Santa, Baby

by Blair Babylon

  Their baby might already have been born.

  Damn it, his emails, phone calls, and texts seemed so inadequate now. Peyton should have shown up on Raji’s doorstep. He should have broken down her door and demanded that she talk to him.

  He should have begged her on his knees to marry him.

  He should have been there for her.

  “We can’t let this stay out there,” Xan emphatically said to Georgie.

  He wasn’t yelling at her, of course. King Arthur never yelled at Guinevere.

  The Queen’s Knight, Sir Peyton, would have had to intervene.

  Xan told her, “This is a smear campaign. This could ruin Killer Valentine. We have to hit back, hard.”

  Peyton stood. “What do you mean, hit back?”

  Xan said, “This woman, this Raji Kannan—”

  “Raji?” Andy shrieked. “What about Raji?”

  “—has sold her smear story to this magazine,” Xan said, poking at the magazine in Peyton’s hand. “We must show that it is lies, that she is a liar. We will have Jonas arrange interviews to deny everything. We will dig up dirt on her and smear her back so that no one believes her.”

  Peyton held the magazine in his hands. “I don’t believe it.”

  “It’s shocking, oui-oui, but we must believe it and prepare ourselves to destroy her. She thought she could get famous by telling all our secrets and making up these lies. We’ll make her famous for all the wrong reasons. By the time we’re done with her, no self-respecting hospital will have such a notorious liar on their staff.”

  “You can’t do that,” Peyton said. Jesus, all those years that Raji had put into medical school and her residency would be wasted.

  Andy was holding her hand over her mouth, tears budding in her eyes.

  “Raji wouldn’t do this.” Peyton put as much conviction into his words as he could, even though he could feel doubt drawing his eyebrows together.

  “Did you tell her these things?” Xan demanded.

  “Yes,” Peyton admitted. “Everything.”

  “And they have these pictures of her smiling for the camera, and they cite her as a source, and the whole article is about you, you, you. Their source was fixated on you. It is Raji, and we will destroy her.”

  “Raji would never do this. She would never try to hurt me or us. She’s not like that.” Peyton looked at Andy. “Do you think she would?”

  Xan whirled and glared at Andy.

  Andy’s dark eyes widened on her face. “I—I don’t know. I don’t think so. She never mentioned even being in a relationship with Peyton to me. She hasn’t returned my calls for a while, just texts saying that she’s fine. She didn’t even tell me she was pregnant. Beth didn’t mention it, either.”

  “So you don’t know.” Xan whipped back around to Peyton. “This smear article is about you, so you will be front and center with our campaign to hit back. Jonas will have reporters here within hours. You will say that she’s a crazy stalker groupie who has lost her mind and is making up lies.”

  Peyton gestured to the magazine. “Xan, this is all true. I can’t say it’s lies, but I don’t believe Raji gave the interview or spilled these secrets about us, either.”

  “You will do it,” Xan said. “It’s part of the publicity that you’ve skived off on for years. This time, you’ll sit down with the reporters.”

  Peyton shook his head. His too-long blond hair swished around his jaw. “I won’t, Xan.”

  “She’s trying to ruin this band!”

  Peyton’s answer came from every cell in his body. “I believe in her. I trust her. She didn’t do this, and I won’t help you destroy her. I’ll quit the band first.”

  “This is it,” Xan said, grabbing his chest. “This is our Yoko Ono. This is the person who is going to lie about us and tear us apart.”

  “I don’t think she did this. No, I know she didn’t do this. You’re unjustly accusing her, and she’s innocent.” He didn’t dare look at Georgie, who was standing over by the door.

  Xan demanded, “Peyton, are you going to stand with the band like we have stood behind you, or are you going to let her pull us apart?”

  Peyton slapped the magazine on the dressing table and picked up his Santa hat. “I won’t do your interviews.”

  Xan’s hands curled into fists. His left fingers didn’t close all the way. “She’s going down, Peyton. I won’t let her destroy this band.”

