“How’s my baby doing?” Zac asked, walking into the dorm room. He kissed Kris, and then kissed her belly. He put his head against her belly, listening to his child inside. “How’d the ultrasound go?”
“You asked me that already.”
“Yeah, but you said you didn’t wanna say anything until I got here. So I’m here now. How did it go?”
“She’s perfect.”
“She?” Zac said, immediately standing upright. “She’s a she?” Kris nodded. “I gonna have a daughter!” Kris nodded again, smiling. Zac knelt down again to the level of Kris’s swollen belly. “You’re gonna be Daddy’s little girl, I’m gonna spoil you rotten and buy you everything you want…”
“Zac, if you turn her into a spoiled brat I will so kill you.”
“Don’t listen to Mommy, I’m gonna give you everything you want and more.” Zac kissed her belly again. “I love you.” He felt a kick. “She kicked me!” Kris laughed. “Fine then, I won’t give you everything. You’ll just have to handle with close to everything.”
“Zac, I’ve been thinking.”
“You think? Since when?” Zac asked. She gave him a look. “I’m sorry, you sound like it’s important, so I’ll shut up.”
“We have to decide what we’re going to do once she’s born. We have to decide if I’m gonna take her, if we’re gonna live together or get married or something.”
“Married?” Zac said, falling back so his butt rested on his feet. “Why do you figure we would get married?” Oh no, I’ve scared him, Kris thought.
“Zac, if we decide to raise her together, we’re going to have to get married. We’re going to be spending eighteen years together, and by the time she’s off at college, we’ll be practically married anyway. I mean, look at it this way, once she’s born our lives are over. We can’t go out, we can’t do things like we normally would, so there’s no way either of us can see anyone else.”
“Kris, I’m only eighteen. I can’t get married now. Plus I’ve got my career going and it’s going good. I can’t raise her with you. I know I can’t. I can be with her as much as I am able to, but there’s no way I can be there and be at my job on the road at the same time. I barely see you, imagine what it will be like for her!” Kris bit her lip. This wasn’t going according to plan. “Listen, I love you. I love her. I want to be there as much as possible but I can’t! You have to understand that as much as I love you and I want to get married to you and raise her with you, I can’t.”
“So what am I supposed to do?”
“You find someone that will be there for you when she’s born.”
“You want me to see someone else?”
“Not yet, but I know you’re gonna have hell trying to raise her yourself. You’ll never be low on money, I can assure you that. If there’s ever anything that you need, you can’t pay for, you know I will. I want to be a part of her life, if not a full-time father, at least have her know who I am.”
“So you want me to find someone else to help me raise her. What about you? I still love you.”
“And I still love you. But this all may change. By April I very well be out of this business. That’s how it goes, I can’t tell what tomorrow is going to be. When she’s born, and I’m out of the business, I’ll marry you and I’ll be with you until the ends of the earth. If I’m not out of the business, then I won’t be able to stay.”
“Alright,” Kris said, solemnly. Misty walked in. “Hey Misty.”
“Kris, can I talk to you for a sec?” Misty asked. “Is this a good time or should I come back later?”
“We’re done,” Kris said, and Zac helped her stand up. She walked out of the room with Misty, leaving Zac inside. They got to the end of the hall when Kris suddenly burst into tears.
“Oh my God! What’s wrong?” Misty said, not expecting Kris to do that. Kris sunk to the ground, still crying hard. “Kris, what happened? Calm down and tell me.” Misty sat next to Kris on the floor. She calmed down a bit, enough so she could talk.
“He said that if he’s still in his career when she’s born, I should find someone else to raise her because he can’t possibly do it with me.”
“Oh I’m sorry,” Misty said, putting a comforting arm around her. “Kris, you know he won’t let you do that. He won’t let you raise her with someone else. He loves you too much.”
“Then why did he suggest it?” She put her hands over her face. “I don’t want anyone else raising my daughter but him! I don’t want to love anyone else but him!”
“Kris, he didn’t say you had to love anyone else.”
