Every Last Drop: A Novel Page 2

  Because today, Baby Falls, is the first day of fertility treatments.

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  “How often are you having sex?” Dr. Dana Hill stared at me over thick, black glasses with a level of seriousness I envied. How did she ask such personal questions day in, day out, and not burst out laughing? Or blush with embarrassment?

  “Uh, often.” Kyle fumbled on his words, crimson spreading across his cheeks.

  “What’s often? Two to three times a week? More? Less?”

  I decided to answer for the both of us. “About four times a week, sometimes more.”

  I put my hand on Kyle’s to calm his nerves. I never minded talking about our sex life. It’s hard to stay quiet about it when you’re married to the physical embodiment of God’s gift to women. To this day, I cannot understand why someone with his impossibly good looks was interested in a mousy brunette like me.

  Kyle is certainly not as open as I am though, and if the color of his cheeks was any indication, he was more than a little uncomfortable at the doctor’s line of questioning. I tried to stifle a grin at the irony since Kyle had been raised one flower blossom shy of being a full-blown hippy. His lackadaisical parents, Elias and Dixie Falls, were children of the sixties and nothing short of a stereotype, but somehow, they had the opposite effect on most of their three children. Kyle and his sister Kat were conservative to the point of polo shirts as a religion. Their brother Kurt was somewhere in between, not fitting into any mold, but certainly nothing like his parents.

  “Four times a week,” Dr. Hill repeated, scrawling notes on a clipboard. “How long have you been trying to become pregnant?”

  “About a year and half since we first decided to start trying. Kyle is in the U.S. Marines, so he was gone on his third tour into the beginning of last year. He was deployed a lot the first few years we were together, actually. Since he came home last year, he’s been stationed close by, so we’ve been able to ...uh, practice...regularly.”

  “I see, and you stopped using condoms or other types of birth control?”

  “Oh, were we supposed to?” I replied with a straight face.

  “Tessa,” Kyle said in warning while his face tried to remain serious, but then he snorted a laugh. “Yes, Dr. Hill, she went off birth control a year and a half ago, and we haven’t used condoms since we were married.”

  Based on the frown on Dr. Hill’s face, she didn’t appreciate my joke. “And, Mrs. Falls, you’ve had steady periods every month? No chance of conception?”

  Struck with sudden sadness, I dropped my eyes to my hands, fiddling with the strap on my purse.

  Kyle placed his arm over the back of my chair. “We conceived a year ago, but lost the baby at nine weeks.”

  It was still hard for me to voice the words. A few friends had assured me miscarriages were surprisingly common, and nine weeks was barely anything—a follow up medical procedure rarely necessary since the body naturally cleans up after itself. They told me I couldn’t feel the baby yet, so it wouldn’t make much of a difference.

  But it had made a difference. I might not have yet felt a kick, but I felt the presence of a life that wasn’t mine, and yet…was. I’d fallen in love, and hugged my waist, telling my little son or daughter how much I already loved them.

  And just as sure as I’d felt the flicker of life inside me, I had felt it leave.

  There was no agonizing pain, no terrifyingly massive blood loss. It was nothing like the movies had led me to believe. Instead, it was quiet and somber. It was slow and deliberate. My body was supporting life one minute, then clearing it away the next.

  The tiny heart had stopped beating, and it was as simple, and complicated, as that.

  “Ages?” Dr. Hill was firing out questions. I might have missed a few since I had tuned out, but Kyle seemed to be keeping up for the both of us.

  I took a deep breath, slowly exhaling and imagining my negative thoughts and memories leaving with it. That’s what my therapist had taught me to do after the miscarriage. It was a process, but I was working my way toward being happy again and today wasn’t the day to think about loss or heartaches. We were taking our first steps toward making our family, creating a second Baby Falls—though we’d never forget our first. Life’s all about choices.

  Today, I was choosing to be happy.

  I needed to be happy.

  “I’m thirty years old,” Kyle told her.

  I glanced sideways at him, a teasing grin on my face. “And I’m twenty-eight.”

