Bouncing her leg, Amy tapped her finger on her knee as she lowered her gaze to the floor, shooting an anxious look in the direction of the test sitting on the edge of the sink then away again. These were the longest couple minutes of her life and her eyes rolled to the ceiling as her leg thumped faster the slower the seconds ticked by.
"Amy, what are you doing in there?" Georgie banged her fist on the bathroom door, sighing when she received no answer. "I have to get ready for school." Her forehead thumped against the door, thinking this would be the least believable excuse to use in order to get out of going to school. Her aunt hogged the bathroom: original, but not very creative.
"Just a minute, Georgie," Amy snapped, running her hand through her blonde hair as her nerves started to make her edgy.
"You've been in there forever."
"So go use Grandpa's outhouse if you have to go that bad." Amy's gaze bore into the back of the test, not really wanting to read the result while having this argument with Georgie.
Georgie wrinkled her nose at Amy's suggestion. "Someone's got a bug up her butt," she mumbled walking away from the door to get breakfast instead.
Closing her eyes, Amy sighed when she heard Georgie walking away from the door, glad to have a moment to herself again as the last few seconds passed. Reaching slowly for the stick, Amy picked it up and held it face down in her lap. "Okay…one…two…" She took a deep breath through her nose. "Two…" Shutting her eyes again, Amy held her breath. "Three." Then turned it over as she opened her eyes.
"Hey, you ready to go?" Ty asked, reaching out to run his hand over Spartan's ebony coat as Amy ran a brush slowly, absently, down his neck.
"Uh, yeah, about dinner. I'm not really feeling up to it tonight, maybe another time?" She glanced up at him briefly before lowering her gaze and concentrating intently on rubbing out a patch of dried mud from Spartan's shoulder, hiding her face behind his neck.
"Yeah, no problem." Resting his hand on Spartan's withers, Ty studied his wife's face for a moment. "Are you okay?"
After a few firm strokes over the horse's shoulder, Amy looked up at Ty, again briefly, with a curious frown. "Yeah. Why?"
"I don't know. Something just seems kind of different…off, I guess."
"What do you mean?" Amy bent down to drop the brush in the caddy then unclipped Spartan from the cross ties and walked him to his stall, Ty following behind and leaning on the open door.
"Well, this is the third time in the last week you cancelled or rescheduled plans."
"So? I'm just tired. We just got two new client horses in yesterday, plus with Nicole on vacation I've been helping Lou with the dude ranch." Tired was an understatement for how exhausted Amy felt over the last week, falling asleep almost immediately after crawling into bed.
"I'm just worried about you, Amy. You've been tired a lot lately and I noticed there's Ginger Ale in the fridge. I didn't think you drank Ginger Ale." At least all the years he's known her Ty never saw Amy drink it, just assuming she didn't have a taste for it.
"Well I do now," Amy responded rather bluntly, making Ty knit his eyebrows at her abrupt tone.
"Are you sure there's nothing else going on?" he asked, deciding it better not to mention her short temper lately for fear of exacerbating it.
Amy was quiet a moment as she exited the stall, latching it slowly. "Uh huh," she replied, purposely turning at such an angle that her back was to Ty as she started fixing grain.
Ty turned with her, forced to look at her back as she leaned over the feed bins. Something was definitely up. He wasn't oblivious, knowing all of Amy's little quirks and signals for when she was annoyed, angry, sad, happy. It was all so obviously there in her body language and her forced distance told him she had something on her mind that was bothering her. He just wasn't sure if it would be worth it to push her to tell him, not wanting to make it worse.
Amy's mind was running rampant. She struggled all day with how she wanted to tell Ty the news, flip-flopping between being excited and nervous. Now that he was there for her to tell him, she chickened out. If she told him now it would be like he forced it out of her after she tried to hide it from him. She wasn't trying to hide it, she just didn't know how to tell him without blurting it out.
The up and down motion of reaching to the bottom of the nearly empty feed bin was starting to make her nauseous and she leaned up to take a slow breath and settle her stomach, dumping the scoop of grain into a bucket. "Here, can you finish feeding. I'll go grab my stuff from the house. Lou made us a lasagna to take home." Handing to scoop to Ty, Amy tried not to rush out of the barn as her stomach turned on her and she jogged the last few steps outside to throw up behind the hitching rail.
Ty continued to look at Amy curiously, watching her hurry outside. He grabbed the first two buckets to hang them up when he could hear Amy getting sick. Setting them down in the aisle, Ty rushed outside to see her bent over holding her stomach as she vomited in the driveway. His approach was cautious, reaching out to lay a gentle hand on her back. "This isn't nothing, Amy. If whatever is bothering you has you this upset, you need to tell me."
"Maybe I'm just sick," she answered once she could breathe again, rubbing her hand over her stomach and coughing from the burn in her throat.
"This is more than just being sick. Now stop deflecting and tell me what's wrong." His hand ran soothingly over her back while the other pulled her hair back away from her face as she inhaled deep breaths.
"I can't."
"Why not?"
"Because, look at me. This isn't how I wanted to tell you. It was supposed to be special, the right moment, like your proposal." Amy was almost in tears, upset at how terribly this moment was going and wishing the could go back a few minutes to start it over again.
"Tell me what?" Ty gathered the rest of her hair to hold in his fist that had been rubbing her back. He leaned down to try and encourage her to look at him. She did, slowly standing straight and turning to face him. For a long moment her eyes fixated on the buttons of his shirt. "Amy? Come on, you know you can tell me anything."
"I know. But this isn't just anything. It's going to change our whole lives."
Ty was finding himself getting nervous then as he gazed at Amy who finally brought her eyes to meet his. What could be so bad that she tried to keep from him? "What is it?"
There was a very long pause at their gazes locked and lingered, studying each other's expressions so intently as if trying to communicate through their thoughts. "I'm pregnant." Amy finally just let it out, the words floating on a breath of air.
Ty went silent, his eyes freezing on hers as the words slowly filtered through his brain, taking their sweet time to unfold into pieces he could understand. Amy gave him a moment to let it register before his lack of response became too much. "Ty, please say something."
Ty's mouth opened, then closed as he blinked and had an actual thought for the first time since receiving that news. "We're going to need a bigger trailer."