by Lisa Suzanne
And that’s why I’m so damn torn over what to do. I can’t just hand Chance over to a stranger, but I’m not sure what other options I have.
It’s in an envelope filed away in a drawer. I didn’t want Brett to see it, but I’m not sure why. It’s not like I have anything to hide from him at this point.
I pull it out of the drawer and finger the post-it note on top of the envelope.
Need notary witness before filing.
My sister’s handwriting is neat and looks like it could be its own font. She was a planner and a bit of a perfectionist, something her scattered sister is not, but a nine-month-old inhibited her ability to complete a lot of tasks—especially ones that cost money. While a notary is relatively inexpensive, our options were a box of Cheerios for Chance plus a little extra toward the electric bill or getting a paper signed that we never really thought we’d have to use.
But it’s my job to carry out the words on the paper.
Chance sits in his highchair with a few Cheerios left on his tray. I slide the printed copy out of the envelope and read it over for the hundredth time in the last two days.
I appoint Hannah Hartman as executor of this will. Hannah is authorized to carry out all provisions of this will. In the event I die as the sole parent of a minor child, Chance Michael Pitzer, then I appoint the biological father, Brett Pitzer as guardian with the provision that Hannah Hartman will be a consistent presence in the child’s life in particular during the transfer of guardianship.
She didn’t say what to do if Brett doesn’t want guardianship. I’m positive she never thought she’d really need to rely on this piece of paper, and she doesn’t...but I do.
There’s a second page in there, too. I knew about the guardianship thing, but I didn’t know about the second page. And there’s a third page, too, but it’s addressed to Chance and it says on the front that he shouldn’t read it until his tenth birthday.
I read through the second page again.
Hannah,
If you’re reading this, it’s because I’m gone. It’s morbid to think about these things, to write about these things, but now that I have a child, the last thing in the world I want is for him to suffer the way we did. Chance has me now, but if something happens to me, you know how important it is for him to know his remaining biological parent. Someday I will get up the courage to find a way to track down Brett and tell him about his son, but if I don’t get the chance, I’m relying on you to do it. Please take care of my sweet boy. Let him keep his innocence, but let him know his father in whatever way you can. I may be too scared to do it right now, but you’re stronger than I am. Strength, right? You have it. More than you know. And just be happy. Whatever it takes. I know you hate him, but if there’s just some way you could try, for me, not to hate him...it would mean everything to me. Be happy, be healthy, be well, and know that whatever path you decide to take, whether I’m physically here beside you or not, life goes on.
Xo,
B
Chance tosses a Cheerio on the floor before he giggles and does it again, and I shake my head at him as I look fondly upon him.
I love this kid so damn much.
He’s way more than just my nephew to me. I’ve lived with him his entire life. I’m like a second mother to him. When Brie had to leave the apartment, I was the one who’d stay with him. When she had a call with a client that couldn’t be interrupted, I was the one who entertained him. I feed him and change him and bathe him and now I’m all he has left in the whole world.
And he’s all I have left, too.
I slide the letter back into the envelope. I empty the rest of the Cheerios from his tray before he has a chance to throw them, and then I wipe his tiny fingers and take him out of the chair. I buckle him into his car carrier, snap the carrier into his stroller, sling the diaper bag over my shoulder, and head on foot toward the bar.
Brie’s car was unrecognizable after the accident. It was a reliable method of transportation—my only way of getting to and from the bar, which is two miles away from the apartment. I guess I’ll be hoofing it for the time being until I can figure something out.
My feet are already tired by the time I arrive, and my shift hasn’t even started yet. I push Chance into the stock room, and just my dumb luck, there stands Hank with a clipboard in his hand, a pen behind one ear and the tip of another pen hanging between his teeth as he surveys some boxes.
“Why is there a child back here in the stock room?” he asks, narrowing his eyes at me and the stroller I’m pushing.
I draw in a deep breath and wring my hands nervously. “I, uh, didn’t know what else to do with him.”
“So you brought him to work?”
Tears burn behind my eyes. Shit. I’m trying to hold it together, but Hank is about to push me over the edge. “He’s my nephew,” I say meekly.
“He’s not even your kid?” he presses.
“Well, um, I guess I’m kind of responsible for him now,” I say softly.
“Speak up, little girl,” he scolds, his tone a little mocking.
That does it. The tears spill over. “My sister died last night. She left behind this little boy and I’m all he has. I couldn’t miss my shift, so I brought him along.”
His eyes soften in surprise, and I feel Mina’s arms come around me from behind. I didn’t even know she walked in.
“Be nice to her, Bossman,” she says, her tone much stronger than mine. She squeezes me. “I’m so, so sorry, Hannah.” Her voice is soft, and the hug from behind is the most comforting thing I’ve felt all day aside from baby cuddles. “What can I do? We’ll cover you tonight. Go home. Do what you need to do.”
“I can’t miss a shift,” I say, my eyes down on the ground. “I need the money now more than ever.”
I think back to Brett’s offer to pay for childcare if it’s his kid. It’s insulting, but I don’t have so much pride that I won’t take him up on it if it comes down to it. I need a stable environment for Chance.
