(no subject)
Title: One Big Happy Dysfunctional Family
Rating: Suitable for those above the age of sixteen.
Pairing: Pete/girl!Gabe, past Pete/Ashlee
Summary: She hasn't been with anyone since Tokyo. Which means that if what she thinks is true, then she's knocked up with Pete's kid, her not-yet-divorced boss' kid, and that's a whole other level of entanglement.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction and does not reflect real lives or relationships.
Warnings: Pregnancy. Some parts teeter on the edge of infidelity.
Note: Set in the universe in which Gabe Saporta has always been a girl. Written for the wild card square, difficult pregnancy, on hc_bingo.
She's not surprised when Pete doesn't answer his phone. Pete's usual tactic when his life goes to shit is to shut down radio communication and take to his bed. She can't force him to pick up, so when she hears the voicemail message, she just says, "Yo, it's me and you probably know why I'm calling. Give me a call if you need to talk," and hangs up.
She hadn't noticed anything amiss with Pete and Ashlee last time she visited the house, but she also has a policy to try not to get involved with Pete's relationships. She and Ashlee treated each other with ritualistic politeness and tried not to be alone together, like they've always done. She spent a lot of time playing with Bronx.
She doesn't expect Pete to call back, but he does and she's relieved. She says, "Hey," and waits for him to talk.
"I thought everything was great," Pete says. "I guess I didn't know her as well as I thought I did."
"I know she loves you," Gabe says. "And she loves Bronx." What she doesn't say is, Sometimes that isn't enough for a marriage.
"I wish someone would just tell me how I fucked up," Pete says. "I'm trying to figure it out but it's not working."
"No, you're obsessing," Gabe says. "Don't do that shit. It's just going to fuck you up. Deal with your life, don't get in your head."
"I can't," Pete says. "I can't go out. Fuckin' paparazzi. I just want to get out, away from all this shit, and -"
"Pete," she says in her schoolmarm voice, the one that makes everyone pay attention. "Stop."
Pete shuts up for a minute. "I can't take it, Gabe."
"Can you go somewhere for a couple days? Where's the munchkin?"
"Ash has him." Pete's voice is wobbly, and before he crashes over completely, she says, "Is there anywhere you want to go? Just to clear your head out?"
Pete's silent for a minute. Then he says, "Tokyo."
If it were her, she'd haul ass home to Uruguay, but whatever Pete's into. "Maybe you should get a ticket. Brush up on your Japanese."
"I don't - Gabe, being by myself is freaking me out right now."
She turns the phone away from her face and sighs. Patrick has told her all the stories of how the band propped Pete up when he needed it, but that's over with now and she doesn't think the new band is skilled in Wentz handling yet. What Pete needs now is a shoulder to cry on and some good advice, and to make a few stupid decisions.
She also knows that if she goes to Japan with Pete and anyone finds out, the press will turn her into the other woman before she can say boo.
She brings the phone back. "You feel like you want someone around?"
"Yeah," Pete says faintly.
She's not going to give a fuck about the press. "I'll set it up. Think you can hang on for a couple days?"
"You don't have to."
"Shut the fuck up," she says kindly. "I'll call you with your instructions later."
"Thank you," Pete says, and she hangs up.
*****
She's got some time before the band has to go back into the studio, so she sits and thinks until she comes up with a plan to throw the paparazzi off. She buys herself a plane ticket and books herself into a single hotel room in Tokyo (both expensive enough to make her choke, but she'll just write this off as a business expense), and then calls Pete with specific directions to get on a later flight to Tokyo and stay in a different room in the same hotel. This way, if they get spotted, they can spin it that they just randomly wound up in the same city. It's happened before.
When she gets to Tokyo, she tries to act like a tourist; she eats onigiri with pickled plums, considers getting some crazy nail art and makes it halfway to Shibuya before jetlag knocks her on her ass. She straggles back to her hotel room, where she paints her fingernails a vivid tangerine and does not worry about Pete. She'd call someone but her phone doesn't work in Japan.
Finally she lies on the bed and watches Tokyo television news until she feels less restless. The knock on the door makes her jump.
Pete stands in the hallway, wearing a puffy coat that's bigger than he is, hood pulled up over his face. She can't really see his face but he's huddled into himself and his posture is rigid. She doesn't bother asking how he's doing but puts an arm around his shoulders and guides him into the room, talking about whatever. She tells him about her flight, shows him her nail polish and talks about how she tried and failed to go shopping as she flips the Do Not Disturb sign onto the door.
Pete offers no resistance as she gets his ridiculous coat off. She figures all she can do is get him to the point where he either starts talking or manages to sleep, so she makes Pete lie down while she hangs the coat up. Pete stares at the wall in front of him numbly, looking like a doll that's been thrown away, and she lies down and spoons up against his back. She eases his sneakers off with her toes and lets them fall onto the floor. She says, "I'll stay here as long as you want, Wentz." Pete doesn't answer but the rigid line of his back eases a little.
He doesn't go to sleep, but finally he brushes her off his back and rolls over, pressing his face into the hotel pillow. Gabe stretches her shoulders back.
"Why am I such a fuck-up," Pete says into the pillow.
If he's talking, that means he's thinking, and if he's thinking, that means he might listen to reason eventually. "You are not," she says.
"Fuckin' statistics, dude. I wrecked the band and I wrecked the marriage. I'm pretty sure I wrecked my ex-girlfriend's whole life. If Bebe had any sense she wouldn't let me within two feet of her."
"You're giving yourself a lot of credit there."
"I'm gonna call her tomorrow and tell her to change her plans for the summer. I'm not going back out on the road and starting this whole fuckin' cycle again. She's young, she can get another band."
"Hey," Gabe says sharply. She sits up and yanks Pete's face around so he's looking at her. Once Pete starts with this train of thought, he doesn't stop until he's worked himself into a full-blown panic attack, and she doesn't believe in pulling her punches. "So your solution to your being unhappy right now is to cut short all the work you've done and disappoint all the kids who are waiting to see you play? You're a fucking moron, dude. You think you feel like shit now, how do you think you're going to feel after two months of sitting around wallowing in your own self-pity?"
Pete doesn't answer, but he doesn't turn away either. He looks miserable and like he's about to cry, but she thinks he still needs to hear what she's saying.
"The only way you're going to feel better is if you go out and make those kids happy," she says. "Not by shutting yourself up like before. We're both too old for that shit. You've got responsibilities to take care of. You've got a band who needs a songwriter and you've got a little boy who needs his dad."
"I wish he had a better dad."
"Well, I wish there was no war and I had my very own monkey, but that's not going to happen."
"Don't make me laugh, I don't feel good."
She pokes his side. "Don't wallow in negativity, dude."
"I don't know what else to do."
She leans back against the wall. "Well, I think you should hang out in the city for a few days, go shopping and get wasted until you're ready to go back to Cali and deal with things. And you shut the fuck up about canceling the tour until you and Ashlee reach an agreement, whatever it is. Don't conflate your personal life with music, okay?"
Pete thinks about it. "You're probably right."
"Duh," she says. "I'm jetlagged and exhausted, man. I'm going to watch TV until I go to sleep. Then we can grab some breakfast in the morning and you can watch me try on clothes."
Pete shrugs. "Can I stay in this room tonight? I'll tuck you in."
"Yeah, yeah. Just don't try anything while I'm sleeping, pervert."
"I like my women conscious, thank you," Pete says, and tugs the covers down so she can crawl in.
"If you need to talk and I'm asleep, just wake me up," she says. "I'll try not to be a crabby bitch."
"Wow, that sounds great," Pete says, but hands her the remote. In fifteen minutes he's asleep on top of the bed, breathing wheezily. She thinks about covering him up but doesn't want to wake him, so she just watches the television with the sound on low until she goes to sleep.
*****
Technically, she's here for Pete, but by the end of the second day she realizes that she probably needed to get away too. She's been feeling rootless since she got back from her Brazilian spiritual retreat; she knows she needs to change but she doesn't have any idea who she needs to be. Being in Tokyo makes it easy for her to switch identities. In the daytime, she walks out into the winter sunshine and instantly becomes the idle, spoiled gaijin with nothing better to do than try on clothes at Parco while Pete holds her purse. At night she switches between sympathetic rabbi and good time Charlie, depending on what Pete needs; usually he needs to freak out and mope for a while and then he just wants to get drunk, which she feels is perfectly reasonable.
Sometime around midnight, Pete decides that he's going to throw himself back into being single. It may be fueled by beer and umeshu, but at least it isn't Pete sitting in the corner emitting visible rays of self-loathing. She encourages him to go flirt with the pretty girl sitting alone at the end of the bar; she feels a vague twinge of guilt when it's out of her mouth but then she chugs another drink and it's easier to not think about Ashlee. Pete turns her offer down anyway, mumbling something about how he doesn't like the atmosphere here.
They stagger together up to her room sometime around dawn. Pete's still on his singles kick, informing her about just how many chances he passed up when he got married and how he's got to make up for lost time. Then he asks, "Minibar?"
"Minibar," she agrees.
She throws herself on the bed while Pete goes through the minibar. Her skirt rides up around her thighs but she can't be bothered to fix it. "Toss me one of those little vodka things if it's in there," she says.
"Uh-huh." Pete rummages around and then lobs a miniature bottle at her. She drops it onto her chest before opening and gulping it. Pete makes an irritated noise.
"Who do I need to fuck to get some Baileys in here?"
"Baileys is bad for you. It's all sugar. Have a beer."
"You're all sugar," Pete says, and jumps onto the bed. He gets thrown off course somewhere on the descent, and he lands on top of her with his hand between her legs.
