by Nikki Wild
“Or him,” Jen said, drawing my curtains shut for good measure. “You’d think she was his mother, or something! That poor guy.”
“Oh, yes,” I said, rolling my eyes as I made my way toward the couch. I needed to sit before my knees gave out from underneath me. “Poor Julian Bastille, who not only got a one-night stand out of the deal, but has upended my life, barged into my home demanding I play into this like it’s some kind of publicity stunt, and who doesn’t have to carry a child for the next nine months.” I sat down, hard, and let myself sink into the cushions. “He’s sure got it rough!”
Jen turned to look at me. She smiled a little pityingly as I shook my head and whined, “Oh, God, I’m pregnant. I’m really pregnant. How? How does something like this happen to someone like me?”
“The usual way, I’d suspect,” she joked, coming to sit beside me. I put my head on her shoulder. “Or it could be karma. This is what you get for going around sleeping with my dream man!”
“I hate you so much,” I sighed, shaking my head. But as the two of us settled into silence, the real weight of the world—my new reality—finally closed in on me in earnest.
This had gone from some embarrassing legal snafu to a full-on ordeal, with doctors and custody to be considered. This wasn’t part of my very detailed life plan.
There was so much to do. I had doctor’s appointments I had to deal with. I didn’t have anywhere near enough time or money to take care of a child on my own—and yet the thought of taking those two up on their offer made my skin crawl. I began to wonder just how good of a parent I’d be, or even if I was cut out at all for parenting—hell, my own parents were hardly the best role models, which was one of the reasons I had shied away from the idea of motherhood as I grew up. What if I ended up just like them?
“I’m scared, Jen,” I said, hiding my face in my best friend’s curls. Her hair always smelled so good, like jasmine and honeysuckle and vanilla. It was soothing, like chamomile tea taken straight through the nose—without the choking and sputtering, obviously. “I didn’t ask for any of this.”
I had, in fact, an itemized list of everything I did ask for. Nowhere on that list was “make a baby with Julian Bastille”.
“I don’t think I’m ready to be a parent.”
“Don’t I know it, hun,” she murmured, rubbing my arm and letting me seek solace in the scent of her shampoo. She was also so indulgent of me. Then again, wasn’t everyone indulgent of the ones they loved? “But for what it’s worth, I think you could be a great mom—hell, you take care of my tipsy ass every weekend. What’s one more helpless human being for you to worry about twenty-four-seven?”
“Now I’m thinking of putting you up for adoption,” I said, playfully pushing her away.
“Adoption?” She laughed. “No one would take me, but if you’re looking for someone to raise a hot British rock star’s baby, I’m gonna be at the front of that line.”
I shook my head. “Great. You can have it. Just be ready to catch when it comes out.”
“Gross!” she said, looking at me askance as she reached for the remote. “Come on, let’s get your mind off things, huh? You’ve got months to go before you need to make a decision and everything is going to work out. What do you want to watch?”
“Put on something scary,” I said, drifting into a lazy half-consciousness. Sleep felt so inviting, and Jen made the best pillow.
“Right, Rosemary’s Baby it is,” she said, surfing through the on-demand movie channels.
Leave it to Jen to rub it in, even when she was trying to help. I caught the mischievous tilt of her lips and settled back into the couch with a shake of my head. If there was one thing I could’ve used a little less of in my life, it was people all too willing to show off their smart mouths.
“Fuck you,” I grunted half-heartedly, hiding my smile as best I could while Jen’s peal of laughter echoed through the living room. She was right. I had plenty of time to decide what I was going to do. Plenty of time to come to terms with this situation and all it entailed.
Julian’s eyes flashed in my mind—not his typical tipsy leer, but the way he’d looked at me just before he’d left. Like he didn’t want to leave—like he’d had every intention of staying, if I’d told him it was all right to. But I hadn’t, had I? I’d sent him away. I’d been telling myself that was the best thing to do, but as I replayed what he’d said to me—the sadness in his tone, the way his shoulders slumped, how his gaze had darkened and lost that brilliant shine—I wondered if maybe I’d gotten it all wrong. Maybe he deserved a second chance, somewhere far away from Tessa and her publicity schemes.