  “I won’t help you smear her,” Peyton said, his own hands clenched and ready to fight, “and I’ll talk to anybody who will listen and say she is innocent and you’re hounding her for publicity reasons.”

  “I will terminate your contract,” Xan said.

  “Fuck you. I quit. I’m quitting right now, as of this very minute. I won’t let you destroy her.” He grabbed his backpack and started walking toward the dressing room door.

  “If you walk out that door, don’t come back,” Xan said. “Your contract is broken. You’re done.”

  “Then I’m done,” he said. “Raji is innocent. I won’t help you railroad her just to get through some bad publicity.”

  Peyton walked out the door.

  Kind

  PEYTON strode down the hallway of the theater, desperate to get a car and make it to Raji before Xan’s smear campaign hit.

  Behind him, Georgie’s voice echoed from the concrete and plaster, “Peyton!”

  Like a spear in his back.

  Peyton stopped, even though every cell in his body wanted to sprint, both to Raji to keep her safe and to run away from Georgie. He knew what Georgie was going to say, and she had every right to say it.

  He turned. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t stand up for you.” He braced himself to be slapped.

  She hurried toward him, her high heels clicking on the cement floor. “Not what I was going to say.”

  “You should say it. I should have stood up for you like that.”

  Georgie reached him and threw her slim arms around his waist.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured, reaching around her. “I’m so sorry.”

  “You’ve said that a thousand times, and today, I know you meant it.”

  “I should have done that for you every time some jackass said something at school. I wish I had stood up for you, and then I wish you had found Xan. You two belong together. I’m glad you’re happy.”

  “We were kids.” She jiggled her arms around his waist like she was trying to shake some sense into him. “Kids are cruel and shallow and don’t know what they’re doing, but now you’re the kindest man I know. If all that had to happen so that you could become this man, the guy who is kinder to the roadies and the other guys and waiters and band members than anyone else, the guy who jumps on a plane to save his ex-girlfriend from the Russian mafia and expects nothing afterward, the guy who quits a megastar band to go to the love of his life when she needs him, then it was worth it. Because you’re who you are now, there is more love and kindness in the world than before, and I’m glad.”

  He held her for a moment, one last embrace of his first love, before he thanked her. They both wiped the tears out of each other’s eyes.

  Peyton ran through the hallways, sprinting to get to the airport to book a flight and get to Raji before the media storm hit her.

  Because Georgie was right: Raji was the love of Peyton’s life, and he would do anything to get to her because she was going to need him.

  High Above the Rocky Mountains

  ON a plane high above the crumpled Rocky Mountains, Peyton Cabot rummaged around in his backpack, trying to find a notebook or something to write on. His laptop and tablet were in there, but he just wanted a pen and paper.

  Dark air filled his backpack like fog, and he searched with his fingertips because he couldn’t see anything in the darkened plane. The Santa hat’s soft fur flopped as he tried to feel past it, so he yanked it out and dropped it on his head. His laptop and tablet clicked against each other as he slipped his hands pa
st them.

  His impulsive exit yesterday meant he was out of Killer Valentine. Georgie had sent him a quick text to tell him to lie low for a while, while Cadell’s text read, Jesus, Peys. What did you do?

  When Peyton thought of not going back to Killer Valentine—not living on the road, not having to wedge time in between gigs to see Raji, not playing someone else’s music and furtively scribbling his songs in the dark while wrung out from performing concerts—his heart lifted.

  He might not be able to go back to the classical world. Breaking that contract with the L.A. Phil three years ago had been a grievous act, but it hadn’t been an error or a miscalculation.

  He had needed to reinvent himself these few years, personally and in his music.

  He wasn’t running after Georgie anymore.

  He wasn’t following the path that Juilliard had demanded of him.

  He wanted to find a new way.

  His hands itched for a keyboard, whether to play his own music or something classical, he couldn’t tell. He’d know when he put his hands down on the keys.