  I needed to joke about something, anything, and ever since Kyle had turned thirty in January, I’d enjoyed kidding him about his ‘old’ age. I told him once I turned twenty-nine in September, I’d stay that age for the rest of my life. His response to that was to go through our entire kitchen to find every birthday candle we owned, counting out twenty-nine and throwing the rest away.

  I squeezed his hand tighter at the memory, a dopey smile pulling at my lips. It’s no wonder I wanted to start a family with this goofball.

  “Do either of you have any health issues I should know about?”

  “Not that I know of,” Kyle answered.

  He still looked so nervous, and I wanted to tell him it would be okay, but I guess this was what we were here to find out.

  I shook my head. “Me neither.”

  “What about these headaches you marked on your intake form, Mrs. Falls?” Dr. Hill stared at me again, as if accusing me of lying. She needed to relax…like, a lot. I wondered if she could write prescriptions for herself. If so, she should.

  I shrugged. “Well, it asked me if I ever had any headaches, and I said yes.”

  “How often? Are they severe?”

  “Uh, a couple times a week. More often and more painful lately than they were at first. I think it’s the stress of this process. We’ve been trying for a baby for a while, you know?”

  Dr. Hill fixed on me for a moment, squinting, as if deep in thought, before returning to her paperwork. “I want to run some tests. Mr. Falls, I’ll need a sperm sample from you first. The nurse out in the hallway will give you everything you need and show you to a private room. Mrs. Falls, I’ll need you to come with me to the fourth floor so I can run some scans after we do a blood test to check that you’re not pregnant now.”

  “Scans for what?” I pictured being stuck in a giant donut-looking machine accidentally malfunctioning and trapping me forever.

  “A full body scan will tell us if there is anything we need to worry about, cysts, malformations. At your age, pregnancy shouldn’t take a year, and in light of your miscarriage, we need to know what’s going on, so we’re going head-to-toe.”

  I immediately suspected she wanted to bill my insurance for expensive tests. “What does fertility have to do with my toes?”

  Dr. Hill rolled her eyes—a doctor rolled her eyes at me. That was a first. I kind of liked her a little now. “With no recent medical records to refer to—since your last physical was in college—I must rule out all possible problems before we proceed.”

  I made a face behind her back, and Kyle stifled a laugh. So sue me. I didn’t like going to doctors. My father didn’t either, and he never made me go unless I was sick. I wouldn’t have gone in college if it hadn’t been required. In my opinion, it makes absolutely zero sense to go to the doctor when healthy, just to risk picking up a nasty virus in the waiting room and ending up worse than when I walked in.

  I gave Kyle an envious look. “So, you get to look at booby magazines, and I get a full body scan. I bet this is how the feminist movement started.”

  Kyle laughed, circling an arm around my waist. “It’s going to be okay, Tessa.”

  I shot him the squinty glare I’d learned recently from watching Dr. Hill. “For you, maybe.” He was a little too eager about all this, if you ask me.

  “I’ll think of you the whole time, babe. I promise.”

  “Well, obviously,” I replied, wiggling my brows suggestively.

  “Mrs.
Falls, are you ready?” Dr. Hill was suddenly in my face, and I realized without the desk between us, this woman had a serious lack of social etiquette. Also, she’d definitely eaten tuna for lunch.

  “Can’t wait,” I told her, pretty certain she wouldn’t pick up on my sarcasm.

  As I followed Dr. Hill down the hall, I heard Kyle behind me asking the nurse for the Wi-Fi password so he could use the internet on his phone instead of magazines.

  Bastard.

  Chapter Two

  Wednesday, March 26, 2014

  “I’m not sure I can take another day off work this week. The U.S. Marines don’t exactly give you free rein on sick days, babe.” Kyle frowned, stirring a jar of tomato sauce into the spaghetti on the stove.

  “Yeah, but you work at the recruitment center now. Plus, Dr. Hill says she needs us to come in person for our results.” I stuck a finger into the pot and slurped the sauce off my fingertip before he could bat my hand away. Beast barked at our feet, as if to tell me to share.