But there was more to it… On some fucked up level, I wanted this to happen. I wanted things to work between us.
“Plenty of time,” I reminded myself out loud, taking a deep breath as I mentally added Julian’s name to the list of things that might be worth looking into over the next handful of months.
Julian
I laid back against the pillow in my hotel bed. I had what was, by far, the best room that Billford Hills had to offer, but that wasn’t saying much compared to the places I’d been.
Tessa had left the meeting with Elizabeth absolutely furious. She couldn’t seem to understand why her compensatory offer for putting up with me wasn’t as well-received as she’d imagined it would be. She seemed to think she’d offered Elizabeth the world back there, while I was pretty sure everyone else in attendance had seen it for what it was: a shrew of a woman trying to manipulate everyone around her into doing her bidding. She kept saying it was for my benefit, even for Elizabeth’s, but in the end, I was certain Tessa’s plans only ever had one beneficiary in mind… and that was Tessa.
The more I had listened, the more I had wanted to run away from all of this. The world was so much simpler when life could be boiled down to one of four things: drinking, fucking, singing, and sleeping; anything else was either too much to bother with, save maybe eating. Usually Tessa was only up my ass about my performances, but these last few months she had been constantly nagging me about my publicity, telling me that “we” needed to be in the papers as much as possible.
“Why?” I’d asked her on numerous occasions. “Why would I want to turn myself into a sideshow?” But that only made her more angry. The way she’d torn into me was the same way most people scolded their dogs for pissing on the carpet.
“I just want to go home,” I whispered to the empty room.
We all grow up having dreams of how your life will turn out, childlike fantasies of being a famous… whatever the hell people dream of being. Me? I wanted to be more than just a rock star. I wanted to be loved.
Really that’s all I ever wanted, to feel like I was loved by someone, but the more I tried the less the love I was trying to find seemed to stick. Sure, I was a pretty lad, someone that all the girls fancied, but beyond the physicality of it, the love I’d experienced had been so fleeting. So superficial. It never lasted long.
Part of that was my fault. It was hard for me to trust in anyone, even myself. The kind of home I came from, I was raised to doubt my every thought, my every feeling, my every action and word. Not only mine, but those of everyone around me. My father certainly never kept his promises, and Mum… well, she was probably the biggest disappointment of all.
How? How do you just stand there and watch your son being beaten like that? How do you watch from the doorway and not say a bloody word? How do you live with yourself, how do you sleep at night, you’re a mother, for God’s sakes, how…
So instead of trying to find a deep, meaningful relationship—something that constantly seemed to elude me—I delved into the pit of meaningless flings. It was easier that way for everyone involved, no attachments, no heartache. I left no broken hearts in my wake, only blissful smiles and dreams come fucking true. All I had to do was keep moving and never let myself think about what I was missing.
Love. The real deal. Not the phony shit I write songs about.
But e
ver since we’d left Elizabeth’s house, something had changed. Deep in my gut I could feel this strange sensation, almost like I was about to be sick, and yet at the same time I knew there was nothing wrong. The world seemed to float along at a snail’s pace while I moved just the way I’d always done—so was it me that had changed, or everything else?
My mouth felt dry despite all I’d had to drink, and yet my vision was swimming in different ways than it normally did, not from my own intoxication, but from the onset of what I was beginning to realize was reality asserting itself despite my drunken stupor.
“I’m going to be a dad,” I mused, saying the words for the first time out loud, acknowledging them for the first time—period. I was going to be someone’s father. This wasn’t some meaningless fling. I couldn’t just walk away.
Maybe it was the fact that this Elizabeth girl wasn’t just some bird I’d knocked up… I’d married this girl! Even the thought of being hitched sent my mind spinning farther afield. What the hell was I thinking?