“I’ll pay you for your shift,” Hank says uncomfortably. “I’m sorry about what happened.”
He’s not sorry he was just an asshole to me, though.
He walks out of the stock room and leaves Mina and me alone. I turn around to face the only friend I really have. “Go home, girl. Take the night. We’ll get you back up and running ASAP.”
I press my lips together in what might form a smile in some alternate universe, but I can’t seem to force my mouth into one today. “Brett came to my apartment today.”
Her dark brows shoot up.
“He brought a DNA test with him and said he’ll be in touch with the results.”
She purses her lips. “Asshole.”
I shrug. “It’s his right. I know the truth already, and he seemed transfixed when he first saw Chance, but in his line of work...” I trail off. Why am I defending him? I shake my head. “I think it was a bad idea to tell him. Now he has the power to take him away from me.”
“What were Brie’s intentions for guardianship?” she asks. She bends over the stroller and makes faces at Chance, who giggles at her.
“Brett as guardian with the provision that I will be a consistent presence in the child’s life in particular during the transfer of guardianship.” I recite the words I’ve read a hundred times from memory. “She never legally filed the paperwork, but that’s what she wanted.”
She blows out a breath. “You could run away with the baby,” she offers.
I shake my head. “Even if I wanted to, I can’t afford to. I don’t have a car. This job isn’t enough to make rent, let alone to find childcare for a baby that isn’t mine. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“You could ask Brett for money. He’s got bundles of it, I’m sure.”
“He offered to pay for childcare and stuff,” I admit. “But I can’t just ask for a handout. I won’t.”
“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” she says. She glances up at the clock and gives me anoth
er hug. “I need to get back to it. You’ll get home okay?”
I nod. “We’ll be fine. And Mina?”
She stops on her way toward the door and turns around, her brows raised in a question mark.
“Thank you.”
She smiles before she puts her hand on the door to push it open. “I’m here for whatever you need, honey.”
She heads out the door, and despite the situation I find myself in, I’m grateful for her friendship.
CHAPTER 7: BRETT
“The lab called,” Karl says.
We take the stage in thirty minutes.
We’re in the green room as we do our typical pre-show prep. Tommy’s singing scales and drinking tepid honey water, the only time you’ll ever catch him doing any of that shit. Dustin is listening to something through his noise cancelling headphones to get amped for the show. Tyler’s looking at a notebook at a big table with his fiancée, Danielle, who’s holding tightly to their kid’s hand. The kid looks like she’s about to make a break for it as she tries to peel her mother’s grip from around her tiny hand.
And then there’s me.
Staring off into space as I sit on a couch in the middle of the room by myself.
They’ve all asked me thirty different times if I’m okay, and my answer is usually along the lines of yeah, fine or fuck off or some other grunting sound.
But the truth is...no. I’m not fine.
I may never be fine again.
I instructed Karl to tell me as soon as he knew anything, and maybe that was a mistake. Regardless of what the results say, though, Phoenix isn’t getting my all tonight.
How can it when I have so much weighing on my mind?
That kid...I was too scared to touch him. Too terrified to hold him. What if I felt something inside? What if I wanted him? On the flipside, what if I didn’t? What kind of horrible human being wouldn’t want that?
It’s too much to try to answer that question.
So instead of dealing with it, I numbed it.
Karl took the test to some lab in Phoenix while I got high.
It’s not the first time I’ve played high, and I can’t pretend like it’ll be the last. It’s not like I’m doing any hard shit, not tonight anyway, and I smoked just enough weed to take the edge off.
It’s already starting to fade, which is probably a good thing.
I need to stand up, to move around, to do some stretches. To drink some water and maybe take a quick shower to help sober myself back up.
But Karl holds my fate.
He knows the answer to the burning question.
Danielle leaves with the notebook and the kid, and I watch as the door clicks shut behind them. The click echoes in my mind, one of the last hollow sounds I’ll hear before this news potentially changes everything.
I stand from my spot on the couch, and suddenly the room is quiet. I think for a second that maybe it just mutes for me as I await my fate, but then I feel the presence of the others in the room as they come to a stop behind me. Whatever happens, these people are my family. “And?” I ask.
He presses his lips together and raises both brows. “He’s yours.”
I blow out a breath.
Of course he’s mine.
Now the question remains. What the fuck am I supposed to do about it?
Tyler claps my shoulder. “I’m here, man. Whatever you need.”
“I, uh...” I trail off. I...what? What now? What do I need? What do I do?
My stomach twists with knots. I feel like I might be sick as my head clouds over.
I fall back onto the couch.
Fuck.
I’m supposed to get on a stage in less than thirty minutes now.
I can’t be a father. I can’t. I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to do it. I don’t have time to learn how right now. Those words sound so goddamn selfish, and that’s because I am selfish. I’ve only had to worry about me for the last thirty years, and I had zero plans to change that. My first inclination was to put the kid up for adoption, but Hannah’s genuine fear when I mentioned that stopped me short.
So what now?
“What do I do with this?” My words fall into the silent room, and the people who usually seem to have all the answers are all quiet as I await some answer. “What the fuck do I do?” I say a little louder, trying to break up the quiet as my emotions start to get the best of me.