She looks at him. He's looking at the minibar distractedly, but he doesn't move his hand, cupping her cunt through her gauzy underwear. She knows she could call him a douchebag and push him away and that would be the end of it. But it's been a while since she got laid and she really doesn't have a problem helping her newly single friend back into the dating scene. So she arches up and presses into his hand as she struggles with her panties, until Pete finally gets a clue and pulls them off for her.
She's not in the mood for leg cramps, so she flips Pete over onto his back and straddles him. Pete grins up at her; it's the first real smile she's seen from him since they got to Tokyo, and it makes her happy. She doesn't want to jinx it though, so she says, "Get your fucking pants off, Wentz."
Pete gets out of his jeans faster than she thought was possible, without moving out from under her. He maneuvers her so that she's resting on his thighs and then sticks two fingers in his mouth, looking up at her with one of the dirtiest expressions she's ever seen on him, and then touches his hot wet fingers to her slit. He doesn't go for it right away, just massages and teases her until her breathing quickens; it's only then that he spreads her open and puts his fingers on her clit, stroking and rubbing until she moans.
"What do you want?" she manages. "You want me just to sit here or…"
"Fuckin'…It's going to get me off if you get off. If you…"
"Oh, in that case," she says, and pushes his hands down. Her body tenses involuntarily, protesting the loss of connection, and she angles her hips to slide Pete's cock inside her, tightening around him. She plays with her clit as she rides him, trying to draw out the experience. Pete regains his presence of mind and cups her breasts with his hands, pressing his palms against her nipples. Her breath catches; he circles her nipples with his thumbs, slowly, and she loses her concentration. She thrashes and calls him a douchebag until he gets rougher.
Pete's had too much booze to last very long; it seems like she comes and then he comes barely ten seconds later. She's sweaty and languid and he looks like the happiest man in the world, and it's easy for them both to go to sleep.
She wakes up expecting that they'll just get up and grab some food like nothing happened, but instead Pete touches her hip and they fuck as the sun's coming up outside. She loses track of time after that. She takes a shower and they fuck as soon as she turns the water off. They watch game shows they can't understand and fuck. They eat room service anpan and fuck. It feels like it's someone else's life but she's not complaining.
They only come out of the haze when they're at the airport, waiting to get back to whatever normal is. When Pete comes back from getting them coffee and gives her the change, she puts the yen in her wallet's side pocket and zips it closed.
"I feel a lot better now," Pete says.
"Yeah? You feel ready to deal with things?"
"Ready to go home and be a dad. Thanks."
"Don't mention it," she says, and that's it.
On the plane back to New York, the whole trip feels like a random blip in her existence, like something that only happens once. She has to remind herself not to dwell on past experience and just keep moving forward.
*****
It's not unusual for her period to be a few days late; stress tends to fuck her cycle up, and the thought of making this album is more stressful than usual. She's so busy trying to figure out what the fuck songs she's going to write and if her voice is even up to recording that she doesn't even think about her period.
Then she gets out of bed feeling crappy and still exhausted, which isn't a surprise because she's been feeling crappy for a while. Then she manages to take some vitamins and eat a banana before she nearly knocks over her ginseng bottle in the rush to puke into the kitchen sink. She stands there with her elbows on the counter, thinking, What the fuck, and then she realizes that she's seventeen days late.
Her coherent thought is Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.
She's not going to get anything done by flipping out, though, so she washes out the sink and reaches for her phone - carefully, because her stomach's still uneasy and moving makes it worse. She texts her personal assistant, i need you to make me an obgyn apt. and bring over as many pregnancy tests as you can.
Within three minutes Keaton writes back, !!!!!!!
many many tests.
Keaton comes over with a bag full of pregnancy tests. She says, "I made you an appointment tomorrow at three. I'll email you the information. You sure you're not just hungover?"
"I haven't had time to drink," Gabe says. She's lying on the couch sorting through her electric bills because that keeps her calm and relatively nausea-free. "Can you make sure I'm awake to get over there?"
"Course," Keaton says shortly. "I mean, holy shit, Gabe."
"You're telling me," Gabe says.
"Do you want to take it now? Just to…"
"I'd like to get it over with," she says. "Give me one."
"I can stick around if you'd like," Keaton says. "If you want, like, moral support."
She rolls her eyes, but says, "Okay."
She has to wait a few minutes before she gets confirmation. When she comes out of the bathroom, Keaton asks, "Do you have an idea who the dad might be?"
She's been determinedly trying not to think about that. She hasn't been with anyone since Tokyo. Which means that if what she thinks is true, then she's knocked up with Pete's kid, her not-yet-divorced boss' kid, and that's a whole other level of entanglement. She tells Keaton shortly, "Yeah," and goes back into the bathroom, where she locks the door and sits on the closed toilet lid.
There are a bunch of reasons why the timing sucks on this. She's got to start recording soon, which means stress and late nights, and then there's promotion and touring, which means even more late nights and poor nutrition and stress. Her apartment doesn't have room for a nursery - she'd have to move again. She's prided herself on being chaotic her whole life; kids need stability, three meals a day and clean clothes, Donna Reed vacuuming in pearls when they get home from school. She doesn't know if she can do that. She doesn't know if she can be a rock star anymore.
But she's in her thirties and she's been wanting a baby since her twenties. Really, when she thinks about it, her rock star self's been feeling more and more confining for a long time. When she started out, it was a thrill to swagger out on stage and tell the kids not to give a fuck. She made herself a whole new Gabe Saporta out of discarded Britney and Courtney and Chrissie Hynde parts, not thinking that she would ever feel suffocated by it.
She's lain awake wondering, What happens when you realize that you actually do care about what happens?
Maybe this would be a new start for her. She's got a good heart and wisdom to share. She's got a shaky feeling in her hands, thinking, A baby, a baby, a baby, and she sort of likes it.
She should probably check the test results.
There are two lines, which means positive, but she already knew that. She unlocks the door and steps outside.
"You're smiling," Keaton says. "Good news?"
*****
Her bloodwork comes back positive from the doctor's. She knew it would, but she wanted to be absolutely sure before telling Pete. She figures she owes it to him; if she's going to go through with having a kid, then she wants to know if Pete wants to be part of the kid's life.
As usual, her timing is fucked. The divorce hasn't been finalized; Ashlee moved out with the dogs and they're just separated. They're still making an attempt to present a united front for Bronx' sake. Gabe isn't even going near the thought of how this will affect Bronx yet.
She waits until she knows Pete's going to be home to call him up. He picks up sounding reasonably together, which is a plus, and says, "What's going on, asshole?"
"Look," she says. She's vaguely queasy and she's not sure how much is morning sickness and how much is nerves. "I'm going to say what I have to say and then you can say what you have to say, all right?"
She feels him tense over the phone. "What?"
Her impulse is to talk in metaphors, make this bigger than it really is and relate it to the cosmos somehow, but her brain's all frazzled so she just says, "When we went to Tokyo and messed around, I don't know what got fucked up but it did. I'm going to have a baby."
There's a long silence on the other end. She thinks that he's trying to gauge whether she's kidding or not.
"The odds are pretty good it's yours, Pete."
"You're sure?"
"Yeah."
Pete says, very calmly and seriously, "I'll marry you."
"Fuck off," she says.
"I mean it. I just need to get the shit with Ash settled. Just let me call my lawyer and -"
"Pete," she says, as gently as she can. "Pete, I'm not Ashlee."
He goes silent, and she knows he knows she's right. "Are you going to have the kid?"
"Fuck yeah I'm having the kid. This could be the best thing that ever happened to me."
Pete lets out a relieved breath. "Okay."
"I just wanted to - this is about what you want, you know? If you want to be part of the kid's life or not. Either way's good with me."
"But either way you're going to have the baby."
"That's right."
"I gotta think about this."
"Yeah, okay. Take your time."
Pete hangs up. She drums her fingers on her stomach and wonders who came up with the idea that pregnant women couldn't drink.
*****
Right before she goes into the studio, she realizes that there's no way on earth that she's going to be able to keep this from the band. She had the idea that she'd breeze through the recording sessions, glowing with the joy of secret new life, and nobody would be the wiser until she started getting fat. That was an incredibly stupid idea. She's exhausted all the time and if she smells anything stronger than rice she starts retching. It's not going to be easy to hide.
She figures that it's best to get it all out in the beginning. On the first day in their shitty rented studio, before the engineer arrives and after they've spent some time small-talking and boosting each other up about the record, she sprawls across the couch in the corner and says, "Congratulate me, motherfuckers, I'm having a baby."
They all stare at her.
"You're such a liar," Victoria says finally.
"Hey, I'll piss on a stick right now if you don't believe me," Gabe says.
"I'd rather you didn't," Ryland says.
"It's no different than that freaky porn you're into, Ryland."
"I only frequent the classiest websites," Ryland says.
"Gabe, are you kidding? You're not kidding," Nate says.
"Totally serious."
They stare at her some more.
"Well, I guess congratulations are in order then," Alex says.
"Dude, what the the fuck, dude," Nate says.
"New member of the gang," Gabe says. "Little baby Cobra."
"So," Ryland says carefully. "Have you thought about how you're going to deal with touring? Or, fuck, just with recording?"
"She's pregnant, not dying," Alex says.
"House rules," Gabe says. "First, if you shitheads are going to get wasted, do it somewhere where I can't see. Second, I start puking if I so much as look at eggs, so -"
"Dude," Ryland says, looking squeamish.
"Hey, you wanted to know how I'm going to deal."
"And touring?" Ryland says. "Promotion?"
