around her chest. "You're patronizing me!"
"Am not!" He defended himself. In reality, he actually had been patronizing her in hopes of making her smile and laugh about the situation instead of being sad about it. His attempt of cheering her up seemed to be working because she looked like she wasn't really mad at him. She seemed to just be playing around.
"Are to!" She exclaimed, splashing him with some soapy water.
"Ahh!" He exclaimed, watching his shirt get covered with water. "What'd you do that for?"
"You were patronizing me." She commented nonchalantly before going back to washing the pan in the sink.
He grinned. She may have thought that she could get away with throwing water at him but she was wrong. He twisted up the dishtowel in his hands and snapped it, hitting his target—which happened to be her butt.
"Hey!" She yelped as the towel lightly slapped her butt. "What was that for?"
"You threw water at me." He replied nonchalantly before going back to drying some plates.
She put her hands on her hips, staring straight at him as he ignored her. "Two can play this childish game you know." She reached for the handheld sprayer and started spraying him with a continuous stream of water.
"Hey!" He yelled, holding up the dishtowel in hopes of deflecting some of the water. But it was a powerful sprayer and already got his clothes soaked. "You're getting water all over the floor!"
"It'll dry off." She shrugged.
Without another word he closed the space between them, wrapping his arms around her waist and pressing his wet clothes up against her. This caused her to stop spraying water at him.
"Martin!" She sighed. His wet clothes were dripping with the water she had sprayed at him and it was making her clothes become wet also since they were pressed up against her. "Now you're making me all wet!"
He couldn't hide his grin at her remark and winked at her. "Well I haven't heard that in a while."
She could feel her face blush and turn five different shades of red as she realized the double meaning of her statement. "I meant…I…oh…you know what I mean!" She buried her head in his shoulder to avoid having to look at him.
He laughed at how embarrassed she was and lightly kissed her neck. "You're even cuter when you're embarrassed." He whispered into her ear.
She moved her head away from his shoulder and they stood there with their faces only a few inches apart.
Without thinking about it, he leaned in and captured her lips in a passionate kiss. Their tongues swirled together and separately as they exploded each other's mouths. He felt her hands start to roam around, finding their way underneath his shirt. He was getting ready to let his hands do some exploring of their own when they heard the back door opening. They sprang apart from each at lightening speed and looked at Claire.
"What happened?" She asked. She looked first at the water on the floor and then at the wet clothes her parents were wearing.
"Uh…" Sam didn't want to admit that she had started a water fight, and decided to fib a little. "A pipe was leaking."
Martin got the idea that she didn't want to tell Claire that she had started a water fight and played along. "Yeah, and I was getting ready to help your mother plug the hole."
"Oh. Ok." Claire bounced out of the room.
Sam meanwhile had turned to stare at Martin, amazed by what had just come out of his mouth. The double meaning was obvious and she was speechless.
He liked being able to make her speechless and grinned at the fact that he had managed to take her mind off of feeling sad about leaving their friends behind in such an enjoyable way. It may not have been the smartest thing to do though because he was very close to having sex with her on the kitchen floor. It was a good thing that Claire walked in on them. He turned to go back to drying the dishes. "We should get back to these dishes."
She slowly walked over to the sink and started washing dishes again, still trying to figure out what had just happened. If Claire hadn't entered the room when she did, they might have gotten carried away. Would that have been such a bad thing though? At least it got her mind off of the negative pregnancy test.