“Yeah, but he’s gonna break up with me when she’s born. He’s gonna move on and I’ll be stuck here. Finding someone else to raise my baby is not something I can do overnight.”
“Kris, I don’t know what he’s thinking. He’s nervous. This whole pregnancy thing is something neither of you expected and you are handling better than he is. He won’t leave you, this is his child and he loves the both of you so much. He won’t leave.”
“But he said he would…”
“He won’t. He may try to break up with you, but it’ll hurt him so much and he’ll realize that he loves you so much that he won’t be able to do it.”
“All I said was that if we want to raise the kid together we should get married.”
“Kris!” Misty said. “That’s why he’s saying this stuff! You scared him when you mentioned the m-word. He’s still eighteen, he’s not thinking about marriage right now. You’re twenty-one. You are.” Kris dried her eyes.
“So you think I just scared him?”
“Yeah, he’ll be better with time. And if he actually thinks his career is more important that his daughter and his girlfriend than he’s not even worth it. He may be famous and he may be popular, but you should be the most important thing to him.” Kris smiled.
“So what did you want to tell me?”
“I don’t remember, and it doesn’t matter. Dry your eyes, go wash your face, then you can go back in there and talk to him. If he thinks you were crying, I’ll just mention I gave you a cookie and you dropped it. You know, with the mood swings and all…”
“Thanks.” Misty got up. “Help.” Kris raised her arms in the air. Misty slowly pulled her up and they walked into the bathroom. Kris washed her face and dried it off, trying to make herself look like she wasn’t crying. If her eyes weren’t so red, she’d be perfect.
“I’m sure he won’t really notice your eyes,” Misty said.
“He will. He’ll know I was crying. The second I walk in there he’ll know. That’s the way he is; he knows everything about me. I just learn to accept the fact that I can’t hide anything from him. And plus, the first thing he’ll look at are my eyes.” Kris walked out of the bathroom and towards their room.
“Oh, I’m going to Ricky’s,” Misty said. “I’m sure I wanted to talk to you about something about him, but I don’t remember. So bye.”
“Bye.” Kris went inside the room. Zac was laying, face-down on the bed. Kris looked around for his face. “Hello? You in there?” Kris knocked on his head. He turned his head and looked up at her. He’d been crying too.
“I need a hug,” he said. She smiled.
“Come here.” He got up and hugged her, holding onto her tightly. She did the same, running her nails over his back. He shivered.
“I’ve always love it when you do that.”
“Do what?”
“Run your nails over my back. You’ve been doing it since we first started to be friends, and you’re still doing it now. Four years later.”
“We’ve known each other too long.”
“Four years isn’t that long.” She smiled, still running her nails over his back. She’d been doing it for so long that she forgot that she was even doing it. She thought about pulling away from him, but he must have read her thoughts and pulled her closer. She felt completely comfortable in his arms like this, hugging him and holding him and never wanting to let go.
“Can we just stay like this forever?”
“I wish we could.” She felt tears welling in her eyes again. Instead of trying to suppress them like she normally would, she put her hands over her face and began to cry. Now he was holding her instead of her holding him. He knew why she was crying, and it truthfully made him want to cry too. He kissed her forehead and rested his chin lightly on her head, looking to the other side of the room, and he let her cry.
Kris turned, dreaming. Zac watched from across the room, biting his fingernail. She was having a nightmare; he could tell just by looking at her. She’d had one every night he was with her, but he had yet to figure out what she was dreaming about. Odds were 20 to 1 that she was dreaming about Brian. It’d be the only reason she’d have a re-occurring nightmare.
But every time she was asleep, she wasn’t awake enough to be talking. She’d hadn’t entered the speaking stage yet. But Zac knew she was suffering. Someone had told him never to wake someone from a nightmare, but he couldn’t just let her dream night after night about the one week in her life that never seemed to go away.
Zac got up and walked over to the bed. Maybe if he could just wake her enough for the talking stage, he could finally find out what she was dreaming about. She’d never say it when she was away, it was the only thing she held from him and it bugged the hell out of him. There was a possibility that it just hurt too damn much to mention anymore.