"That, I don't know about. My hope is that we can shred this album and get a couple dates in before I get too huge. Depends on how quickly we can work."
"Maybe you should talk to Sarti about this," Alex says. "So when everything's set -"
"No," she says calmly. "I'm not telling Sarti. I tell Sarti, that means he's got to do his job and tell everyone at Crush, and that's not happening. Not now."
"Well, okay, Gabe, but - " Alex starts.
"Nobody is telling anyone else anything," she says.
"Is it because of the dad?" Nate says.
Fuck Nate for being intuitive. She says, "No, asshole, it's because I'd like to wait until I hit four months before I tell anyone. It's about time I learned how to keep my trap shut."
"You told me you'd shout it from the rooftops if you were pregnant," Victoria says.
"Oh, Victoria, once you have a little bun of your own in the oven, you'll understand."
"Ew," Victoria says.
"So who is the lucky guy, anyway?" Ryland says.
She shrugs. "How the fuck should I know? My bedroom's got a revolving door in it."
"Riiiiiiight," Ryland says, but doesn't push the subject.
"I'm really happy for you, Gabe," Alex says. He gives her a sideways shoulder hug. "Congratulations."
"Yeah, congratulations, Gabe," Nate says.
"Well done, Gabrielle," Ryland says, grinning. "Way to populate the earth."
"Can I be Aunt Victoria when it's born?" Victoria asks.
Gabe loves her band.
They manage to lay down a few keyboard tracks; she figures she'll basically move into the studio until she gets a handle on the lyrics. It's their second try at making this album and they can't afford to waste any more time.
She comes back to the apartment to try to organize her recording kit - lozenges and lyric book and herbal supplements - and she's not even in the door two minutes when Pete calls. They haven't spoken since she gave him the news about the baby; she figured he'd come to a decision on his own. She says, "Hey."
"So this is what I've come up with," Pete says.
"Yeah?"
"I don't want you to have the baby and then have me just be this dude you know. I want to do right by the kid."
She'd be lying if she said she wasn't relieved. She knows she can have the baby by herself but the more she thought about it the more she realized that she and Pete could never be the same if she did. The odds are good that if Pete hadn't wanted to be in the kid's life that they'd have to stop being friends, if only to protect themselves. She says, "Awesome."
"Have you thought about what you're going to do? You think you'll stay in New York?"
"I don't know yet," she says. "I don't think I can stay in my old place. It's not exactly child-friendly."
"Thought about coming out to California?"
"I hate Los Angeles, Pete."
"There are nice places outside of LA."
"I don't really want to make any solid plans until I'm out of the first trimester, Pete," she says. "Just to be safe."
Pete thinks a minute. "I guess you're right."
"Of course I'm right," she says.
"I can probably help out a little more once this thing with Ash is settled," Pete says.
"Yeah. You focus on that for the time being. I've got it under control around here."
"Okay," Pete says. He sounds a little regretful but at least he's not arguing.
*****
The only things she can eat that don't make her puke or give her violent indigestion are rice, popcorn, ice cream and potato knishes. It doesn't make recording any easier.
She knows people are trying to make allowances for her. No one is saying that between her voice and her pregnancy, making this album is like pulling teeth. She wishes they would so she has someone besides herself to be angry at. She goes into the recording booth knowing she's got about an hour until she's too exhausted to stand and that they're going to have to run the vocals through Autotune to give her the illusion of power. She doesn't know what's going to happen to her when and if this album finally gets finished.
She's reinvented herself a hundred times over, but this time feels like the most frightening.
*****
She dreams that she's in a room with Pete, and he's explaining very calmly that because he was still married when they messed around, that negates her parental rights, so he's going to take the baby away and he and Ashlee will raise it. And then somehow she's holding the baby, chubby-cheeked and smiling, and Pete takes it out of her arms and passes it to Ashlee, who'd shown up when Gabe wasn't looking. The baby laughs and nestles into Ashlee's arms.
Gabe wakes up in a cold sweat. Still half-asleep, she grabs her phone and dials Pete's number. He picks up sounding distracted and she half-screams at him, "You need to promise you're not going to take the baby away from me!"
"Gabe?"
"I can admit when I fuck up!" she says. "I just want a chance to not fuck this up first!"
"Gabe, what the hell are you talking about?"
"I'll be a good provider. I'll think of something."
"Gabe. Calm down. Think about what you're saying."
"I - " she starts, and then she's wide awake and realizing that she sounds like a crazy person. "Oh. Yeah."
"I guess I should get used to this," Pete says, sounding amused.
"I had this dream," she mumbles. "Look, the hormones are fucking my head up, okay?"
"You're going to be a great mom," Pete says. "I'm not going to fuck around with that."
"Promise promise," she says, if only to make herself feel better.
"Stick a needle in my eye and all that."
"Well, okay, then. Sorry. Bye," she says, and hangs up.
*****
When the album is three-quarters done, inching forward slowly and painfully, she decides to lady up and tell Sarti that they have to do promotion and the tour differently this time around. She'd hoped that as she got closer to the second trimester she'd start feeling better, but she's still tired and nauseated and her back is giving her problems. She doesn't see it getting easier any time soon.
"Goddamnit, Saporta," Sarti says when she gives him the news.
"Hey, it's not like I planned this to happen," she says.
"You're supposed to be promoting your asses off."
"It's fucking hard for me to promote when I'm puking all the time," she snaps.
Sarti thinks a while. "Think you'll be okay if we try to stick to the East Coast this time around? It'll mean less time in the bus."
"I think I can do it." The kids are going to be pissed at her, but she can't help that.
"I can send you some stuff if you want to make a statement."
"Not yet," she says. "I need to do this on my own time, Alex. Keep this quiet, will you, please?"
"You're the boss," Sarti says. "I'll try to make this as easy as possible for you, okay? Keep the baby happy."
"Yeah, well, don't feel too bad if you can't. The baby takes after its mom. Never happy." Sarti snorts and hangs up.
*****
When she hits sixteen weeks and the OB/GYN assures her that it's safe to start telling people, she lets her family know. Ricky congratulates her and offers to shoot photos whenever she wants, and her stepsister and stepbrother are really cool about it. Her dad is caught somewhere between overjoyed that he's getting a grandchild and upset that his unmarried, two-steps-away-from-itinerant musician daughter got herself knocked up and is only telling him now. He's used to her doing things on her own terms, though, so she can't really help him being upset. She promises to keep him in the loop as much as she can and send pictures.
She thinks about how she's going to tell the fans for a long time. She considers sitting down and writing a blog about it, but she's also probably going to have to skip out on the meet and greets this tour (baby doesn't want her to have any damn fun at all), and she wants to write seriously about that so everyone doesn't get too upset. Finally she takes the tried and true route of being an asshole.
She puts on her Alexander Wang crop top and makes Keat take a picture as she flashes a thumbs up and a huge cheesy grin. When she looks at herself in the thumbnail, she doesn't look like how she feels, which is fat and achy and cranky - she's got a definite belly bulge and there are circles under her eyes, but she also looks gleeful and proud. Then she uploads the picture to Twitter and writes Check this goddamn milf out!!! in the caption before she sends it.
Two seconds later, just so there's no confusion, she writes, yes i am pregnant. have enough one night stands and yr dreams come true!
The kids are mostly pretty cool about it; she gets a lot of congratulations and 'I'm so happyyyyyyyy for you!' messages. A couple of people ask if it's William's baby, which make her laugh. William himself calls her up and she spends forty minutes soothing his ruffled feathers because she hadn't asked him for any advice when she first found out.
"I know a lot about pregnancy!" William says. "I would have been very helpful!" Gabe decides against mentioning that Christine was the one who went through the pregnancy, and William was on tour for most of it. Finally she gets him to the point where he's laughing and teasing her about singing Bikini Kill and Hole to the baby in the womb, and she thinks he's over the sulk.
She gets either retweets or congratulatory phone calls from almost everyone she knows: the rest of the band, Travis, Mikey, Rob, even Maja calls her long distance. She gets a message from Pete; for a minute she's afraid he'll give in to his sentimental streak and give the whole thing away, but he just writes, awesome. altho if the kid takes after you therell be hell to pay.
She writes back, more like awesome to pay.
For a while she toyed with the idea of leaving the question of if she's having a boy or a girl unanswered, but with everything else so unsettled, she wants to make sure of at least one thing. She books an ultrasound through the OB/GYN when she hits twenty weeks.
The technician introduces herself as Carol and doesn't ask any questions about why Gabe's by herself, which Gabe is grateful for. She lies on the table and rolls her shirt up over her gut.
"So you're about five months along?" Carol asks.
"Something like that," Gabe says. Carol gets the machine ready and smears gel on Gabe's belly, and then the scan starts and Gabe sees the baby flickering on the screen.
The ultrasound image is grainy, but she sees the baby's hands opening and closing. It looks almost translucent on the screen, light and dark spots. Carol spouts off some stuff about measurements and features and development, but Gabe only clearly hears the part where she says, "Now if you look here, you can tell pretty clearly you're having a boy."
Gabe doesn't answer. She looks at the little translucent creature in her stomach and feels very fond of it. "So that's who's been giving me morning sickness."
"Nice to put a face to it, right?"
"So does everything look okay? No extra heads?"
"One head, two hands and two feet," Carol says. "He's a healthy little sucker."
"Can I get a copy so I can show his dad?" Gabe asks.
"I'll print some out," Carol says.
Gabe goes home with about forty printouts in her purse, and she's pretty sure she freaks people on the street out by beaming at them the whole way, but she doesn't care. She gets in her apartment and immediately texts Pete, got an ultrasound. want to get on skype and see the kid?