Tyler moves to sit on the couch beside me. “You step up, dude.” His voice is soft, like he’s talking to a wild child or rabid animal, and neither of those descriptions are too far off if I’m being honest.
“What if he doesn’t want to?” Tommy booms from across the room.
“I don’t think he has much choice.” Dustin’s tone resembles Tyler’s, and isn’t that just typical as fuck? Two against two. Tommy and Brett, the asshole single guys, against Dustin and Tyler, the stand-up fathers in love with their women.
Tommy’s focus is on me, while Dustin and Tyler are thinking of the kid.
My focus is on me, too...which just goes to prove my theory that I’m not fucking cut out for this.
Tyler clears his throat. “I missed out on almost two years with my kid. I was right where you are not so long ago, man. So I get it.” He claps me on the back. “You can’t just abandon him now that you know.”
Tommy snorts across the room, but he doesn’t say anything.
“I don’t even know what she did with him tonight,” I muse, staring at nothing across the room as the words spill out. “She had to work. She was just going to bring him with her because she couldn’t afford someone to watch him. And I let her. I fucking let her. She lives in this tiny shithole apartment in a shitty neighborhood and I let her stay there with my kid.”
“Throw some money in their direction and move on,” Tommy says.
“He can’t just move on.” Tyler stands and takes a step toward Tommy. “That’s his kid.”
They didn’t used to fight like this, but lately they’ve been butting heads a lot. And it’s only now, in the midst of coming off a high and learning this news, that I realize why they’ve been at odds. I see it on Tommy’s face. Tommy’s worst fears are manifested in everything Tyler has now—all things he didn’t have as little as a year ago. A kid out there he knew nothing about. A woman he’s set to wed. A family and a future.
They’re my fears, too, but Tommy’s not the one facing those monsters right now. I am.
“I can’t just throw money at it. The mother...Brie—uh, Hannah said her final wishes were for me to be part of the kid’s life,” I admit.
“She doesn’t get to decide that,” Tommy says.
“Doesn’t she?” Dustin asks. It’s rare for him to take a stand against Tommy, but now that he’s got Tyler to back him up, he does it more often. “Seems to me there were two people involved in the creation of that kid.”
I hate what all this shit is doing to us. We never fought like this when it was just the four of us. Even when Dustin and Amanda first got together, she was the only chick and it wasn’t a big deal. But now we’re expanding and any time an outsider makes their way into our sacred inner circle, we’re vulnerable to the growing pains. I think about the time those pains will turn into cracks that are irreparable.
“But the mother didn’t bother contacting him,” Tommy counters.
Didn’t she? Maybe she did, and maybe she couldn’t get through. We’re a tight-knit group. We’re celebrities. She would hardly be the first one to toss a paternity claim in my direction, hardly be the first to try to get in touch with me but couldn’t.
Dustin’s voice rises. “You don’t know that!”
“Stop!” I yell. I hang my head, and then I press my palms to my temples and push as I try to soften the edges of a headache that’s creeping in. I’m a fucking drummer. I can’t afford to have a headache right before I take the stage. “Just stop.” I glance at the clock as the rest of my high wanes. “We’ve got fifteen minutes until we need to entertain a crow
d of twenty thousand fans and the last thing we need is infighting.”
I move toward the restroom because I need a minute alone to figure out what the fuck to do without the voices of these three idiots clouding my judgment. It’s clouded enough on its own already.
I gulp down some water and then splash some on my face. I stare at myself in the mirror. I have a kid. Brett Fucking Pitzer has a damn kid. I shake my head and blow out a breath before I open the door.
Ten minutes until we need to take the stage.
Twenty thousand fans waiting out there.
This is normally where I get a little dart of anxiety. That’s a lot of people watching my every move, and we may have done this a lot of times, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still feel the nerves every single one of those times.
Tonight that dart of anxiety is more like a wave washing over me. It’s the combination of normal pre-show jitters combined with the fact that I just found out I have a kid on top of fighting with my brothers in the band. It’s all too much.
Tommy’s in the corner running through his scales. Dustin’s got his headphones back on. They’re getting into the right headspace.
It’s Tyler who stands by the door waiting for me. “You okay, man?” he asks.
I shrug. “As okay as I can be. How’d you do it? How’d you just accept her?”
His mouth tips into a small smile. “Luna?”
I nod.
“I fell in love with that kid the moment I met her. Something inside of me shifted, and suddenly all I wanted was to light her face with a smile. None of the other shit mattered anymore.”
“What if it isn’t like that for me?” I ask, and I can’t hide the fear in my voice.
“You won’t know unless you give it a shot.”
I press my lips together and nod.
“You’ve got two choices, Brett,” he says. “You can throw money at it, like Tommy said, or you can get the two of them out of that situation. Invite the girl and the kid on tour. We’ve got plenty of space, we’ve got two mothers who would be willing to help. You’ve got Dustin and me to turn to with anything.”
I glance over at Tommy. “But I share a bus with Tommy,” I protest. “He’s not on board with this idea at all. And he fucks anything that moves and likes to walk around naked.”
