Floored - Karla Sorensen Page 0,20

I'd found in Oxford.

Jude: Haworth, eh? I grew up not too terribly far from there, but I don't get home often. It's a beautiful place.

Me: London isn't a terrible backup, though.

Jude: I don't actually live in London. You just caught me on a night in the city.

Me: Where do you live? (Asks the girl who has very hazy geographical knowledge of anything other than the biggest cities in Britain)

Jude: Ha. I live in Shepperton. Takes me less than an hour to drive into central London most of the time.

My thumbs itched to google Shepperton, but I refrained. The guy hadn't even asked me out again. Between texting with Jude, I found myself wandering the same parts of Haworth over the next couple of days, saving some of my favorite places for the last days—to end on a high note, so to speak. I spent a lot of time outside, reading through Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and Agnes Grey, trying to determine which sister would get my focus. I found quiet spots to sit and stare at the countryside, scribbling furiously in my journal as I put myself in their shoes. I napped ... like three times a day, but whatever.

And it was upon waking from one of those naps that I felt my first unpleasant wave of nausea. Hand pressed to my stomach, I took a few deep breaths until it subsided. Food. I needed food.

I broke off a piece of a granola bar I kept stashed in my purse and heard my phone ding.

Jude: When do you return from your epic adventures?

Me: I have two more days here. I'd like to have a rough outline of my project done before I leave, but someone keeps distracting me.

Jude: Ah, yes. What a prat. Don't worry, I need to go kick a ball for three hours anyway.

Me: Someone punishing you?

Jude: That mouth of yours, American ...

I bit my lip. This was something we'd danced around. I snuggled back under the covers and let the sensation wash over me. By this point, it had been over three weeks since I'd seen him, and based on the amount we'd texted since I'd arrived in Haworth, I'd see him again when I got back, if we could manage it.

Me: Yes, I remember how much you enjoyed it, Brit.

Jude: Immensely. Wish I could've enjoyed it again upon waking up.

Jude: And because I have horrible time management skills, by the time I work up a more polite way to ask, I'd like not to wait another month before I get to see that lovely mouth in person.

Me: I think we could manage that.

My belly fluttered until his words sank in a little.

A month.

It had been a month.

"Holy shit," I whispered. Frantically opening up my calendar app, I scrolled back to the little dot on my calendar of when I'd gotten my last period. Five weeks. I should've gotten my period.

I was late.

The kind of late that was really, really bad.

"Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit, holyyyyyyy shit."

I scrambled from the bed, tossing my phone away from me with fumbling fingers, and speared my hands in my hair when it clattered to the floor.

"I'm just late because of stress," I insisted. To myself. Because I was alone.

In a foreign country.

And possibly pregnant.

From a one-night stand.

My eyes burned. My nose tingled. My hands shook dangerously. This could not be happening.

I mean, it could happen. I remember him using a condom. But with a groan, I knew that my birth control taking had been ... hit or miss ... those first couple of weeks while I adjusted to the time difference.

Claire had been telling me for years that I should set reminders on my phone for my medication. But past advice coming back to haunt me was not what I needed.

What I needed was a freaking pregnancy test. As I leaned down to find my phone where it'd dropped on the floor, I knew I needed to call ... I didn't know. Claire. Isabel. Finn ... no, not Finn, he'd be terrible in this situation. Plus, there was the whole in medical school and has a new girlfriend thing. Paige. No. She'd hop on a plane and make me pee on a stick. As I mulled over my options, I noticed that the screen on my phone was on the news app, and before I could navigate away from it, I caught a glimpse of a sports headline, the top portion of someone's very familiar face in a picture.

Hey,