Pete writes back, fuck yes.
It takes her a minute to get set up, but she finally connects and Pete's face flickers into view. She says, "So, I can show you unclear photos or clear ones. Do you want to be surprised in four months?"
"Stop being a tease and show me my kid," Pete says.
"Okay," Gabe says. She gets the one where the baby's basically mooning the camera, hanging out in his altogether with an assurance that she knows comes from her. She holds the picture up to her webcam and says, "Check out who you and I made, Wentz."
Pete doesn't say anything. She frowns behind the photo and tries again, getting the picture where the baby's sucking his thumb. "Look. Hey, look."
Pete still doesn't say anything. She puts the pictures down, ready to get annoyed, but then she sees Pete's glassy eyes and the hand covering his mouth.
"Dude," she says. "Are you crying?"
"Shut up," Pete says and sniffs. "Jesus."
"Aw, daddy. I'm so telling him about this moment when he turns eighteen."
"I said shut up," Pete says. "I'm allowed to get emo. Another boy. Awesome."
"It was really weird in the office," she says. "I felt like I was looking at a little alien in my tummy and I didn't even care."
"Feels real now, right? Got to start thinking of names and shit."
"I already had a boy's name picked out. If it was a girl I'd have to do some scrambling."
"Yeah?" Pete wipes his eyes. "What's his name?"
"Sebastian. He needs a middle name though."
"We can call him Bastian, like in the Neverending Story," Pete says. "That's a cool name."
"Bastian might be easier to say," she says. "Sebastian Saporta's kind of a mouthful."
"Hey, you could give him Atreyu as a middle name."
She stares at him. Pete stares back innocently. "What?"
"Atreyu is a ridiculous name."
"It worked in the movie!"
"I'm an immigrant, asshole. Your cultural references are useless against me."
"How about Artax?" Pete says. "That was Atreyu's horse. He got killed in the Swamps of Sadness."
Sometimes Gabe can't believe she allowed this person to even put his dick in her, much less knock her up. "Pete, I am not naming my son after a dead horse."
"Fine, be that way," Pete says. "Can you send me copies?"
"I gotta hook the scanner up. I'll send them later tonight."
"In the movie, Falkor was a luckdragon, and he -"
"Let it go, Pete," Gabe says, and disconnects.
*****
Touring takes every ounce of strength she has. Even with skipping the meet and greets and trying to conserve her energy as much as she can, between travel, sound check and the actual show, she has to force herself through the days. Caffeine sends Bastian into wildly unpleasant calisthenics, so she can't go back to the old stand-bys of Red Bull and Starbucks. She tries to sleep whenever she can and drinks a lot of tea.
Reports filter back to her from the internet, kids saying how fat and busted she looks on stage. Ryland does his best to take over the stage banter, which she feels horrible about but she can't really help. It feels like a replay of just after she had her throat surgery - the rest of the band trying to pick up her slack. She hates it.
No one talks about what's going to happen once she has Bastian, not to her, anyway. She tells Pete about it sometimes, when she's stuck in the back lounge unable to sleep and avoiding the internet. Pete tells her to worry about that when the time comes, but she can't help herself.
*****
Pete texts her to get on Skype. The internet on the bus is spotty, but it sounds important, so she waits until the rest of the band are getting lunch before she goes into the back and hooks it up.
"I need to tell Ash about the baby," Pete tells her when she manages to connect.
Cold tingles shoot down her arms and her stomach roils. "No!" she says.
"It's not fair to her or Bronx, Gabe. I can't keep walking around like this. It's making me crazy."
It's a low blow, but she goes for it. "If she uses this in the divorce, Pete, you are fucked. It won't matter that I got pregnant after she filed the papers. If you want evidence of unstable behavior, it's right fucking here."
Pete looks at her for a long time. "Then I'll fucking take it," he says finally. "You can't have it both ways, Gabe. I'm either going to be Bastian's dad or I'm not. If I'm going to be a halfway decent father, then I have to make sure he's safe and that Bronx is safe. He needs to know he's having a little brother and that I'm going to be there for both of them. Ashlee's my friend and the mother of my kid. I owe it to her to let her know what's going to happen."
It makes sense but she doesn't want it to. "Ashlee hates me," she says.
"She doesn't hate you. She was jealous of you, it's different."
It's not that big a difference in Gabe's experience, but she doesn't want to go into it. "But what if…"
"We both want what's best for the little dude," Pete says. "Let me deal with this, Gabe. It's been too long already."
She's not going to be able to stop him. She disconnects without saying goodbye.
*****
Something has to give eventually. She's hoping she'll just punch out a hotel window or something and let out some frustration. It doesn't happen that way.
They haven't been soundchecking for more than half an hour and her back's already killing her. She's trying to figure out just how much she can manage to sing tonight and how much she can hand over to Ryland when Alex has to stop playing to struggle with the Fender for the fourth goddamn time.
She loses it. She screams at Alex that if he's not going to take this seriously then he should get the fuck off the stage and take his worthless ass back to New York. Alex stares at her, bewildered and silently hurt, and she's the one who storms off the stage.
She knows she's fucked up as soon as she hits the dressing room. Alex is the only one in the band, including herself, who isn't a complete asshole, and yelling at him makes her feel like dogshit on a shoe. She drops onto the couch with her head in her hands and thinks, Fuck fuck fuck.
Bastian kicks, tentatively, and she groans. Her kid is going to grow up with a horrible rotten mother, just like Gabe did. She touches her bulge and mumbles, "What did I get you into, mi cielo?"
Her phone buzzes; it's Victoria. Gabe picks up and says, "Yeah."
"That was a shitty thing to do," Victoria says.
"I know," Gabe says.
"Want to come out and apologize, or do you need a minute?"
"I'll apologize in a minute. To everybody."
"Well, okay," Victoria says, and hangs up.
Gabe rubs her neck. The one thing she can say about herself is that she can admit when she's wrong.
She goes outside; everyone else gets the hell out of her way. Ryland's standing in the hallway, and he says, "Suarez is down the hall."
Alex watches her warily when she comes into the room. She says, "I was shitty and I was upset and I took it out on you when you didn't deserve it. If you're pissed at me I understand because I'm pissed at myself."
"It was just a fucking song, Gabe," Alex says.
"I know. I was wrong. I'm sorry."
Alex rubs his forehead. "I mean, we all want to be supportive of you, Gabe. It's just fucking difficult when you don't let us."
"I guess I need to work on that."
Alex thinks for a minute. "We've all kind of seen this coming. We've been walking around…"
"Afraid of the crazy pregnant lady?"
"Well, yeah."
"Join the club."
Alex leans over and ruffles her hair. "You're always going to be my buddy, Gabe. Sister from another mister."
"Dysfunctional sister."
"Well, we're dysfunctional people," Alex says.
"I promise I'll try to keep it together if we go back to soundcheck. But you know, be prepared to duck if the hormones kick in again."
"Okay," Alex says, and they go back out to the stage.
*****
Pete calls her just as she's getting home from tour. "So I told Ashlee about the baby a little while ago."
Gabe drops her bag on the floor and kicks it out of sight. "What happened?"
"She's not super happy," Pete says.
She figured as much, and she can't really say she blames Ashlee. "Are you okay?"
He exhales. "I don't know. She hasn't decided whether or not she's going to say anything about this to her lawyer. I'm dealing with it."
"Can I do anything to help?"
"They're my consequences, Gabe. I've got to take them."
"I don't want this to fuck up anything with you and Bronx. I can make a statement saying that I lied to you and the father's just some random dude. If you want -"
"No lies," Pete says. "I'm not starting out on lies. Let me handle this, Gabe. It's my mess to fix."
"I'm sorry."
"You know what'll help me out?" Pete says. "If you take it easy and focus on you and Bastian. You're doing the heavy lifting here, dude. I've just got to try to get things okay with my ex."
"I still want to help."
"If I think of anything I'll let you know. Otherwise I'm just going to keep checking up on you."
"Okay," she says, though she's not happy about it.
"I'm going to be fine, Gabe."
"Okay," she says.
*****
For the next few months she focuses on nesting. She orders baby furniture and clothing online and stocks up on newborn diapers. She tries to come to terms with the fact that she's gotten too big to fit into her clothes and starts draping herself in bohemian maxi dresses (fuck maternity clothes, that shit is fug). She takes her vitamins and drags her ass to the OB/GYN.
She's bored as fuck.
She gets the phone call from Sarti when she's twenty-six weeks pregnant. He says, "How do you feel about the KIIS-FM festival this week?"
"What about it?"
"They want you all to come out to LA and do a set."
"You're fucking kidding, dude."
"What? They've been playing the single for months. It'd only be good exposure."
"I'm seven months pregnant, Alex."
"Is that bad?"
"I almost killed everyone on this last tour and we didn't go off the East Coast. I don't think I can even fit my fat ass on the plane."
"It's just one set, Gabe. You won't have time to go crazy. The radio station's been good to the band. Consider this payback."
"This last time around was really rough on me, Sarti."
"I know," Sarti says. "You know I wouldn't ask you if I didn't think you could handle it, right? I just figured, in a month or so you won't be able to fly, and after the baby's born…who knows what'll happen then?"
It's exactly what she's been worried about, and Sarti saying it out loud stops her in her tracks. Because she doesn't know what she's going to be like after Bastian gets here, and she doesn't want to remember the tour where she looked and sounded like shit all the time as her last hurrah as a rock star.
"Just one set?" she asks.
"Forty-five minutes. You'll be in and out."
"You owe me," she says and hangs up. She fires off an email to the rest of the band telling them to pack their bags.