  “Why can’t she do it over the phone?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe she feels bad telling you over the phone your swimmers aren’t working,” I said, teasing, though every part of me hoped it had nothing to do with bad news.

  “My swimmers are fine. Maybe your batter missed the ball.”

  I grimaced, sticking my tongue out while walking to the cabinets and pulling out our dinner plates. “My batter? That sounds horrifying. Where on earth did you learn that metaphor?”

  He grinned proudly. “I just made it up.”

  “That figures. I officially ban any baseball talk in regards to my uterus.”

  “You can’t do that!” He actually sounded upset. Men are so weird.

  I cocked my head to the side, my brows raised. “So, you wouldn’t mind me writing in my book to Baby Falls that Daddy says you’re taking so long to get here because Daddy can’t throw strikes?”

  “Maybe he will become a famous baseball player and see this as the beginning of his fated journey to athletic stardom.” Kyle waved his hand dramatically through the air while Beast followed his movements with sharp eyes, waiting for one of us to drop a tasty morsel of canine-poison tomato sauce.

  “Fated journey? You’ve been talking to your mom again, haven’t you?”

  “They’re up in Alaska, looking for a yeti or something.”

  I snorted a laugh. “There are no yetis in Alaska. Yetis live in the Himalayans. Amateurs.”

  “That’s Dixie and Elias for you,” Kyle said, shrugging.

  I paused, tapping an index finger to my pursed lips.

  He furrowed his brow. “What?”

  “I’m trying to decide if I’m more weirded out by you calling your parents their first names, or that they are off searching for mythical creatures on the wrong continent.”

  He came up behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist and kissing my neck softly. “And the verdict is?”

  “I’m strangely okay with both.”

  “And I’m strangely okay with you.” His breath sent shivers across my skin. “Speaking of strange trips, have you checked your email today?”

  My eyes popped open. “Oh my God—today’s the day!”

  Kyle held up his phone, grinning. “I got the permit. I got picked in the lottery. Did you?”

  “I haven’t checked!” I shrieked at the top of my lungs, digging around in my pockets frantically for my phone.

  “Don’t be upset if you didn’t,” he cautioned. “The chances of us both being picked for the Half Dome are slim to none.”

  The Half Dome Day Hike at Yosemite National Park was a climber and hiker’s dream trail, and we’d been trying to get picked to go forever. You could only get permits in March via lottery and we’d both missed out and not been chosen the last two years.

  I finally managed to find my phone and pull open my email, scrolling through a ton of junk mail until I finally found the right one. “I got it! I got it!”

  Waving my phone in his face, I jumped up and down then threw my arms around his neck in a giant bear hug. “We’re going to Yosemite!”

  “I can’t believe we both got in!” Kyle said, hugging me back. “This trip is going to be amazing.”

  “This is our year, babe. We’re going to kill it.” And I was really beginning to believe that.

  Kyle laughed. “You’re a strange one, Tessa.”

  “What’s so strange about me?” I said, teasing and unsure if I actually wanted an answer. We’re talking jumbo-sized can of worms here.

  “What’s so strange about Tessa Falls? Hmm, do we have all night?” He kissed me again, chuckling against my skin.

  “Nope, we’re on the clock. Beast demands an answer in one sentence or less.”

  “Beast does?”

  I nodded, motioning down to the dog, who had wormed his way between our legs.

  “Hmmm…the strangest thing about Tessa Barnes is she chose to become Tessa Falls,” he said.

  I tried to hold the corners of my lips still, his coaxing voice making me turn to face him. Wrapping my arms around his neck, I found his mouth with mine and thanked him for the moment of sincerity. I was more comfortable in constant witty banter than I was with raw feelings, but his words were exactly what I needed to hear. It was exactly what I needed to feel—wanted.

  “Schedule the doctor’s appointment for Friday afternoon, and I’ll see if Gunny will let me leave early.” Kyle brushed his lips across mine. “It shouldn’t be a problem though.”