  His fingers closed over a hard cube in the bottom of the sack, under his change of clothes and other stuff that he always kept in his rucksack.

  He pulled out the ring box.

  When he opened it, the dawn sunlight hit the brilliant center diamond and threw spangles over the interior of the airplane.

  His heart clenched, looking at it.

  Whatever his new path was, he needed Raji to walk it with him.

  Peyton should have knocked on Raji’s door that night when he had proposed the second time. Pride had kept him from doing it, stupid wounded pride at pursuing her after she had rejected him.

  He should have pounded on the door, rattled it in its frame, until she let him in.

  He should have beaten it down.

  He should have told her that he loved her and begged her to have him, to stay with him.

  Now, it was all fucked up.

  The plane jiggled around him, a touch of turbulence.

  Xan’s counter-offensive would begin soon, Peyton knew, and it would be thorough. He had to get to her before the reporters did. They would be brutal, demanding to know why she had lied like that. Any dirt in her own life was going to be flung around in an attempt to distract the press.

  He’d tried to call Raji, first from the small French airport and then during his plane changes in Paris and Boston, but she wouldn’t answer her phone.

  Maybe she had turned her phone off because the reporters were already bothering her.

  Maybe she had changed her cell phone number sometime in these last few months, and he had been flinging desperate texts into an empty hole.

  Peyton finally asked the steward for a pen and scribbled lines on his unfolded napkin, something confused and mostly incoherent about his heart and his life’s blood and that love wouldn’t keep them apart.

  When the plane began to descend, he was clutching the ring box and shredded napkin in his fists, praying that he wasn’t too late.

  Packing for India

  RAJI swung the bulk of her pregnant belly around as she rolled up a few salwar kameezes, which were Indian tunic and leggings sets, and wedged them into her overstuffed suitcase that was lying open on her bed. These last few months, she had been glad that her family had been sending her salwar kameez as gifts for many years. With the drawstring waists and roomy tops, they had worked perfectly as maternity clothes under her new, XXL-sized white doctor’s coat.

  Boxes and zipper bags filled the rest of her luggage. Friends and cousins had dropped packages by or mailed them to her so she could to take them in her luggage to their families in India. No one trusted the international mail.

  Breaking up with Peyton had left Raji with lots of free time. She had picked up other people’s shifts at the hospital and had gotten ahead to the point where she could take three whole weeks off to have the baby and recover.

  One of Raji’s Indian aunties had been thrilled to volunteer to take Raji in afterward and had sent lists detailing just how she was going to mother Raji after the birth with sweets and savory snacks, all the time, any time she wanted, as inadequate thanks for Raji giving Aarthi this most beautiful and blessed of gifts.

  Raji’s mother was flying to India for the birth and recovery, too. She had emailed competing lists of the foods and snacks that she was going to cook to help Raji recover her strength after this most kind and generous offering, for which the gods would surely bless her a thousand and one times.

  Raji had felt a little trepidation at first about how her family would receive that she had gotten pregnant with an illegitimate child, but after she had offered the baby to Aarthi, the problem of the baby’s father hadn’t come up.

  Her flight for India would leave that evening. A last-minute OB/GYN appointment just an hour ago had assured her that she was less than ten percent effaced, normal for late pregnancy. Thus, it was exceedingly unlikely that she would go into labor in the next forty-eight hours, barring any unexpected shock.

  Raji was cleared for take-off.

  Her apartment was picked-up and vacuumed enough so that, if the plane crashed or something, no one would think she lived like a slob. Raji hadn’t bothered with Christmas decorations, though. She only had a little table-top tree and some garlands in a box in a closet, and hanging them up had seemed stupid and far too much effort when her arms could barely reach around her pregnant tummy. She wouldn’t be home until well after New Year’s Day, anyway.

  Yet, it was Christmas Eve, and her bare apartment seemed especially sad.

