Chapter 33

Friday, February 1 - Saturday, February 2, 2002

On the last day of January Dave fired up the Chevy and headed eastward again.

Once again, there was little reason for him to do it for the sake of Dunlap and Fyre. There were a couple things that would go smoother face to face but nothing that couldn't have been done by phone if absolutely necessary. In practice, though, Dave felt as if his prediction back in September was correct -- he was getting out of touch with the office politics and feeling the lack of networking he had once experienced. From time to time, he'd talked with some other editors, and they mostly reported the same kind of thing, so he wasn't alone. However, Dave was beginning to think this wasn't a long range issue with him; he just wanted to get his work done and free up his time for other things.

He probably would have found some reason to beg off the trip if it weren't for Shae. It was now almost a full month since he'd seen her, although they talked every day, both with and without the boys in the conversation. Still, talking to her on the phone wasn't the same as being with her. If it weren't for the fact it was too long of a trip to expect the boys to ride for such a short stay, he'd have been tempted to take them with him, even though it would put a real crimp into the adult bedtime activities he'd come to enjoy the last couple times he'd gotten together with Shae. So, with no small amount of eagerness he dropped the boys off at school and got out on Interstate 80.

As usual, the trip was long and boring. He spent some time trying to think about where the book was going, but it couldn't hold his interest, because his mind was really more on Shae than anything else.

So far, they'd pretty well managed to keep their romance from the boys, mostly because the kids weren't old enough to be tuned in on it, but even that subterfuge was getting more difficult. Emily had asked a couple of rather pointed questions that he'd had some trouble evading, too. While his mother knew about it and had promised to keep the secret, Dave could tell she was just about busting with the desire to tell someone, and suspected that Hazel, at least, knew about it too.

Clearly it was near time to come clean with the boys, and then with everyone else. The boys had been handed a tough truth last fall, and all in all they'd taken it pretty well, mostly better than he had, and at least partly because everyone had worked so hard to soften the blow for them. Their youth played into it -- it might not have gone anywhere as well if they were a little older. But still, he had trouble figuring out how to drop this happy news on them, and he planned to talk it over with Shae this trip, with the idea of telling the boys the next time she came to Bradford. That meant they had to do some planning and timetable setting, and had to make a few decisions. With that thought in mind Dave drove eastward with the feeling this trip was going to bring some changes to his life, since this time it was likely the topic of marriage would come up, as uncomfortable as it might be considering his issues with being loyal to Julie.

Having to drop the boys off caused him to leave a little late, and traffic hassles caused the trip to go slowly. It was well after dark when he arrived at Shae's apartment, where she was waiting for him. Since he'd called ahead on his cell phone and let her know he was running late, she'd held dinner for him, but it was ready within a few minutes of walking in her door and being greeted with a tremendous hug and kiss. He would have liked to have started right into discussing his thoughts of the drive over, but decided it wasn't a good time right then, since it was late and both of them were tired -- tired enough that they kept their lovemaking session down to about an hour before they fell asleep in what had become their favorite position, in each other's arms.

They knew they didn't have any time to mess around when the alarm went off the next morning, since Dave had an early appointment with Larissa Hamilton about Wings of Tregedar, which she'd been sending to him in sections. Her book was really going well, and what he'd seen was much better than the marginal Swordsman of Atlantis, which they'd decided not to publish. Wings was still a ways from being done and still needed some work, but it was coming along nicely. Dave's mind was really more on it than anything else as he showered by himself -- it would have taken much longer for the two of them to shower together because they would have gotten diverted into other things.

He stepped out of the shower to find Shae on her knees in front of the toilet, looking rather pale and peaked. "You OK?" he asked.

"I think so," she told him. "I was brushing my teeth and all of a sudden I gagged so bad I thought I was going to barf. It's happened a couple times here recently. My stomach has been feeling a little rocky sometimes. I think I've got a little touch of flu or something, not very bad though. I'll be OK."

Dave simply forgot about the incident, as his mind was still on Larissa and her book. They had a light breakfast, then got on their separate ways.

Dave's meeting with Larissa went very well; she'd picked up a lot of what he'd told her and improved on it. It really was more of a face-to-face to touch base with each other than for anything substantive. He finally managed to have his long-delayed meeting with Rob, although there were other items of interest to cover, and about all they managed on the online books was to agree they needed to talk about it sometime. Clearly, it was far down Rob's priority list, and Dave finally decided he was going to write up a memo of what he'd come up with, send it to Rob, and quit spending time on it until Rob approached him on the subject. Even with having lunch with Dick and Michelle, he had everything pretty well wrapped up by two PM, so he headed for Aaron Tietelbaum's office, still a little piqued at the lack of communication he was experiencing from being out of the office. He was not concerned about it much since it seemed likely Dunlap and Fyre was quickly becoming past tense.

The meeting with Tietelbaum went well. Because he and Julie had been filing their income tax separately, and the amount of money to be transferred was large, it was taking a while to iron everything out. Basically Dave had known since near the beginning there was going to be a tax hit, but after months of work Aaron had cut it down considerably. The returns still weren't quite ready and a couple issues were up in the air, but Aaron promised him everything would be done in another month, and in another year his taxes were going to be far simpler.

Whatever problems Shae may have had in the morning, she seemed to be over them after work. They went to a nice German restaurant for dinner, and then wound up at a smoky club with dancing and a good blues band before heading back to the apartment to do a little horizontal dancing in bed. Since they didn't have much on the schedule for Saturday, they slept in a bit. They cuddled for a while after waking up, which morphed, as it had before, into a nice bout of oral sex.

