ASL2: Chapter 100 "Unplanned"

-- CHAPTER 100: Unplanned --

****

-- SUNDAY, AUGUST 9, 2009 --

STOP: 0x00000050 (0xFCCBFFF, 0x00000050, 0x00000050)

PAGE-FAULT-IN-NONPAGED-AREA

A problem has been detected and your consciousness has been shut down to prevent--

No-no-no. We’re not doing that again. I’m not going unconscious. My soul is fine. Breathe, Ben. Breathe…

The problem seems to be caused by the following file: DAWNISPREGNANTWHAT?!?.SYS

Do you wish to continue? Y/N?

“Yes! I mean… of course yes! Was that ever actually in doubt?”

Well, your arms around her midsection kinda went from comforting hug to the sort of unyielding rigidity more suited to rigor mortis. Just sayin’.

Dawn shifted her gaze from the pregnancy wand over to my really HUGE eyes, and her eyebrows went up in inquiry. “I didn’t actually ask a question, but I think I can guess what your answer means.”

“Sorry, wasn’t actually talking to you at the time.”

She made a face. “Yeah, I know how exactly how you feel. But I’m trying to be present in the moment right now. I feel like this conversation is gonna be complicated enough with just the two of us instead of four.”

I nodded and took a deep, calming breath, doing my best to similarly be in the present and not let the voice in my head second-guess me.

Good luck with that.

Shut. UP.

“You want to keep the baby,” she said as a statement, not a question.

I released my grip around her body and scooted myself upright to sit back against the headboard. Raising my knees to my chest and wrapping my arms around them, I collected myself before asking, “Do you NOT want to keep it?”

Dawn pursed her lips and winced. She didn’t respond right away, and while her hesitation to say ‘yes’ wasn’t in and of itself a definitive ‘no’… it certainly wasn’t a definitive ‘yes’.

“You’re obviously a little shellshocked and freaked out,” I stated reasonably. “Those are obvious tear tracks. There’s a huge part of you that wishes this didn’t happen.”

“It’s not that I didn’t want it to happen.”

“But you didn’t want it to happen yet.” I took a deep breath and exhaled. “I mean yeah, you talked about handing me your last box of birth control pills right after getting your diploma… the operative phrase in there being ‘right after getting your diploma. Not when we’re… what… ten months away from you getting your MBA? Shit, your due date will be about…”

“Early April,” Dawn finished for me, having obviously done the math a long time ago. “Might even be around your birthday.”

I blinked. “How pregnant ARE you? When was your missed period supposed to be?”

“About a week and a half ago,” she explained.

My eyes got big. “You’ve known you were late for a week and a half?”

She stared back down at the pregnancy wand. “At first I thought I was just stressed out. Even though birth control pills are supposed to regulate a girl’s period like clockwork, shit still happens. I’ve been late before. I’ve even been a week late. And you certainly know I’m capable of stressing myself out like nobody else.”

“I did know you were stressed.” I pursed my lips and sighed. “I noticed you’ve been really quiet and subdued lately. You didn’t text me as often. Our Skype sessions this last week were pretty short - full of love, yes - but short, like you could only keep up the brave face for so long.”

She made a face. “You noticed?”

“You did flat out tell me when you were feeling weird, feeling unsettled, or feeling anxious. It made me feel better that you’d confess those things. It made me believe you were finally being honest with me.”

“It’s not that I wanted to be dishonest about this. I wasn’t lying to you. I just… I truly didn’t know what was going on.”

“You weren’t hiding anything from me you weren’t hiding from yourself. You didn’t want to think about being pregnant. You convinced yourself you were just stressed out.”

Dawn started fiddling with her “Ben’s Cow” ring, rubbing it like a nervous tic. “I’ve been feeling anxious and unsettled for weeks already trying to find myself and going through this identity crisis.”