Part 2
Rating: Suitable for those above the age of sixteen.
Pairing: Pete/girl!Gabe, past Pete/Ashlee
Summary: She hasn't been with anyone since Tokyo. Which means that if what she thinks is true, then she's knocked up with Pete's kid, her not-yet-divorced boss' kid, and that's a whole other level of entanglement.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction and does not reflect real lives or relationships.
Warnings: Pregnancy. Some parts teeter on the edge of infidelity.
Note: Set in the universe in which Gabe Saporta has always been a girl. Written for the wild card square, difficult pregnancy, on hc_bingo.
She's not surprised when Pete doesn't answer his phone. Pete's usual tactic when his life goes to shit is to shut down radio communication and take to his bed. She can't force him to pick up, so when she hears the voicemail message, she just says, "Yo, it's me and you probably know why I'm calling. Give me a call if you need to talk," and hangs up.
She hadn't noticed anything amiss with Pete and Ashlee last time she visited the house, but she also has a policy to try not to get involved with Pete's relationships. She and Ashlee treated each other with ritualistic politeness and tried not to be alone together, like they've always done. She spent a lot of time playing with Bronx.
She doesn't expect Pete to call back, but he does and she's relieved. She says, "Hey," and waits for him to talk.
"I thought everything was great," Pete says. "I guess I didn't know her as well as I thought I did."
"I know she loves you," Gabe says. "And she loves Bronx." What she doesn't say is, Sometimes that isn't enough for a marriage.
"I wish someone would just tell me how I fucked up," Pete says. "I'm trying to figure it out but it's not working."
"No, you're obsessing," Gabe says. "Don't do that shit. It's just going to fuck you up. Deal with your life, don't get in your head."
"I can't," Pete says. "I can't go out. Fuckin' paparazzi. I just want to get out, away from all this shit, and -"
"Pete," she says in her schoolmarm voice, the one that makes everyone pay attention. "Stop."
Pete shuts up for a minute. "I can't take it, Gabe."
"Can you go somewhere for a couple days? Where's the munchkin?"
"Ash has him." Pete's voice is wobbly, and before he crashes over completely, she says, "Is there anywhere you want to go? Just to clear your head out?"
Pete's silent for a minute. Then he says, "Tokyo."
If it were her, she'd haul ass home to Uruguay, but whatever Pete's into. "Maybe you should get a ticket. Brush up on your Japanese."
"I don't - Gabe, being by myself is freaking me out right now."
She turns the phone away from her face and sighs. Patrick has told her all the stories of how the band propped Pete up when he needed it, but that's over with now and she doesn't think the new band is skilled in Wentz handling yet. What Pete needs now is a shoulder to cry on and some good advice, and to make a few stupid decisions.
She also knows that if she goes to Japan with Pete and anyone finds out, the press will turn her into the other woman before she can say boo.
She brings the phone back. "You feel like you want someone around?"
"Yeah," Pete says faintly.
She's not going to give a fuck about the press. "I'll set it up. Think you can hang on for a couple days?"
"You don't have to."
"Shut the fuck up," she says kindly. "I'll call you with your instructions later."
"Thank you," Pete says, and she hangs up.
*****
She's got some time before the band has to go back into the studio, so she sits and thinks until she comes up with a plan to throw the paparazzi off. She buys herself a plane ticket and books herself into a single hotel room in Tokyo (both expensive enough to make her choke, but she'll just write this off as a business expense), and then calls Pete with specific directions to get on a later flight to Tokyo and stay in a different room in the same hotel. This way, if they get spotted, they can spin it that they just randomly wound up in the same city. It's happened before.
When she gets to Tokyo, she tries to act like a tourist; she eats onigiri with pickled plums, considers getting some crazy nail art and makes it halfway to Shibuya before jetlag knocks her on her ass. She straggles back to her hotel room, where she paints her fingernails a vivid tangerine and does not worry about Pete. She'd call someone but her phone doesn't work in Japan.
Finally she lies on the bed and watches Tokyo television news until she feels less restless. The knock on the door makes her jump.
Pete stands in the hallway, wearing a puffy coat that's bigger than he is, hood pulled up over his face. She can't really see his face but he's huddled into himself and his posture is rigid. She doesn't bother asking how he's doing but puts an arm around his shoulders and guides him into the room, talking about whatever. She tells him about her flight, shows him her nail polish and talks about how she tried and failed to go shopping as she flips the Do Not Disturb sign onto the door.
Pete offers no resistance as she gets his ridiculous coat off. She figures all she can do is get him to the point where he either starts talking or manages to sleep, so she makes Pete lie down while she hangs the coat up. Pete stares at the wall in front of him numbly, looking like a doll that's been thrown away, and she lies down and spoons up against his back. She eases his sneakers off with her toes and lets them fall onto the floor. She says, "I'll stay here as long as you want, Wentz." Pete doesn't answer but the rigid line of his back eases a little.
He doesn't go to sleep, but finally he brushes her off his back and rolls over, pressing his face into the hotel pillow. Gabe stretches her shoulders back.
"Why am I such a fuck-up," Pete says into the pillow.
If he's talking, that means he's thinking, and if he's thinking, that means he might listen to reason eventually. "You are not," she says.
"Fuckin' statistics, dude. I wrecked the band and I wrecked the marriage. I'm pretty sure I wrecked my ex-girlfriend's whole life. If Bebe had any sense she wouldn't let me within two feet of her."
"You're giving yourself a lot of credit there."
"I'm gonna call her tomorrow and tell her to change her plans for the summer. I'm not going back out on the road and starting this whole fuckin' cycle again. She's young, she can get another band."
"Hey," Gabe says sharply. She sits up and yanks Pete's face around so he's looking at her. Once Pete starts with this train of thought, he doesn't stop until he's worked himself into a full-blown panic attack, and she doesn't believe in pulling her punches. "So your solution to your being unhappy right now is to cut short all the work you've done and disappoint all the kids who are waiting to see you play? You're a fucking moron, dude. You think you feel like shit now, how do you think you're going to feel after two months of sitting around wallowing in your own self-pity?"
Pete doesn't answer, but he doesn't turn away either. He looks miserable and like he's about to cry, but she thinks he still needs to hear what she's saying.
"The only way you're going to feel better is if you go out and make those kids happy," she says. "Not by shutting yourself up like before. We're both too old for that shit. You've got responsibilities to take care of. You've got a band who needs a songwriter and you've got a little boy who needs his dad."
"I wish he had a better dad."
"Well, I wish there was no war and I had my very own monkey, but that's not going to happen."
"Don't make me laugh, I don't feel good."
She pokes his side. "Don't wallow in negativity, dude."
"I don't know what else to do."
She leans back against the wall. "Well, I think you should hang out in the city for a few days, go shopping and get wasted until you're ready to go back to Cali and deal with things. And you shut the fuck up about canceling the tour until you and Ashlee reach an agreement, whatever it is. Don't conflate your personal life with music, okay?"
Pete thinks about it. "You're probably right."
"Duh," she says. "I'm jetlagged and exhausted, man. I'm going to watch TV until I go to sleep. Then we can grab some breakfast in the morning and you can watch me try on clothes."
Pete shrugs. "Can I stay in this room tonight? I'll tuck you in."
"Yeah, yeah. Just don't try anything while I'm sleeping, pervert."
"I like my women conscious, thank you," Pete says, and tugs the covers down so she can crawl in.
"If you need to talk and I'm asleep, just wake me up," she says. "I'll try not to be a crabby bitch."
"Wow, that sounds great," Pete says, but hands her the remote. In fifteen minutes he's asleep on top of the bed, breathing wheezily. She thinks about covering him up but doesn't want to wake him, so she just watches the television with the sound on low until she goes to sleep.
*****
Technically, she's here for Pete, but by the end of the second day she realizes that she probably needed to get away too. She's been feeling rootless since she got back from her Brazilian spiritual retreat; she knows she needs to change but she doesn't have any idea who she needs to be. Being in Tokyo makes it easy for her to switch identities. In the daytime, she walks out into the winter sunshine and instantly becomes the idle, spoiled gaijin with nothing better to do than try on clothes at Parco while Pete holds her purse. At night she switches between sympathetic rabbi and good time Charlie, depending on what Pete needs; usually he needs to freak out and mope for a while and then he just wants to get drunk, which she feels is perfectly reasonable.
Sometime around midnight, Pete decides that he's going to throw himself back into being single. It may be fueled by beer and umeshu, but at least it isn't Pete sitting in the corner emitting visible rays of self-loathing. She encourages him to go flirt with the pretty girl sitting alone at the end of the bar; she feels a vague twinge of guilt when it's out of her mouth but then she chugs another drink and it's easier to not think about Ashlee. Pete turns her offer down anyway, mumbling something about how he doesn't like the atmosphere here.
They stagger together up to her room sometime around dawn. Pete's still on his singles kick, informing her about just how many chances he passed up when he got married and how he's got to make up for lost time. Then he asks, "Minibar?"
"Minibar," she agrees.
She throws herself on the bed while Pete goes through the minibar. Her skirt rides up around her thighs but she can't be bothered to fix it. "Toss me one of those little vodka things if it's in there," she says.
"Uh-huh." Pete rummages around and then lobs a miniature bottle at her. She drops it onto her chest before opening and gulping it. Pete makes an irritated noise.
"Who do I need to fuck to get some Baileys in here?"
"Baileys is bad for you. It's all sugar. Have a beer."
"You're all sugar," Pete says, and jumps onto the bed. He gets thrown off course somewhere on the descent, and he lands on top of her with his hand between her legs.