Shae was enjoying what she was doing and he was enjoying it, too. That came to a screeching halt as she got a greenish look on her face, vaulted out of bed, and raced for the bathroom, barely in time to make it to the toilet to blow her guts.

Well, he thought, that sort of takes the fun out of that. He waited several minutes, but when she didn't return, he decided he'd better check on her, so got up and headed for the bathroom himself to find her on her knees in front of the toilet again. "Shae, are you all right?" he asked.

"Yeah, I think so, now," she replied. "I don't know what this bug I have is, but I wish I'd get over it."

"You said you thought you had a touch of the flu or something."

"It feels sorta like it, but not really," she shrugged. "I can't seem to shake it, whatever it is." She stood up, apparently done with the toilet. "I feel better now."

With the mood for sex pretty well shot, they decided to get dressed. "Tell you what," Dave said. "I'll run ahead of you while you go get some coffee going."

"Let's not," she said. "I really haven't been able to put up with coffee recently, at least in the morning. Tea would be fine, though. Why don't I put a kettle on? I can have some of that."

"OK, fine with me," Dave frowned, a little suspicion beginning to tickle his mind. Some of this was starting to sound familiar.

He turned to the shower, to get a quick one, his mind running hard. Could it be? If so, it was going to put a real twist in things.

A few minutes later he was in the kitchen, with Shae now running well behind him. He found some tea bags and coffee singles and made himself one of the latter, planning on drinking it quickly. It tasted lousy, better than instant, but not by much, and nothing like the rich convenience store flavor of the coffee at the Spee-D-Mart. What was he going to do for his morning coffee after it closed? Make his own? He was going to miss the daily gossip session with Janine or Emily, he thought, digressing almost intentionally from what was on his mind. Was he making a mountain out of a molehill?

Eventually, Shae emerged wearing a pair of jeans that were way too short, almost pedal pushers, and somewhat incongruously, a flannel shirt. "Sorry about taking so long, Dave," she said. "I've been a little constipated lately, along with everything else."

Dave couldn't help himself. "I never said you were full of shit."

She giggled and blushed a little. "Well, you know what I mean," she laughed, and went to the kettle to make herself some tea.

"Yeah, I guess," he snickered. Oh, hell, might as well press on, he thought. If I'm wrong I at least get some points for caring. "However it ended, it felt good to sleep in," he commented divertingly.

"Yeah, it did," she yawned. "I've been tired a lot lately, and sometimes it's so bad I get headaches from it. It sure felt good to get some extra Z's."

Well, it fit, Dave said, not really wanting to examine how he felt. He turned to Shae and looked seriously at her. "Shae," he said. "I know this is kind of personal, but when was your last period?"

"Right after you left last month," she answered right off.

Dave frowned -- that didn't fit the picture forming in his mind. "Was there anything abnormal about it?" he asked.

"Dave," she frowned. "Are you my doctor or something?"

"Your 'or something' for now," he smiled. "I'm leading up to a point. Was there anything abnormal about it?"

"Well, yeah," she said, the confusion evident on her face. "It was a little early, even though I'm on the pill. And it was real light."

"When's your next one due?"

Shae shook her head. "I don't see what you're getting at, but I go to the placebo pills Monday, and it usually kicks right off then."

Dave glanced at the calendar hanging on the wall. "So your last one should have started around the seventh but started around the third or so, right? And the one before that about December 10."

"Yeah, so what?"

"So, you showed up at Bradford on the twenty-fourth, which as you'll recall, we spent the night trying to knock the bed down."

"I needed it, too," she replied. "Damn, you lit some fires in me I forgot I had. And you were into me every night for a week. It really was fun to sneak those past the boys."

"It was," he grinned at the memory. "Shae, I could be wrong, but looking at the calendar your fertile period should have been right about then."

Shae frowned, then got an odd look on her face. "Dave, are you saying what I think you're saying?"

"I could easily be wrong," he said slowly, "But there are a lot of signs indicating you could be pregnant."

"But Dave!" she protested. "I can't be pregnant. I'm on the pill, and I had a period last month."

"Doesn't have to mean anything," he said. "The pill has never been perfect pregnancy protection. Even under the best conditions, the failure rate is around one percent. Some pills have a failure rate of ten percent or higher. It depends on the pill and the person. I don't know the details, but they can be looked up on the Internet. As far as the period, some women have what they call 'implant bleeds' six to ten days after impregnation. They can fool you into thinking you're having a normal period."

"Dave," she said a little firmly, "How do you know all this shit?"

"Don't forget, Shae," he smiled. "I've been through this from the man's side before. Twice in fact. In Julie's case, well, we were trying to get pregnant. She had implant bleeds both times and both times we were disappointed until we realized later she'd caught after all. All the other stuff, well, I was interested, and Julie was the kind of person who wanted to let me know every detail. That's what makes me think you're showing all the signs."

"Wow," she replied in a soft voice. "I never even thought about that. I mean, the pills, the period..."

"I can tell you from experience that, even if you hope it's coming, the realization is a big experience," he said with a smile.

"Yeah, no shit," she said absently. "Damn, Dave. Pregnant! I mean, I was kind of looking forward to it in a year or so, but ... well, damn."

"I wouldn't go just on my word," he told her. "After all, I'm not a doctor; I'm just going on experience, and I could easily be wrong. But I think it would be a good idea to go out and buy a pregnancy test kit. If it comes up positive, then if I were you I think I'd see a doctor to be sure."

"Well, yeah, sure..." she said slowly. "Damn it, now you've got me excited about it. I don't know whether to hope it's true or hope it's not. What do you say we go find a drug store?"