“Hannah’s pregnant.”
That stuns him into silence.
“Wait, I just realized how that sounds,” I interject before he can reply. “I’m not using that as an example of a nightmare scenario. I just needed to say it and didn’t want to hear your stupid mime story anymore.”
“First of all, wow.”
“I know, right?” I rake my free hand through my hair. “She totally threw me a curveball yesterday.”
“I meant wow, my story wasn’t stupid.”
I can’t help but snort.
“Second of all,” he continues. “Wow.”
A full-blown laugh slips out. I know it’s not the time to be laughing, but I love my friends. They never fail to lift my spirits when I need their support.
“Is this wow about my news?”
“Yeah. I mean, holy shit, G. Congratulations. How far along is she?”
“Ten weeks. She had the first ultrasound yesterday. Actually, that’s sort of how I found out. She wasn’t feeling well and thought she was losing the baby. Had to rush her to the hospital.”
“Oh, damn. I’m sorry. She okay?”
“Yeah, better now. False alarm. But I had no idea.” Shame coats my throat. “I was in the middle of this god-awful joint interview with my father when Wellsy called, so I was already in a crap mood. Then she dropped all this on me at once, and I, uh…” The remorse is choking me now. I clear my throat. “I didn’t react well.”
His voice turns grave. “What’d you do?”
“Nothing. Well, I mean, we got into a shouting match in the car, and I may or may not have compared her to my father.”
Logan’s expletive thuds in my ear. “Not cool, dude. You can’t be yelling at pregnant ladies.”
“Yes, thank you. But I was caught off guard.”
I pace around the house, trying to walk off the nervous energy building in my muscles.
“You better do some serious groveling,” he advises me. “Bust out that credit card and get to work.”
“She’s pretty mad still. We were supposed to talk, but she basically blew me off this morning.”
“Well, yeah, dickhead. She’s been all alone in this, and then she’s freaking out, tells you, and you flip out on her and tell her she’s like your dad? Your dad, who was spawned from Satan’s rib? Jesus, bro. She’s feeling like shit right about now, and you made it so much worse.”
He’s right. I know. As he rails into me for my behavior, I wander into the den and notice the notepad Wellsy had written on. I don’t even mean to read it. I just happen to glance at it and the name catches my attention.
Reed Realty.
I freeze in place. What the hell does Hannah need a realtor for? And when did she even have a chance to contact one? She went straight to bed when we got home yesterday—
—at six o’clock in the evening, I realize. And I sat in the kitchen alone for hours, lost in my own damned head while my pregnant girlfriend was in the bedroom. Maybe she hadn’t gone to sleep, but stayed up for a while. Also stewing, thinking. And maybe she’d stewed and thought until she’d reached a decision.
To move out.
My blood runs cold with terror. She did just receive that big royalty check. She sure as hell doesn’t need me to support her and the baby. And after the way I lost it on her yesterday, maybe she doesn’t want my support.
Fuck.
My body growing weak, I cut Logan off midsentence. “Dude, I gotta go.”
42
Hannah
Our engineer, Max, is in the studio with Nice, finessing a track with him, when I get there to pick up my hard drive. The entourage are camped out on the leather sofa, watching some sci-fi show on a laptop. I mean to just grab the drive and go, but when I hear Nice riffing in the booth, I can’t help but get sucked in.
At the mic, Nice recites some lines he reads from his phone while Max cues up a new mix of the bridge.
“What do you think?” he asks, calling me into the booth with him. “Came to me last night while we were watching Farscape. You ever see that show? It’s a trip.”
“I like that slant rhyme,” I say. “But what if we moved it to the second verse and moved that first bit to the new bridge?”
Max ducks out for a minute while we dig into these lyrics. As always, Nice and I become absorbed in the process, until I notice a figure waving at us through the glass. At first I think it’s Max, but then I blink and realize it’s Garrett.
My boyfriend stands at the board, silently mouthing words I can’t discern.
“Garrett?” I blurt out. “What in the hell?”
He meets my eyes when he hears my voice come through the monitors on his side.
“You have to cue up the talkback,” I tell him, before realizing he has no idea what I’m talking about. “The red button next to the microphone. On the board.”