“I know you have. So whenever you were distracted or lost in thought, it never occurred to me it might be… this. I was trying to be a good boyfriend by being supportive, being present, and always reminding you I was here for you without actually pressuring you. Because let’s face it: you’ve never really responded very well to me pressuring you. And you openly admitted to feeling out of sorts rather than put up a façade and pretend that everything’s going well.”

“But I didn’t tell you WHY I was feeling out of sorts, though.”

“You know what? I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I think you’ve blamed yourself enough already. There were times when I asked you what was going on, and you told me you were freaking out a bit because there was a lot of uncertainty in your life. It was the truth, because there was a lot of uncertainty in your life. There was no way I could expect you to come out and tell me or anybody else, ‘My period’s late. I’m freaking out that I might be pregnant.’”

“Thank you for understanding.” Dawn closed her eyes and exhaled slowly in relief.

I suddenly clapped my hand to my forehead. “Oh, shit. Is THIS why you volunteered to be the designated driver Friday night? You didn’t HAVE to drive. It’s not like we can’t afford calling a cab. Normally ‘drunk’ and ‘horny’ are two words that go really well together for you, but not Friday night. You didn’t touch a drop of alcohol.”

Dawn blushed and stared down at the wand in her hand. “I didn’t know for sure, but I suspected.”

“Is that why you took a test this morning? How many tests have you already taken? Was it coming up negative before? Was this the first positive? Could it be a false positive?”

Dawn took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “This IS the first positive, but it’s also the first one I’ve taken, period. False positive? I suppose it could be. But then again…”

Her voice trailed off and she pursed her lips, staring down at the wand. I waited her out rather than press her.

“I spent a week thinking it was just stress and that my period would eventually come. But then by Wednesday I wasn’t so sure anymore. Thursday I started to worry. Friday I nearly had a full-blown panic attack… and of course you noticed that I didn’t drink any alcohol. Yesterday I did my best to focus on you. Basketball was a nice distraction, but even then--”

“Even then you spaced out a few times mid-game,” I interjected. “I noticed.”

Dawn pursed her lips and nodded. “I didn’t want to think about it. I kept… hoping?… that my period would just miraculously show back up. But then I woke up like an hour ago feeling really nauseous and had to go hurl in the toilet.”

“Morning sickness already?”

“Or nerves? I dunno. In any case, I couldn’t put it off any longer. I got dressed, drove out to Walgreens to pick up a test, came home, and… well… you know the rest.”

I nodded slowly. “How did this happen?”

Well, Junior, when a man and a woman love each other very much--

Shut it.

“How did your birth control fail?” I clarified.

Dawn grimaced and glanced down at her lap. “I think it’s because I missed a pill.”

“WHAT?”

“The week we were ‘taking a break’, right before my birthday,” she explained. “I woke up on Thursday morning and realized Wednesday’s pill was still in the case. It’s not the first time I’ve forgotten one, and I never got knocked up before. I’ve read up on it and all the literature says it’s totally fine to miss one pill. Miss two and you might be in trouble, but one should be fine.”

“‘Should’ be,” I said, miming the air quotes.

“I didn’t do this on purpose.”

“I know you didn’t.”

“Will Adrienne believe that I didn’t?”

I winced, and for the very first time I thought about my fiancée. “Oh, shit.”

How the hell did you forget about your ‘Number One’?

Dude, shut it. I’ve got a lot of other stuff on my mind right now.

“She is NOT gonna be happy about this,” Dawn muttered.

“Now hold on a sec,” I muttered defensively. “Would it really be THAT important for her to have a baby before you? I mean, I’ve already got BJ. The role of firstborn son has already been filled and is even potty-trained.”

“You weren’t Adrienne’s fiancé when you knocked up Kim. Pretty sure most engaged women - especially world-famous ones - don’t want celebrity news magazines publishing articles about their husbands-to-be knocking up other girls before the wedding.”

I made a face and held up both hands. “Let’s not think of this in terms of the public at large. I really don’t give a shit what the public at large thinks.”