An errant thought strayed to the forefront of my brain. Kid’s gonna be a looker, between the two of us. Now that was a truth no one could deny: that Elizabeth and I would make some damn pretty babies. But that was about where the advantages to this situation ended: right at the threshold between where the fortunate circumstances of inheriting my genetic material ended, and having me as a parent began.
“Christ,” I muttered, “a dad? This poor fuckin’ kid…”
And yet the more I imagined myself in a world where I played peek-a-boo and changed nappies, the more I wondered why I couldn’t make that a reality. So maybe this girl and I hardly knew one another—as a matter of fact, before a few hours ago, I hadn’t even known what she looked like. But something about knowing that I was responsible for what was growing inside of her—of placing the burden of carrying around another body inside of hers for roughly nine months squarely on her shoulders—made me think of someone other than myself for a change. It made me think of what the hell I could possibly do to make life easier on the both of them. After all, this was going to be my kid, too.
Taking responsibility for something, I thought. Well, that’s new for me. In fact, this might be a first. All my life, I’d run from responsibility—from my actions and the consequences thereof—but no matter how hard I tried, something inside of me couldn’t shake the urge to do something for this girl—and by extension, for my child.
More than my dad ever did, I thought, bile rising in my throat at the thought of that mean bastard. I won’t let that happen. Not to my kid.
But was that really a promise I was going to be able to keep? After all, I didn’t have the best track record when it came to reliability—but then again, just how hard could parenthood really be? All I had to do was not fuck up. Right? Seemed fairly straightforward: be nothing like my parents. Done and done.
The sound of my phone buzzing on the nightstand nearly made me jump out of my skin. I reached over and grabbed it off the table, squinting through the radiant glow of the screen to see who the hell was calling me at such an ungodly hour—or, as most people called it, half past two. In the afternoon.
“Of course,” I sighed once I was able to discern it was Tessa calling me. For a moment I debated whether or not I should bother answering, but I knew full well that if I didn’t, she’d just call back a thousand times more. And if that didn’t work for her, she’d just waltz right into my damn room like she owned the place. With a sigh, I accepted the call and put my phone to my ear.
“City morgue,” I said, trying to sound as cheerful and American as possible. “You bag ‘em, we tag ‘em! My name is 8-Ball, what can I do ya for?”
“You’re a bloody child,” Tessa muttered. “And what you can do for me is grow up a little. You have work to do making sure this plan of ours goes off without a hitch!”
Though she couldn’t see me, I cocked my head. “Funny, that, considering that to my knowledge, this was all your idea—or at least it was back when it looked like it might pan out. Now that there’s complications to be had, suddenly it’s a joint venture?” I chuckled darkly. “No thanks, love. You can keep full custody of this one.”
I immediately regretted my choice of words. They sounded harsh, even to my ears, and I had the benefit of knowing what I’d meant. To Tessa, they must have sounded deplorable. And they left the door wide open for her to take a jab.
“Let me put it to you this way, Julian,” she began in that slow, hissing tone that told me she knew exactly what kind of opening I’d left her. “Either you get her on board with this plan—our plan—or I just go ahead and cancel these shows I have lined up over the next few months for you. The ones that booked you after seeing you on the news. How’s that for a custody agreement?”
I felt my stomach tighten, heat rising up the back of my neck. Despite how much I wanted to tell her to go fuck herself, Tessa had one hell of a power play at her disposal. If I wasn’t making any money, how could I hope to be part of my kid’s life? Or possibly even Elizabeth’s? Kids cost a hell of a lot these days. I needed to be doing everything in my power to ensure he or she had a head start on a great life.
“Why can’t we just leave this girl alone, Tessa?” I asked, rubbing my face in frustration. “She seems the decent sort. A little crabby, but who wouldn’t be, in her shoes? She doesn’t deserve this.”