She looks at him. He's looking at the minibar distractedly, but he doesn't move his hand, cupping her cunt through her gauzy underwear. She knows she could call him a douchebag and push him away and that would be the end of it. But it's been a while since she got laid and she really doesn't have a problem helping her newly single friend back into the dating scene. So she arches up and presses into his hand as she struggles with her panties, until Pete finally gets a clue and pulls them off for her.
She's not in the mood for leg cramps, so she flips Pete over onto his back and straddles him. Pete grins up at her; it's the first real smile she's seen from him since they got to Tokyo, and it makes her happy. She doesn't want to jinx it though, so she says, "Get your fucking pants off, Wentz."
Pete gets out of his jeans faster than she thought was possible, without moving out from under her. He maneuvers her so that she's resting on his thighs and then sticks two fingers in his mouth, looking up at her with one of the dirtiest expressions she's ever seen on him, and then touches his hot wet fingers to her slit. He doesn't go for it right away, just massages and teases her until her breathing quickens; it's only then that he spreads her open and puts his fingers on her clit, stroking and rubbing until she moans.
"What do you want?" she manages. "You want me just to sit here or…"
"Fuckin'…It's going to get me off if you get off. If you…"
"Oh, in that case," she says, and pushes his hands down. Her body tenses involuntarily, protesting the loss of connection, and she angles her hips to slide Pete's cock inside her, tightening around him. She plays with her clit as she rides him, trying to draw out the experience. Pete regains his presence of mind and cups her breasts with his hands, pressing his palms against her nipples. Her breath catches; he circles her nipples with his thumbs, slowly, and she loses her concentration. She thrashes and calls him a douchebag until he gets rougher.
Pete's had too much booze to last very long; it seems like she comes and then he comes barely ten seconds later. She's sweaty and languid and he looks like the happiest man in the world, and it's easy for them both to go to sleep.
She wakes up expecting that they'll just get up and grab some food like nothing happened, but instead Pete touches her hip and they fuck as the sun's coming up outside. She loses track of time after that. She takes a shower and they fuck as soon as she turns the water off. They watch game shows they can't understand and fuck. They eat room service anpan and fuck. It feels like it's someone else's life but she's not complaining.
They only come out of the haze when they're at the airport, waiting to get back to whatever normal is. When Pete comes back from getting them coffee and gives her the change, she puts the yen in her wallet's side pocket and zips it closed.
"I feel a lot better now," Pete says.
"Yeah? You feel ready to deal with things?"
"Ready to go home and be a dad. Thanks."
"Don't mention it," she says, and that's it.
On the plane back to New York, the whole trip feels like a random blip in her existence, like something that only happens once. She has to remind herself not to dwell on past experience and just keep moving forward.
*****
It's not unusual for her period to be a few days late; stress tends to fuck her cycle up, and the thought of making this album is more stressful than usual. She's so busy trying to figure out what the fuck songs she's going to write and if her voice is even up to recording that she doesn't even think about her period.
Then she gets out of bed feeling crappy and still exhausted, which isn't a surprise because she's been feeling crappy for a while. Then she manages to take some vitamins and eat a banana before she nearly knocks over her ginseng bottle in the rush to puke into the kitchen sink. She stands there with her elbows on the counter, thinking, What the fuck, and then she realizes that she's seventeen days late.
Her coherent thought is Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.
She's not going to get anything done by flipping out, though, so she washes out the sink and reaches for her phone - carefully, because her stomach's still uneasy and moving makes it worse. She texts her personal assistant, i need you to make me an obgyn apt. and bring over as many pregnancy tests as you can.
Within three minutes Keaton writes back, !!!!!!!
many many tests.
Keaton comes over with a bag full of pregnancy tests. She says, "I made you an appointment tomorrow at three. I'll email you the information. You sure you're not just hungover?"
"I haven't had time to drink," Gabe says. She's lying on the couch sorting through her electric bills because that keeps her calm and relatively nausea-free. "Can you make sure I'm awake to get over there?"
"Course," Keaton says shortly. "I mean, holy shit, Gabe."
"You're telling me," Gabe says.
"Do you want to take it now? Just to…"
"I'd like to get it over with," she says. "Give me one."
"I can stick around if you'd like," Keaton says. "If you want, like, moral support."
She rolls her eyes, but says, "Okay."
She has to wait a few minutes before she gets confirmation. When she comes out of the bathroom, Keaton asks, "Do you have an idea who the dad might be?"
She's been determinedly trying not to think about that. She hasn't been with anyone since Tokyo. Which means that if what she thinks is true, then she's knocked up with Pete's kid, her not-yet-divorced boss' kid, and that's a whole other level of entanglement. She tells Keaton shortly, "Yeah," and goes back into the bathroom, where she locks the door and sits on the closed toilet lid.
There are a bunch of reasons why the timing sucks on this. She's got to start recording soon, which means stress and late nights, and then there's promotion and touring, which means even more late nights and poor nutrition and stress. Her apartment doesn't have room for a nursery - she'd have to move again. She's prided herself on being chaotic her whole life; kids need stability, three meals a day and clean clothes, Donna Reed vacuuming in pearls when they get home from school. She doesn't know if she can do that. She doesn't know if she can be a rock star anymore.
But she's in her thirties and she's been wanting a baby since her twenties. Really, when she thinks about it, her rock star self's been feeling more and more confining for a long time. When she started out, it was a thrill to swagger out on stage and tell the kids not to give a fuck. She made herself a whole new Gabe Saporta out of discarded Britney and Courtney and Chrissie Hynde parts, not thinking that she would ever feel suffocated by it.
She's lain awake wondering, What happens when you realize that you actually do care about what happens?
Maybe this would be a new start for her. She's got a good heart and wisdom to share. She's got a shaky feeling in her hands, thinking, A baby, a baby, a baby, and she sort of likes it.
She should probably check the test results.
There are two lines, which means positive, but she already knew that. She unlocks the door and steps outside.
"You're smiling," Keaton says. "Good news?"
*****
Her bloodwork comes back positive from the doctor's. She knew it would, but she wanted to be absolutely sure before telling Pete. She figures she owes it to him; if she's going to go through with having a kid, then she wants to know if Pete wants to be part of the kid's life.
As usual, her timing is fucked. The divorce hasn't been finalized; Ashlee moved out with the dogs and they're just separated. They're still making an attempt to present a united front for Bronx' sake. Gabe isn't even going near the thought of how this will affect Bronx yet.
She waits until she knows Pete's going to be home to call him up. He picks up sounding reasonably together, which is a plus, and says, "What's going on, asshole?"
"Look," she says. She's vaguely queasy and she's not sure how much is morning sickness and how much is nerves. "I'm going to say what I have to say and then you can say what you have to say, all right?"
She feels him tense over the phone. "What?"
Her impulse is to talk in metaphors, make this bigger than it really is and relate it to the cosmos somehow, but her brain's all frazzled so she just says, "When we went to Tokyo and messed around, I don't know what got fucked up but it did. I'm going to have a baby."
There's a long silence on the other end. She thinks that he's trying to gauge whether she's kidding or not.
"The odds are pretty good it's yours, Pete."
"You're sure?"
"Yeah."
Pete says, very calmly and seriously, "I'll marry you."
"Fuck off," she says.
"I mean it. I just need to get the shit with Ash settled. Just let me call my lawyer and -"
"Pete," she says, as gently as she can. "Pete, I'm not Ashlee."
He goes silent, and she knows he knows she's right. "Are you going to have the kid?"
"Fuck yeah I'm having the kid. This could be the best thing that ever happened to me."
Pete lets out a relieved breath. "Okay."
"I just wanted to - this is about what you want, you know? If you want to be part of the kid's life or not. Either way's good with me."
"But either way you're going to have the baby."
"That's right."
"I gotta think about this."
"Yeah, okay. Take your time."
Pete hangs up. She drums her fingers on her stomach and wonders who came up with the idea that pregnant women couldn't drink.
*****
Right before she goes into the studio, she realizes that there's no way on earth that she's going to be able to keep this from the band. She had the idea that she'd breeze through the recording sessions, glowing with the joy of secret new life, and nobody would be the wiser until she started getting fat. That was an incredibly stupid idea. She's exhausted all the time and if she smells anything stronger than rice she starts retching. It's not going to be easy to hide.
She figures that it's best to get it all out in the beginning. On the first day in their shitty rented studio, before the engineer arrives and after they've spent some time small-talking and boosting each other up about the record, she sprawls across the couch in the corner and says, "Congratulate me, motherfuckers, I'm having a baby."
They all stare at her.
"You're such a liar," Victoria says finally.
"Hey, I'll piss on a stick right now if you don't believe me," Gabe says.
"I'd rather you didn't," Ryland says.
"It's no different than that freaky porn you're into, Ryland."
"I only frequent the classiest websites," Ryland says.
"Gabe, are you kidding? You're not kidding," Nate says.
"Totally serious."
They stare at her some more.
"Well, I guess congratulations are in order then," Alex says.
"Dude, what the the fuck, dude," Nate says.
"New member of the gang," Gabe says. "Little baby Cobra."
"So," Ryland says carefully. "Have you thought about how you're going to deal with touring? Or, fuck, just with recording?"
"She's pregnant, not dying," Alex says.
"House rules," Gabe says. "First, if you shitheads are going to get wasted, do it somewhere where I can't see. Second, I start puking if I so much as look at eggs, so -"
"Dude," Ryland says, looking squeamish.
"Hey, you wanted to know how I'm going to deal."
"And touring?" Ryland says. "Promotion?"