“But Adrienne does. What does this do to her Tigress brand if it comes out that you’re the father?”

“Nobody knows that I’m the father.”

“You HAVE been spotted out and about the town quite frequently with both me and Summer. Hell, Sasha too.”

“Are you saying you wanna get an abortion to avoid hurting Adrienne’s public image?!?”

Dawn sighed. “There are a lot of considerations here: Adrienne’s public image, finishing my MBA, letting your wife have your next baby.”

“Breaking your mother’s heart… again.”

Dawn winced, and I didn’t need any mystical link to know we were both thinking about DJ’s abortion. And Dawn muttered quietly, “Breaking your heart… again.”

I sighed and let my shoulders slump. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that in the first place. I wanna be happy and excited and I wanna keep this baby, but you’re clearly torn and I don’t want to make this about me.”

“You’re allowed to make this about you. It’s your baby too.”

“I understand the logic behind getting an abortion,” I conceded. “It avoids all these messy complications with Adrienne’s image, your education, and my engagement. But this isn’t a game. We can’t push the reset button and start over. There’s no getting an abortion and then refreshing at our last save point right before you found out you were pregnant and then moving forward as if nothing ever happened. This is OUR baby. We’d NEVER forget this moment. The consequences would echo throughout our lives forever, and you know it.”

“Now you know exactly what’s been running through my mind for the last week and a half.”

I separated my legs and leaned forward to take hold of Dawn’s waist before physically dragging her in front of me. I parked her between my legs so that she was reclining back against my chest. My left arm hugged around her upper body to her right shoulder while my right hand almost absentmindedly rubbed her still-flat belly, imagining our developing lima bean still inside. And both of Dawn’s hands were on top of mine.

We sat there in silence, neither of us speaking, lost in our own thoughts for a moment. She’d had a lot more time to process than me, and I was still wrapping my mind around all of the ramifications. My gut instinct wanted to throw logic to the wind, say ‘Damn the consequences’ and swear up and down that Dawn and I would figure this out together no matter what. Had I still been in high school I would’ve certainly said exactly that, and probably the same had I been in college. But I was a 25-year-old man now with a corporate job, a not-quite-3-year-old, and a fiancée who was NOT yet pregnant.

In short: It’s complicated.

“It feels a little like fate that I took this pregnancy test in that bathroom out there, the morning after spending the night with you in this bedroom,” Dawn muttered out of the blue, and I found her looking up at the ceiling and across the walls.

“Your college bedroom.”

Dawn sighed and nodded slowly. “So many memories in this house.”

“Good memories or bad?”

“Bit of both. Mostly good. This was OUR house. This was the place where we could finally live in the same zip code again for the first time since we were kids. This was the place where our first real long-term relationship could grow.” She glanced at me over her shoulder and pursed her lips. “This is the house where I broke your heart.”

“For a little while.”

“I killed our relationship. It died.”

“For a little while,” I repeated and then smiled. “It’s better now. What was it that you told Adrienne? That you’d loved me for twenty-five years and never stopped for even a single day? We had a hiccup in our relationship, yes.”

“A four-year hiccup.”

“But we’re back now where we were four years ago. What would we have done had you turned up pregnant back then?”

“Back when we were together during junior year? We would’ve gotten married, and quickly, before my baby bump started to show.”

I smiled. “Well, probably, but I was thinking more just about whether or not we’d keep the baby. We would. I know it.”

“I know we would have, and even as undergrad students we’d have kept it and figured out a way. The logical part of my brain says that the timing of this is shit, but we’re still in a much better position now than we would’ve been back then. I can still graduate on time. You’ve got a great job and plenty of income. We have friends and family who will support us with oodles of free babysitting. I’m old enough and ready enough to settle down, with not even a second thought about trying to maintain my youthful body. All of DJ’s reasons for getting an abortion are a complete non-issue for me.”

I nodded slowly. “That’s good to know.”