“Deserve what? Being in the spotlight? Being a celebrity?” Tessa sucked her teeth. “Get real, Julian. Everyone wants to be famous—even her.”
“It isn’t just her anymore, Tessa,” I reminded her. God, I couldn’t believe how she’d changed. The two of us had been together a long time, and this wasn’t the Tessa I’d met when I was just starting my career. “She’s got my bloody kid inside of her.”
I could practically hear her roll her eyes. “Please. Even if she does—and you still don’t have any proof that she’s telling you the truth—since when have you ever cared about some bastard you may or may not have made?”
“Maybe since this one’s actually mine?” I shot back. “Or it could be. Look, I don’t know for sure. None of us do. But if Elizabeth had wanted something from me, wouldn’t she have gone to the press with all this?” As far as I could tell when I’d visited her, she’d wanted nothing to do with being in the public eye whatsoever.
“How do you know she didn’t?” Tessa queried. “How do you know this isn’t just part of some elaborate scheme of hers? Maybe the past few weeks, she’s been working on her image—scrubbing social media of any evidence of wrongdoing, cleaning up her act, polishing herself for the cameras. Stranger things have happened, Jules. You’ve no idea how insanely manipulative people can be.”
“I rather think I do,” I muttered. “And anyway… even if I can’t prove that’s not what’s going on here, I somehow feel it. Elizabeth isn’t that kind of girl, Tess. I just… know.”
I knew it wasn’t the most compelling argument, but my gut was telling me Elizabeth wasn’t out to get me. She wasn’t trying to use me or cause me harm like so many others had. Enough people had hurt me that I should have been able to recognize it clearly by now, and Elizabeth didn’t even register on my radar.
Abused kids, they have this sense about them, I think—even as adults. It never quite leaves you. Without even trying, you pick up on the small things—body language, micro-expressions, tone of voice, or whatever else—and then you just… know.
And where Elizabeth was concerned, I just knew.
It wasn’t an explanation Tessa would accept. But this wasn’t her life. It was mine. No matter what she might believe to the contrary.
“Well, then,” she said testily. “If you’re so damned determined to play house here, then you had better get this little tart on board, hadn’t you? Otherwise, you’re probably never going to see that kid again for as long as you bloody live. You patch things up, and I’ll spend the next few days letting the press know you’ve been involved in a deep and loving relationship with this girl. Don’t scre
w this up Julian!”
The line went dead, and suddenly I was alone again with my thoughts—which was exactly the thing I’d been avoiding for over a decade. I sighed and put the bottle of liquor back to my lips, feeling the hot burn of it scorching my throat as I tried once again to reach that sweet oblivion that was unconsciousness.
This poor girl didn’t bloody deserve any of this… but if everything Tessa had said went according to plan, then wouldn’t she end up coming out the other side better off for all of her trouble? She was young enough to be stuck paying off her debts from college, and getting a divorce settlement and child support would set her and our kid up for the rest of their lives. I was doing them a favor.
I took another long pull from the bottle, closing my eyes as I rested back on the hotel bed, embracing the warm glow radiating through me as I began to let the ebb and flow take me away into sleep. Whatever Tessa was planning could wait until tomorrow.
As I drifted off, a different feeling started rising up from deep within me. It was a familiar feeling. A need that couldn’t be written off or hidden away. I couldn’t get Elizabeth’s face out of my mind. Every curve of her body played out in lurid detail with my imaginary fingers tracing delicate lines across her skin.
These were memories of our night together. As dreams of Elizabeth washed over me, I found myself lost in her beautiful eyes… and I could see one emotion above all others as plain as day.
Desire.
I can work with desire…
Elizabeth
What the hell am I going to do? I wondered, feeling almost as hopeless as I was yesterday.
In situations like this, a girl like me might have been able to get some loving advice from her mother. But since I’d made sure not to give my mother my cell phone number, that was totally out of the question. The last thing I needed was a lecture on how good of a mom she’d been and how much I’d ruined her life. No thank you.