  “Yes, sir, Staff Sergeant.” I pressed my hips forward, my tone suggestive.

  He groaned, always loving when I call him by his rank, and inhaled deeply, his nose still pressed against my shoulder. The sensation caused my skin to prickle with a chill before heating up and traveling south.

  “You know what I think?” His voice was now deeper and husky.

  I moaned lightly in response, urging him to finish his thought.

  “I think we should go upstairs and practice before dinner.”

  “Practice what?” I asked.

  “Making Baby Falls.”

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  Wednesday, March 24, 2010

  “I got something for you.” Kyle grinned at me excitedly.

  The man had no poker face. I’d known he had a surprise up his sleeve ever since he first picked me up for our date. It was cute. He was cute. The last three months of dating him were cute.

  Cute, cute, cute.

  And I’m not a cute person—never have been and never wanted to be. Yet somehow, I was dolling up to see him and gushing to my friends about everything he did. I’d even tucked the receipt from tonight’s movie rental into my purse as a memento.

  That’s the levels of depravity we’re talking about here.

  Someone, send help.

  “What is it?” I wedged into the couch farther, pulling my feet underneath me.

  He hopped up and walked to his jacket, slung over a chair in the corner, and retrieved something from the pocket. We’d already eaten at one of my favorite restaurants in downtown Chicago then rented a movie to watch at my place. I was a big fan of movies on the couch—same show, but you could take your shoes off…among other things.

  He handed me a medium-sized brown box. “Open it and find out.”

  I grabbed it and ripped the top to find a red heart inside. Smiling, I glanced up at him, wondering if this meant what I thought it meant.

  “Are you giving me your heart?” My voice sounded a lot more hopeful than I intended. I bit my lip, hoping I hadn’t sounded as desperate for his answer as I really was.

  Instead, his fingers found my chin and tilted my face to him. “I love you, Tessa. I’m in love with you and have been for weeks.” His wide smile seemed to go on for days as he reached into the box and pulled out the heart. I hadn’t realized it at first, but it was the kind of heart-shaped box that was filled with chocolates. “But you should open the heart.”

  Lifting the lid quickly, I immedi
ately burst out laughing. “Kyle!”

  The heart was filled with small airplane bottles of booze—all of my favorite brands. Hershey’s kisses acted like buffers between the bottles and each little chocolate had a paper ribbon that said “I love you.” If I had had any doubt that he was my perfect man, it was certainly wiped clean now.

  “I couldn’t think of anything that would better describe our love than booze and kisses,” he said, a mischievous grin on his face.

  I pulled out a tiny Jack Daniels and shook my head, chuckling. “I accept your booze—and chocolate-filled proclamation of love, but I have one caveat.”

  I felt like throwing my arms around his neck and kissing him to kingdom come. Or until one of us does—preferably me first. But I had conditions first.

  He looked so surprised I thought his eyebrows would touch his hairline. “You have a caveat to me loving you?”

  “Yes, I’ll let you love me with one condition—”

  He snorted. “Oh, now you’ll let me?”

  “I’m not done,” I said in warning, my index finger pointed between us.

  He held his hands up in defense, pausing for me to continue.

  “As I was saying, I’ll let you love me on one condition—I get all the love. Every last drop of love in your heart is for me, nothing held back ever.”

  “Every last drop,” he repeated, clearly amused.

  I pushed my chin up. “Those are my terms.”

  Kyle scooted closer on the couch and pulled me to him, settling me on his lap as my arms circled his neck. I took the opportunity to sniff his collar, blushing slightly at my indulgence. I’m pretty sure his scent is half the reason I started dating him. Something about it was intoxicating, compelling, and perfectly mine.

  “Tessa Barnes, I hereby guarantee you have all my love.” He covered my lips with his, stealing the very breath from my lungs.

  I tasted his sincerity and wanted more, took more, and gave more. After several heated moments, I pulled away and looked at him with mock seriousness. “Can I get that in writing and notarized?”