Dawn pursed her lips and shook her head. “The reasons NOT to have a baby are completely different. You’re Adrienne’s fiancé now. I know she wants to get knocked up on your honeymoon. I did want to bear your children, but not right now. I’m not supposed to end up pregnant yet.”

“Maybe you are supposed to end up pregnant. Maybe that’s our destiny.”

“I don’t believe in destiny.”

“‘Sometimes Destiny happens whether you believe in it or not,’” I quoted softly.

“I can’t believe in Destiny,” Dawn said quietly. “If I did, then I would believe this was a sign from the gods that you’re making a mistake marrying Adrienne and should be marrying me instead. I’d believe I was meant to be Perfect Dawn. I’d believe I was meant to be your perfect wife, live in our perfect home, raise our perfect 2.5 kids in our perfect white-picket fence house with the PTA and the jealous moms and all that jazz.”

“And that’s not who you want to be.”

“It’s NOT. Fuck Destiny.”

“We did. Sydney lives in SoCal.”

Dawn simply rolled her eyes at my lame joke.

I moved forward quickly. “If Destiny is real, it means you and I were always meant to have children together. And even if Destiny isn’t real, we still have this opportunity to have children together the way we’d always wanted. The timing is shit - obviously - but the end result is the same. You and me… bound together in a way that can never be truly broken. People get married. People get divorced. But once two people have a child together, they will forever be family.”

“We’re already family through the twins.”

“The twins aren’t a direct connection between you and me. But once that little lima bean growing inside you finally comes out to meet us, that tiny little life…” I let my voice trail off, momentarily losing myself in the vision of a squalling infant being held up by the delivery doctor while a nurse hands me a pair of medical scissors to cut the umbilical, the way I’d done for BJ.

I imagined that adorably wrinkled little girl being placed onto Dawn’s bare chest, her tiny mouth instinctively stretching out in search of her nipple to take her first sucks of breastmilk while I gazed down at both of them with infinite wonder and love.

My Dawn.

And our daughter.

Ours.

Dawn glanced back at me, and I saw a shimmer in her eyes that told me she was imagining the same thing. She still had her hands on mine, and she squeezed them both. She set my right hand on her tummy to rubbing a bit, and she stared deep into my eyes while murmuring, “I can’t wait to meet our baby.”

“Me either,” I said sincerely.

“Do you think we’ll have a boy or a girl?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t really have a preference,” I hedged.

Her eyes narrowed fractionally. “You want a little girl. Maybe just because you already have a son? Maybe because you associate us Evanses with women?”

I shrugged. “Maybe.”

“It’ll be a girl,” Dawn stated confidently. “I guess we already know what a mix of our two families will end up looking like. Maybe she’ll grow up as gorgeous as Eden and Emma.”

“Maybe she’ll grow up as gorgeous as her mother.”

Dawn gave me a small smile and then sighed. “So that settles that then, I suppose: I’m keeping her.”

“Did you ever have any real doubt?”

“‘Real doubt’? Yes. Totally. Absolutely I had real doubt.” Dawn sighed and let her head fall back over my shoulder. “There are so many logical reasons to have an abortion, and had you preferred an abortion, I think I honestly would’ve agreed with you.”

“I was never going to prefer an abortion and you know it.”

Dawn nodded seriously. “Yeah, I do know it. So now that we’re firmly agreed that I’m keeping it, what now? How do we break the news to the others? How does this affect your relationships with the others?”

“You mean: How does this affect my engagement to Adrienne?”

“I don’t believe in destiny and therefore can’t believe destiny made me pregnant just to fuck with your engagement. But this is gonna fuck with your engagement anyways and we both know it.”

I took a deep breath and regarded her seriously. “I love you. Please don’t doubt that.”

“I don’t. ‘Til death do us part. For all eternity. But me being pregnant doesn’t change Option Two. I’ve got a blueprint from Kim for how to raise a child with you, but Adrienne should be your wife.”