"That, I don't know about. My hope is that we can shred this album and get a couple dates in before I get too huge. Depends on how quickly we can work."
"Maybe you should talk to Sarti about this," Alex says. "So when everything's set -"
"No," she says calmly. "I'm not telling Sarti. I tell Sarti, that means he's got to do his job and tell everyone at Crush, and that's not happening. Not now."
"Well, okay, Gabe, but - " Alex starts.
"Nobody is telling anyone else anything," she says.
"Is it because of the dad?" Nate says.
Fuck Nate for being intuitive. She says, "No, asshole, it's because I'd like to wait until I hit four months before I tell anyone. It's about time I learned how to keep my trap shut."
"You told me you'd shout it from the rooftops if you were pregnant," Victoria says.
"Oh, Victoria, once you have a little bun of your own in the oven, you'll understand."
"Ew," Victoria says.
"So who is the lucky guy, anyway?" Ryland says.
She shrugs. "How the fuck should I know? My bedroom's got a revolving door in it."
"Riiiiiiight," Ryland says, but doesn't push the subject.
"I'm really happy for you, Gabe," Alex says. He gives her a sideways shoulder hug. "Congratulations."
"Yeah, congratulations, Gabe," Nate says.
"Well done, Gabrielle," Ryland says, grinning. "Way to populate the earth."
"Can I be Aunt Victoria when it's born?" Victoria asks.
Gabe loves her band.
They manage to lay down a few keyboard tracks; she figures she'll basically move into the studio until she gets a handle on the lyrics. It's their second try at making this album and they can't afford to waste any more time.
She comes back to the apartment to try to organize her recording kit - lozenges and lyric book and herbal supplements - and she's not even in the door two minutes when Pete calls. They haven't spoken since she gave him the news about the baby; she figured he'd come to a decision on his own. She says, "Hey."
"So this is what I've come up with," Pete says.
"Yeah?"
"I don't want you to have the baby and then have me just be this dude you know. I want to do right by the kid."
She'd be lying if she said she wasn't relieved. She knows she can have the baby by herself but the more she thought about it the more she realized that she and Pete could never be the same if she did. The odds are good that if Pete hadn't wanted to be in the kid's life that they'd have to stop being friends, if only to protect themselves. She says, "Awesome."
"Have you thought about what you're going to do? You think you'll stay in New York?"
"I don't know yet," she says. "I don't think I can stay in my old place. It's not exactly child-friendly."
"Thought about coming out to California?"
"I hate Los Angeles, Pete."
"There are nice places outside of LA."
"I don't really want to make any solid plans until I'm out of the first trimester, Pete," she says. "Just to be safe."
Pete thinks a minute. "I guess you're right."
"Of course I'm right," she says.
"I can probably help out a little more once this thing with Ash is settled," Pete says.
"Yeah. You focus on that for the time being. I've got it under control around here."
"Okay," Pete says. He sounds a little regretful but at least he's not arguing.
*****
The only things she can eat that don't make her puke or give her violent indigestion are rice, popcorn, ice cream and potato knishes. It doesn't make recording any easier.
She knows people are trying to make allowances for her. No one is saying that between her voice and her pregnancy, making this album is like pulling teeth. She wishes they would so she has someone besides herself to be angry at. She goes into the recording booth knowing she's got about an hour until she's too exhausted to stand and that they're going to have to run the vocals through Autotune to give her the illusion of power. She doesn't know what's going to happen to her when and if this album finally gets finished.
She's reinvented herself a hundred times over, but this time feels like the most frightening.
*****
She dreams that she's in a room with Pete, and he's explaining very calmly that because he was still married when they messed around, that negates her parental rights, so he's going to take the baby away and he and Ashlee will raise it. And then somehow she's holding the baby, chubby-cheeked and smiling, and Pete takes it out of her arms and passes it to Ashlee, who'd shown up when Gabe wasn't looking. The baby laughs and nestles into Ashlee's arms.
Gabe wakes up in a cold sweat. Still half-asleep, she grabs her phone and dials Pete's number. He picks up sounding distracted and she half-screams at him, "You need to promise you're not going to take the baby away from me!"
"Gabe?"
"I can admit when I fuck up!" she says. "I just want a chance to not fuck this up first!"
"Gabe, what the hell are you talking about?"
"I'll be a good provider. I'll think of something."
"Gabe. Calm down. Think about what you're saying."
"I - " she starts, and then she's wide awake and realizing that she sounds like a crazy person. "Oh. Yeah."
"I guess I should get used to this," Pete says, sounding amused.
"I had this dream," she mumbles. "Look, the hormones are fucking my head up, okay?"
"You're going to be a great mom," Pete says. "I'm not going to fuck around with that."
"Promise promise," she says, if only to make herself feel better.
"Stick a needle in my eye and all that."
"Well, okay, then. Sorry. Bye," she says, and hangs up.
*****
When the album is three-quarters done, inching forward slowly and painfully, she decides to lady up and tell Sarti that they have to do promotion and the tour differently this time around. She'd hoped that as she got closer to the second trimester she'd start feeling better, but she's still tired and nauseated and her back is giving her problems. She doesn't see it getting easier any time soon.
"Goddamnit, Saporta," Sarti says when she gives him the news.
"Hey, it's not like I planned this to happen," she says.
"You're supposed to be promoting your asses off."
"It's fucking hard for me to promote when I'm puking all the time," she snaps.
Sarti thinks a while. "Think you'll be okay if we try to stick to the East Coast this time around? It'll mean less time in the bus."
"I think I can do it." The kids are going to be pissed at her, but she can't help that.
"I can send you some stuff if you want to make a statement."
"Not yet," she says. "I need to do this on my own time, Alex. Keep this quiet, will you, please?"
"You're the boss," Sarti says. "I'll try to make this as easy as possible for you, okay? Keep the baby happy."
"Yeah, well, don't feel too bad if you can't. The baby takes after its mom. Never happy." Sarti snorts and hangs up.
*****
When she hits sixteen weeks and the OB/GYN assures her that it's safe to start telling people, she lets her family know. Ricky congratulates her and offers to shoot photos whenever she wants, and her stepsister and stepbrother are really cool about it. Her dad is caught somewhere between overjoyed that he's getting a grandchild and upset that his unmarried, two-steps-away-from-itinerant musician daughter got herself knocked up and is only telling him now. He's used to her doing things on her own terms, though, so she can't really help him being upset. She promises to keep him in the loop as much as she can and send pictures.
She thinks about how she's going to tell the fans for a long time. She considers sitting down and writing a blog about it, but she's also probably going to have to skip out on the meet and greets this tour (baby doesn't want her to have any damn fun at all), and she wants to write seriously about that so everyone doesn't get too upset. Finally she takes the tried and true route of being an asshole.
She puts on her Alexander Wang crop top and makes Keat take a picture as she flashes a thumbs up and a huge cheesy grin. When she looks at herself in the thumbnail, she doesn't look like how she feels, which is fat and achy and cranky - she's got a definite belly bulge and there are circles under her eyes, but she also looks gleeful and proud. Then she uploads the picture to Twitter and writes Check this goddamn milf out!!! in the caption before she sends it.
Two seconds later, just so there's no confusion, she writes, yes i am pregnant. have enough one night stands and yr dreams come true!
The kids are mostly pretty cool about it; she gets a lot of congratulations and 'I'm so happyyyyyyyy for you!' messages. A couple of people ask if it's William's baby, which make her laugh. William himself calls her up and she spends forty minutes soothing his ruffled feathers because she hadn't asked him for any advice when she first found out.
"I know a lot about pregnancy!" William says. "I would have been very helpful!" Gabe decides against mentioning that Christine was the one who went through the pregnancy, and William was on tour for most of it. Finally she gets him to the point where he's laughing and teasing her about singing Bikini Kill and Hole to the baby in the womb, and she thinks he's over the sulk.
She gets either retweets or congratulatory phone calls from almost everyone she knows: the rest of the band, Travis, Mikey, Rob, even Maja calls her long distance. She gets a message from Pete; for a minute she's afraid he'll give in to his sentimental streak and give the whole thing away, but he just writes, awesome. altho if the kid takes after you therell be hell to pay.
She writes back, more like awesome to pay.
For a while she toyed with the idea of leaving the question of if she's having a boy or a girl unanswered, but with everything else so unsettled, she wants to make sure of at least one thing. She books an ultrasound through the OB/GYN when she hits twenty weeks.
The technician introduces herself as Carol and doesn't ask any questions about why Gabe's by herself, which Gabe is grateful for. She lies on the table and rolls her shirt up over her gut.
"So you're about five months along?" Carol asks.
"Something like that," Gabe says. Carol gets the machine ready and smears gel on Gabe's belly, and then the scan starts and Gabe sees the baby flickering on the screen.
The ultrasound image is grainy, but she sees the baby's hands opening and closing. It looks almost translucent on the screen, light and dark spots. Carol spouts off some stuff about measurements and features and development, but Gabe only clearly hears the part where she says, "Now if you look here, you can tell pretty clearly you're having a boy."
Gabe doesn't answer. She looks at the little translucent creature in her stomach and feels very fond of it. "So that's who's been giving me morning sickness."
"Nice to put a face to it, right?"
"So does everything look okay? No extra heads?"
"One head, two hands and two feet," Carol says. "He's a healthy little sucker."
"Can I get a copy so I can show his dad?" Gabe asks.
"I'll print some out," Carol says.
Gabe goes home with about forty printouts in her purse, and she's pretty sure she freaks people on the street out by beaming at them the whole way, but she doesn't care. She gets in her apartment and immediately texts Pete, got an ultrasound. want to get on skype and see the kid?