  Well, it wasn’t like she had children to share the holiday with. When she was a kid, her mother had insisted they celebrate Diwali, Christmas, New Year’s, and Tamil New Year’s every year. Raji had just assumed she would do that with her own kids someday, if she had a family and any little half-lizard kids.

  Something wet fell out of her eye, and she wiped it away. Damn hormones.

  The television was tuned to some stupid entertainment channel where overhairsprayed talking heads jabbered about nonsense. The woman wore a red coat with a white fur collar. Fake snow covered the desk and floor, and enormous, glittering Christmas trees crowded the set.

  Nonsense was calming. Entertainment shows never talked about people dying on operating tables.

  “And in other news today,” the television announcer woman shrilled, “Fame This Week has released an explosive new exposé on the rock band, Killer Valentine.”

  Raji half-turned, afraid that the newsreader would say something about Peyton Cabot, his sunny sense of humor, or his fascinating sea-green eyes. Raji hadn’t sobbed in the shower for months, an embarrassment that she chalked up to pregnancy hormones instead of non-lizard sentiment on her part.

  The blond woman smiled brilliantly for the camera. “Allegations of widespread drug abuse by most of the band members, including—” she squinted just off to the left of the camera, and her mouth worked for a second before she continued, “—Rade Delcore, Grayson Jones, Tryfon Diav—are you kidding me, making me try to pronounce something like that on camera? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  The television screen cut back to a woman in the main studio who was staring, wide-eyed into the camera. “Um, some technical difficulties. To sum up, the article included allegations of illegal drug use by band members including Rade Delcore, Grayson Jones, Try-fon Di-a-vo-los Ar-e-le-ous,” mispronounced while staring straight ahead, “and Cadell Glynn, plus injectable steroid abuse and alcohol abuse by lead singer Xan Valentine. The newest band member, Peyton Cabot, seems to have an unhealthy fixation with the keyboard player and wife of the lead singer, Georgie Johnson, and joined the band to stalk her while abandoning his pregnant girlfriend. Fame This Week is available at newsstands and grocery stores now.”

  “Oh, no,” Raji said, scrambling for her phone. “Oh, no. Oh, no.”

  Her phone rang before she managed to dial Peyton, and the screen said, Loca Friend.

  Raji sw
iped to the right. “Beth! Oh, my God. Something terrible has happened. I don’t know what to do. Somebody found out about me and Peyton Cabot and called the damn magazines!”

  Over the phone, Beth’s voice said, “You’re welcome.”

  “What?” Panic flashed through Raji like a blaze of fire. “No, tell me you didn’t.”

  “I most certainly did. All that stuff Peyton Cabot bragged about to you—drug abuse, steroid abuse, alcoholism, fucking the groupies—all that is coming back to bite him on the ass.”

  Raji stupidly started to cry. “No. Oh, no! Oh, Beth. Why?”

  “That asshole deserved it for all the heartbreak he’s put you through. If he hasn’t come back here by now to help you, then he deserves to burn with the rest of Killer Valentine. They’re a bunch of drug addicts and negligent baby-daddies, and I hate them all for you.”

  Raji edged over to her window and looked down the four stories to the main street outside. Down there, several cars and two satellite trucks were parked right up next to the doors, and people were walking around, holding tablets and talking. “I can’t believe you did this.”

  “I did it for your own good.”

  “That’s always a bad thing!”

  “Peyton Cabot should have helped you. He should have been there for you when you needed him. He’s an asshole for dumping you like that. Let him explain to the world why he did that.”

  Down on the sunny street below, another white van topped with a satellite dish pulled up. “Beth, I need to get to the airport. A bunch of reporters are stalking the lobby of my building and standing in the street, waiting to ambush me. I can’t get out.”

  “They shouldn’t be going after you. They should be going after Peyton Cabot and the rest of the Killer Valentine assholes.”

  “The band is in France and Monaco on sabbatical. They’ve been lying low for months!”

  “Oh. I didn’t know that.”

  “You should have! They’re after me, now!”