“I agree. She’s the one I want to marry, and this pregnancy doesn’t change that. You’ll always be My Dawn, and we both wanted you to be a mother of my children, but she’s my Mrs. Ben.”

“Think you can convince her of that?”

“Yes I do. I’m not saying she’s gonna be happy about this, but she’ll understand that it was unplanned and that we’ll all have to make the best of the situation. How many times has she stated she values my ultimate happiness in the end? She was right there when you told her about handing me your birth control pills after getting your diploma. She’s always known that you bearing my children was on the agenda.”

“But not the timing. Not before her wedding,” Dawn insisted. “Sure, she’ll say all the right things and do her best to look at the big picture. But… well… she’s the Queen Bee. And the Queen Bee does NOT get her thunder stolen by the rival soulmate/best friend/One True Love she nearly lost out to already before.”

“I think you’re overexaggerating how she’ll react,” I stated evenly, downplaying the situation. “Will this come as a surprise? Of course. But she loves me. She loves you. She’ll understand. She won’t get mad.”

****

“DAMN FUCKING STRAIGHT I’M MAD!!!” Adrienne howled, her skin flushed and her hazel eyes aflame with righteous anger as she thrust both hands at me as if to mime, ‘Are you fucking CRAZY?!?’ before clapping her palms over her face, turning, and stomping away.

This was not going well.

Congratulations, dude. You had a functional four-way relationship for four weeks. The Quad ALMOST made it to a one-month anniversary! Almost!

It’s not over yet. It’s not over yet! Okay, okay, okay. What was it that Iris said to Dawn? Problem solve. Think proactively. Think positively.

Adrienne is positive that the pregnancy wand in Dawn’s hand was positive. Let’s just think back again… Yep. Two pink lines. Couldn’t miss ‘em. Definitely pregnant.

You’re not helping.

It had been fairly early for a Sunday morning when I’d woken up just before Dawn’s return to her old Birdhouse bedroom. The two pairs of twins had still been asleep upstairs when Dawn and I slipped out and headed for home. And our three Nestmates had still been asleep together in the master bedroom when we returned.

At first, I simply parked myself lengthwise on the couch with Dawn sitting between my legs and reclining back against my chest with my right hand on her belly, much the same way we’d done in her Birdhouse bedroom. My analytical brain, seeking something to latch onto, started doing project management on all the action items we would need to execute in terms of identifying friends and family to be notified, figuring out which hospital her OB was affiliated with for delivery, and plotting out the calendar until Dawn finished her MBA program. Finishing off her last month of school and getting her degree in mid-May would be… challenging… to say the least. The timing of this almost couldn’t be any worse.

But the important thing was that both Dawn and I were in agreement that we wanted to keep the baby. It was OUR baby - how could we NOT keep it? And while I knew it was still possible that Dawn could eventually change her mind, much as DJ had, I didn’t think it likely. I knew her. I felt her resolve to see this through. Our commitment to each other was already unquestioned. Dawn and I had already planned on raising children and spending the rest of our lives together. The timing was just off, that’s all.

About twenty minutes later, low moans filtered down the vaulted ceiling of the living room from upstairs. We’d done our best to soundproof The Nest, but it was otherwise as quiet as a church mouse and we both knew the sounds of sex all too well. The girls had woken up and started a round of morning lovemaking. So with that knowledge, Dawn and I headed into the kitchen to start making breakfast for everyone.

Breakfast was ready by the time Summer came down first, intending to start what we’d already completed. She expressed surprise at our early arrival, immediately noted Dawn’s somewhat… contemplative… state, and asked if everything was alright. I explained that we had an announcement but that it should wait until the other two arrived. And although that got Summer’s curiosity up, she would of course obediently wait.

Adrienne and Sasha were only five minutes behind Summer, and immediately smiled and opened their arms to us for welcoming hugs. But Adrienne was the first to recognize my somewhat pensive state, and with her arms still around me, she pulled back far enough to look me in the eyes.

“What’s wrong, Tiger?”