Pete writes back, fuck yes.
It takes her a minute to get set up, but she finally connects and Pete's face flickers into view. She says, "So, I can show you unclear photos or clear ones. Do you want to be surprised in four months?"
"Stop being a tease and show me my kid," Pete says.
"Okay," Gabe says. She gets the one where the baby's basically mooning the camera, hanging out in his altogether with an assurance that she knows comes from her. She holds the picture up to her webcam and says, "Check out who you and I made, Wentz."
Pete doesn't say anything. She frowns behind the photo and tries again, getting the picture where the baby's sucking his thumb. "Look. Hey, look."
Pete still doesn't say anything. She puts the pictures down, ready to get annoyed, but then she sees Pete's glassy eyes and the hand covering his mouth.
"Dude," she says. "Are you crying?"
"Shut up," Pete says and sniffs. "Jesus."
"Aw, daddy. I'm so telling him about this moment when he turns eighteen."
"I said shut up," Pete says. "I'm allowed to get emo. Another boy. Awesome."
"It was really weird in the office," she says. "I felt like I was looking at a little alien in my tummy and I didn't even care."
"Feels real now, right? Got to start thinking of names and shit."
"I already had a boy's name picked out. If it was a girl I'd have to do some scrambling."
"Yeah?" Pete wipes his eyes. "What's his name?"
"Sebastian. He needs a middle name though."
"We can call him Bastian, like in the Neverending Story," Pete says. "That's a cool name."
"Bastian might be easier to say," she says. "Sebastian Saporta's kind of a mouthful."
"Hey, you could give him Atreyu as a middle name."
She stares at him. Pete stares back innocently. "What?"
"Atreyu is a ridiculous name."
"It worked in the movie!"
"I'm an immigrant, asshole. Your cultural references are useless against me."
"How about Artax?" Pete says. "That was Atreyu's horse. He got killed in the Swamps of Sadness."
Sometimes Gabe can't believe she allowed this person to even put his dick in her, much less knock her up. "Pete, I am not naming my son after a dead horse."
"Fine, be that way," Pete says. "Can you send me copies?"
"I gotta hook the scanner up. I'll send them later tonight."
"In the movie, Falkor was a luckdragon, and he -"
"Let it go, Pete," Gabe says, and disconnects.
*****
Touring takes every ounce of strength she has. Even with skipping the meet and greets and trying to conserve her energy as much as she can, between travel, sound check and the actual show, she has to force herself through the days. Caffeine sends Bastian into wildly unpleasant calisthenics, so she can't go back to the old stand-bys of Red Bull and Starbucks. She tries to sleep whenever she can and drinks a lot of tea.
Reports filter back to her from the internet, kids saying how fat and busted she looks on stage. Ryland does his best to take over the stage banter, which she feels horrible about but she can't really help. It feels like a replay of just after she had her throat surgery - the rest of the band trying to pick up her slack. She hates it.
No one talks about what's going to happen once she has Bastian, not to her, anyway. She tells Pete about it sometimes, when she's stuck in the back lounge unable to sleep and avoiding the internet. Pete tells her to worry about that when the time comes, but she can't help herself.
*****
Pete texts her to get on Skype. The internet on the bus is spotty, but it sounds important, so she waits until the rest of the band are getting lunch before she goes into the back and hooks it up.
"I need to tell Ash about the baby," Pete tells her when she manages to connect.
Cold tingles shoot down her arms and her stomach roils. "No!" she says.
"It's not fair to her or Bronx, Gabe. I can't keep walking around like this. It's making me crazy."
It's a low blow, but she goes for it. "If she uses this in the divorce, Pete, you are fucked. It won't matter that I got pregnant after she filed the papers. If you want evidence of unstable behavior, it's right fucking here."
Pete looks at her for a long time. "Then I'll fucking take it," he says finally. "You can't have it both ways, Gabe. I'm either going to be Bastian's dad or I'm not. If I'm going to be a halfway decent father, then I have to make sure he's safe and that Bronx is safe. He needs to know he's having a little brother and that I'm going to be there for both of them. Ashlee's my friend and the mother of my kid. I owe it to her to let her know what's going to happen."
It makes sense but she doesn't want it to. "Ashlee hates me," she says.
"She doesn't hate you. She was jealous of you, it's different."
It's not that big a difference in Gabe's experience, but she doesn't want to go into it. "But what if…"
"We both want what's best for the little dude," Pete says. "Let me deal with this, Gabe. It's been too long already."
She's not going to be able to stop him. She disconnects without saying goodbye.
*****
Something has to give eventually. She's hoping she'll just punch out a hotel window or something and let out some frustration. It doesn't happen that way.
They haven't been soundchecking for more than half an hour and her back's already killing her. She's trying to figure out just how much she can manage to sing tonight and how much she can hand over to Ryland when Alex has to stop playing to struggle with the Fender for the fourth goddamn time.
She loses it. She screams at Alex that if he's not going to take this seriously then he should get the fuck off the stage and take his worthless ass back to New York. Alex stares at her, bewildered and silently hurt, and she's the one who storms off the stage.
She knows she's fucked up as soon as she hits the dressing room. Alex is the only one in the band, including herself, who isn't a complete asshole, and yelling at him makes her feel like dogshit on a shoe. She drops onto the couch with her head in her hands and thinks, Fuck fuck fuck.
Bastian kicks, tentatively, and she groans. Her kid is going to grow up with a horrible rotten mother, just like Gabe did. She touches her bulge and mumbles, "What did I get you into, mi cielo?"
Her phone buzzes; it's Victoria. Gabe picks up and says, "Yeah."
"That was a shitty thing to do," Victoria says.
"I know," Gabe says.
"Want to come out and apologize, or do you need a minute?"
"I'll apologize in a minute. To everybody."
"Well, okay," Victoria says, and hangs up.
Gabe rubs her neck. The one thing she can say about herself is that she can admit when she's wrong.
She goes outside; everyone else gets the hell out of her way. Ryland's standing in the hallway, and he says, "Suarez is down the hall."
Alex watches her warily when she comes into the room. She says, "I was shitty and I was upset and I took it out on you when you didn't deserve it. If you're pissed at me I understand because I'm pissed at myself."
"It was just a fucking song, Gabe," Alex says.
"I know. I was wrong. I'm sorry."
Alex rubs his forehead. "I mean, we all want to be supportive of you, Gabe. It's just fucking difficult when you don't let us."
"I guess I need to work on that."
Alex thinks for a minute. "We've all kind of seen this coming. We've been walking around…"
"Afraid of the crazy pregnant lady?"
"Well, yeah."
"Join the club."
Alex leans over and ruffles her hair. "You're always going to be my buddy, Gabe. Sister from another mister."
"Dysfunctional sister."
"Well, we're dysfunctional people," Alex says.
"I promise I'll try to keep it together if we go back to soundcheck. But you know, be prepared to duck if the hormones kick in again."
"Okay," Alex says, and they go back out to the stage.
*****
Pete calls her just as she's getting home from tour. "So I told Ashlee about the baby a little while ago."
Gabe drops her bag on the floor and kicks it out of sight. "What happened?"
"She's not super happy," Pete says.
She figured as much, and she can't really say she blames Ashlee. "Are you okay?"
He exhales. "I don't know. She hasn't decided whether or not she's going to say anything about this to her lawyer. I'm dealing with it."
"Can I do anything to help?"
"They're my consequences, Gabe. I've got to take them."
"I don't want this to fuck up anything with you and Bronx. I can make a statement saying that I lied to you and the father's just some random dude. If you want -"
"No lies," Pete says. "I'm not starting out on lies. Let me handle this, Gabe. It's my mess to fix."
"I'm sorry."
"You know what'll help me out?" Pete says. "If you take it easy and focus on you and Bastian. You're doing the heavy lifting here, dude. I've just got to try to get things okay with my ex."
"I still want to help."
"If I think of anything I'll let you know. Otherwise I'm just going to keep checking up on you."
"Okay," she says, though she's not happy about it.
"I'm going to be fine, Gabe."
"Okay," she says.
*****
For the next few months she focuses on nesting. She orders baby furniture and clothing online and stocks up on newborn diapers. She tries to come to terms with the fact that she's gotten too big to fit into her clothes and starts draping herself in bohemian maxi dresses (fuck maternity clothes, that shit is fug). She takes her vitamins and drags her ass to the OB/GYN.
She's bored as fuck.
She gets the phone call from Sarti when she's twenty-six weeks pregnant. He says, "How do you feel about the KIIS-FM festival this week?"
"What about it?"
"They want you all to come out to LA and do a set."
"You're fucking kidding, dude."
"What? They've been playing the single for months. It'd only be good exposure."
"I'm seven months pregnant, Alex."
"Is that bad?"
"I almost killed everyone on this last tour and we didn't go off the East Coast. I don't think I can even fit my fat ass on the plane."
"It's just one set, Gabe. You won't have time to go crazy. The radio station's been good to the band. Consider this payback."
"This last time around was really rough on me, Sarti."
"I know," Sarti says. "You know I wouldn't ask you if I didn't think you could handle it, right? I just figured, in a month or so you won't be able to fly, and after the baby's born…who knows what'll happen then?"
It's exactly what she's been worried about, and Sarti saying it out loud stops her in her tracks. Because she doesn't know what she's going to be like after Bastian gets here, and she doesn't want to remember the tour where she looked and sounded like shit all the time as her last hurrah as a rock star.
"Just one set?" she asks.
"Forty-five minutes. You'll be in and out."
"You owe me," she says and hangs up. She fires off an email to the rest of the band telling them to pack their bags.
Part 2