“Nothing’s ‘wrong’,” I prefaced before continuing straight on, not wanting to let the anticipation build at all. “But Dawn and I do have an announcement: she’s pregnant.”

All three of the other girls gasped in immediate surprise. I looked at Dawn, and she stared rather hesitantly at the dining table, refusing to meet anyone’s eyes as she withdrew the pregnancy wand from her pocket and held it out. “Surpriiise,” she mumbled quietly, attempting to smile and keep her voice light but not doing a very good job of it.

There was a… well… pregnant pause.

I could see my inner voice promptly facepalm (as if disembodied inner voices had faces to palm).

“Well this is a gamechanger,” Sasha muttered, the first of the three girls to speak.

“Holy… WOW. This is a good thing, right?” Summer queried uncertainly, although she did her best to smile. “I mean, this totally isn’t what any of us planned, but… A baby! Ben’s baby! This is awesome, right? I think congratulations are in order, don’t you think? Congratulations!” She promptly hugged her BFF again.

Adrienne, on the other hand, just sort of stared at Dawn in stony silence, her lips pressed together in a hard line. I could see her still… processing… for lack of a better term, and she otherwise remained completely mute.

She then let go of my waist, giving me a somewhat… cold… look as she took a step back.

And then without a word, she turned around and headed up the stairs.

I immediately followed my fiancée, knowing full well I shouldn’t let her stew on the situation, all alone with her thoughts, without giving myself a chance to explain, reassure, or do whatever else would be necessary to ensure the continued survival of our engagement. There were very few nuclear bombs that could interrupt our upcoming nuptials, but Dawn getting pregnant had the potential to be one of them, perhaps slotted just one step down from an actual nuclear bomb.

Sasha also started after us, but I turned and held a hand up to her. “Please, let me talk to her one-on-one first,” I requested. “Please?”

The brunette took a deep breath, sighed, and gestured for me to continue. Adrienne was already halfway up the stairs by then, and I picked up my pace to catch up to her. At this point, my biggest fear was that she’d slam the master bedroom door and lock it before I got there.

But she didn’t slam the door. She just walked inside and then pivoted to sit down on the armchair with one leg tucked beneath her butt. It didn’t escape my notice that she hadn’t elected to sit on the bed where there would be room for me to sit beside her and potentially hug her. So after closing the door behind me for privacy, I picked the spot on the bed closest to her and sat there with my heels up on the bedframe, leaning forward with my elbows on my knees.

“We didn’t plan this,” I began firmly.

“I know you didn’t,” she replied softly, not looking directly at me. “I know Dawn’s heart. She would never have done this intentionally.”

“Total accident,” I assured her.

“But intentional or not, she’s still pregnant.”

“She is.”

“You should marry her.”

“What? No. Not at all. You’re the one that I want.”

“What does it matter anyway? Hot potato, hot potato. We’re a team. We’re The Quad. Interchangeable parts. I told you before that I’d be okay not having the government piece of paper. I would’ve been fine with Summer as your wife, but Dawn’s always been your soulmate. This is Destiny telling us you made the wrong choice. You belong with her, Ben. You always have. But don’t worry about me. So long as you’re in my life Forever and Always, I’ll be alright.”

“I won’t. Adrienne, please. I meant what I said about you being The One. We’re a Quad, yes, but you’re The One. My wife. I wanna marry you because I can’t stand the thought of NOT marrying you.”

The first tears started rolling down Adrienne’s cheek. She still wouldn’t look at me, eyes fixed on some distant point past my left shoulder, and her lower lip began quivering. “It’s happening again.”

I blinked, not understanding.

“What’s happening again?”

“I’m gonna lose you.”

“What? I’m right here. You’re not gonna lose me. You’re gonna be my WIFE.”

“It’s happening again,” she repeated. “This is just like Morris Camp after you not-proposed! This is just like our first engagement. I let myself believe for the briefest of moments that I’d get my Happily Ever After. But then Fate had to go and fucking pull the rug out from under my feet again.”

“What are you talking about?”

Adrienne’s eyes finally turned straight to me, sharpening like daggers. “I’m going to lose you to Dawn. Again.”

“Adrienne…”

“Not on purpose. Neither of you would ever do it on purpose. I know you both love me and would never WANT to hurt me. Neither of you did anything on purpose LAST time either. But it still happened nonetheless. I knew back then that the day you had sex with her would be the day I lost you, and even though it took longer than a day I was still right in the end. I still wound up sobbing my heart out on the floor of our apartment while you packed up and moved back to Berkeley.” Adrienne swallowed thickly and shrugged. “Back to Dawn.”

“That was my fault. That was all my fault. Not hers.”

“I agree,” Adrienne stated bitterly. “It wasn’t Dawn’s fault. She was simply there. She did nothing on purpose. She made no active attempts to steal you. She simply existed, and you still went back to her. You’ll always go back to her. For twenty-five years you two have loved each other and never stopped for a single day. She’s your soulmate. She’s your Destiny. And now she’s having your BABY.”

“We’ll be raising a child together, yes. That’s happening. But that doesn’t have to change my relationship with you. I’m raising a child with Kim, right?”

“You never felt for Kim what you still feel for Dawn.”

I sighed. “Dawn will always be an integral part of my life. You knew that, which was why you went down south to bring her back to me.”

“You love her.”

“Of course I love her. But that doesn’t mean I don’t also love you. Love isn’t zero-sum. I can love you both, and love Summer, and love Kim and BJ and Sasha and Eden and Emma and June and--”

“She’s going to be the mother of your child,” Adrienne cut me off.

“Then let’s get you knocked up ASAP and she’ll have like… a month… on you. You can read What To Expect When You’re Expecting together and take Lamaze classes together and bond over breastfeeding.”

Adrienne pursed her lips, and I could tell that she was considering the possibility. But she almost immediately scowled and shook her head. “I can’t help but feel like you’re cheating on me right now.”

“Cheating? How?”

“I don’t know! I just…” Adrienne planted both hands to the sides of her head and squeezed. “This wasn’t supposed to happen! Dawn’s not supposed to be pregnant!”

“I know…” I sighed. “This whole thing is the definition of ‘unplanned’. But that doesn’t change the fact that she IS pregnant, and we’re gonna have to work out how to move forward together… as a team. We’re still The Quad.”

“I know we are.” Adrienne shook her head. “But I was supposed to be your unquestioned Number One.”

“You ARE my unquestioned Number One. You’re ‘The One’. Dawn’s pregnancy doesn’t change that.”

“But doesn’t it? We’re a Team, we’re The Quad, we’re the Furious Five - but everyone was supposed to have their role. Dawn was supposed to be your lifelong best friend and intimate partner but NOT your romantic primary. That was supposed to be me.”

“You are. You still are. You’re My Tigress. You’re my fiancée. Soon you’ll be My Wife. It’s a Sunday today, but if it’ll make you feel any better we can run out tomorrow morning and get hitched. You DID say you’d marry me in a dumpy courthouse wearing sweatpants and no makeup if you had to.”

“I don’t WANT the dumpy courthouse or sweatpants. I WANT the big fancy wedding and you KNOW it. And the fact that we even have to consider giving up the big fancy wedding is making me so fucking mad!”

I raised both hands and gestured for her to calm down. But she only got angrier.

“Don’t you get it?!? Dawn’s beating me to the punch… AGAIN.”

I frowned. “When did Dawn ever beat you to the punch on anything?”

“I don’t know! I don’t remember right now! But it still feels like she’s usurping my position! She’s gonna be the ‘Mother of the Heir’ or something like that.”

I blinked. “Pretty sure Kim’s ‘Mother of the Heir’ in that analogy.”

“Kim’s not in The Quad. BJ will always be your firstborn son, but shouldn’t -I- get to have your first Quad baby? And RIGHT before our wedding? You think I want all the news magazines talking about how my fiancé’s baby mama is upstaging my wedding?!?”

“Dawn’s not trying to upstage your wedding by getting pregnant right now.”

“But she’s still fucking upstaging me!”

“Is that really the emotional response you want to have today? Think about her feelings. Dawn’s your friend. She’s had a really rough few weeks with a ton of stress from her internship, from trying to find her new sense of identity, to giving up on her dream of ever marrying me and watching you and I get engaged. This is hard for her. For all we know, it’s exactly this kind of stress that made her birth control fail in the first place. And now, on the morning she found out that she’s unexpectedly pregnant, the father of her unborn child is upstairs because one of her best friends is having a temper tantrum instead of wishing her congratulations.”

Adrienne’s eyes narrowed and I could practically see the hot steam boiling out of her ears. “You’re calling this a fucking ‘temper tantrum’? FUCK, Ben. This IS a repeat of our first engagement. I’m sitting here feeling fucking betrayed and you’re gonna sit there getting all self-righteous, scolding me for overreacting to something perfectly valid for me to get upset about! For her. For Dawn. AGAIN.”

I held up both hands defensively. “I’m sorry for using the term ‘temper tantrum’. That was uncalled for. But you ARE letting your emotions get the best of you right now.”

“Oh I’ll SHOW you letting my emotions get the best of me!” she thundered as she stood up from the chair and glared down at me.

“Adrienne, please. I know you’re mad.”

“DAMN FUCKING STRAIGHT I’M MAD!!!” Adrienne howled, her skin flushed and her hazel eyes aflame with righteous anger as she thrust both hands at me as if to mime, ‘Are you fucking CRAZY?!?’ before clapping her palms over her face, turning, and stomping away.

This was not going well.

Congratulations, dude. You had a functional four-way relationship for four weeks. The Quad ALMOST made it to a one-month anniversary! Almost!

It’s not over yet. It’s not over yet! Okay, okay, okay. What was it that Iris said to Dawn? Problem solve. Think proactively. Think positively.

Adrienne is positive that the pregnancy wand in Dawn’s hand was positive. Let’s just think back again… Yep. Two pink lines. Couldn’t miss ‘em. Definitely pregnant.

You’re not helping.

Adrienne marched across the bedroom and flung the door open so hard that the handle crushed the rubber bumper on the wall designed to absorb the impact - and caved in the drywall anyway. Spiderweb cracks appeared in the wall. Dust and a few flecks of painted material dropped down to the hardwood floor.

I quickly got up and hustled after her, but she was already halfway down the stairs. I took the stair treads two at a time as I rapidly descended, but she was already marching through the living room and towards the kitchen. Dawn, Summer, and Sasha were all seated on the couches, and Sasha stood up while reaching a hand out towards her best friend. But Adrienne ignored them all, snatched her keys off the hanging hook on the kitchen wall, and blitzed straight for the back door.

Dressed in skimpy pajamas without a drop of makeup, my Tigress thundered outside and opened the garage. I caught up to her right as she jumped into the Cayenne, and on impulse I stood directly behind the big SUV with my arms stretched out to the sides while she ignited the engine and shifted the gearbox into reverse.

Didn’t matter. The Porsche backed straight at me, not so fast that I’d be unable to get out of the way, but she forced me to save my own life nonetheless by darting off to the side. Still, she’d have to make a three-point turn to get out of the backyard and line up with the driveway. So I hustled over to the corner of the house where she’d have to drive past me and held both palms out, silently pleading for her to stop.

Miracle of miracles, she stopped. The Porsche screeched to a halt right next to me and Adrienne rolled the window down. My heart leaped for joy, but just for a moment. She gave me a baleful glare through red-rimmed eyes, whipped the engagement ring off her finger, and dropped it onto the grass in front of my feet.

“I hope you two are happy together,” she muttered bitterly.

And then she drove away.

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