“Kris, Kris honey, wake up,” he whispered. Misty was in the other side of the room, and Zac didn’t want to bug her. She would be a bitch if she got woken up. Zac lightly rubbed Kris’s hand.
“No, don’t touch me!” Kris said, and yanked her hand away. Zac sat back, surprised. “Oh, I’m sorry…no, I’m sorry! I’ll never do it again! Please don’t hurt me, I shouldn’t have said anything. Please, NO!!!” She was definitely dreaming about Brian.
“No, Kris, it’s me, it’s Zac. He’s not here.”
“I’m sorry! I’ll do whatever you want, just stop hitting me…” Kris suddenly cried out like she was in pain. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.
“Kris! Kris wake up!” Zac said, getting on top of her and starting to shake her. “Wake up!”
Her eyes opened wide in pure fright. She tensed until her eyes adjusted and she saw Zac. “Oh God, oh thank God. I thought you were him.” Zac got off her and laid next to her. “I’m so glad it’s you.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t let him get to you.”
“What time is it? Why are you up?”
“I couldn’t sleep. I’ve just been thinking all night.” He glanced at the clock. “It’s four.”
“And you haven’t been to sleep? Zac!”
“I know, I know. It’s not good. But I can’t sleep.”
“Try. I don’t like you staying up. You’ll end up sleeping late tomorrow and that’s not good. The plane leaves bright and early and we still have to help Misty pack.”
“She’s coming with us?”
“Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you. But she’s coming with us. I got her a ticket already. I wanted her to come, she needs to go back cause I’m not letting her stay here.”
“Alright.”
“Are you okay?” Kris asked. “You seem a little out of it.”
“I’m just thinking, I told you that.” She cuddled up to him.
“About what?”
“Nothing important.”
“You’re lying.”
“Listen, I just don’t really want to talk about it right now. Go back to sleep. You really need to sleep.” Zac shifted to get comfortable.
“Why don’t you want to talk about it? What’s wrong, hun?”
“I said it was nothing important.”
“And I said that you’re lying. You can’t keep things from me, Zac. I know you can’t.”
“We’ll talk about it in the morning.”
“No, we’re gonna talk about it now,” she said, sitting up.
“You’re getting bitchy.”
“You’re keeping things to yourself.”
“I just don’t want to make you cry again.” He turned away from her, stealing a cover away.
“Oh,” she said. She stole the cover back from him, but he pulled it away again. They started tugging it back and forth until Kris smacked his hand and he let go. “This is why we always had two covers.”
“We don’t have two now, do we?”
“There’s a big thick one in the closet. Get it for me and you can have this one.”
“No, I want the big thick one.”
“Zac! I need it more than you do.”
“No you don’t.”
“I’m going to squeeze a baby out of me while you watch and go ‘Ew.’ Now get me the blanket.”
“Don’t use that excuse on me.”
“Don’t fuck me.” He gave her a look. She looked away sadly, putting her hands on her stomach.
“I hate you.” He got up and got the blanket from the closet. He returned to find her smiling widely.
“Thank you!”
“Here.” He threw the blanket at her. She unfolded it and put it over her while he got under the thin covers and shivered. “I’m still cold.”
“Too bad.”
“You know, Kris, you’re horrible to me. I don’t know how I can put up with you.” She giggled. “What was that?”
“A giggle.” He turned to her.
“Since when do you giggle?”
“Since I start playing with your mind.” She kissed him. “I love you.”
“Sure. Make me freeze and say you love me. I see how it goes.”
“Zac, you’ll steal the cover from me in the middle of the night. I know you, and you tend to do that. If I’m cold that means the baby is cold and that can’t be good at all. I need to keep nice and warm and toasty.”
“Aren’t pregnant women usually very hot?”
“Of course I am. I’m a sexy bitch.”
“I meant hot as in temperature.”
“I’m still a sexy bitch.”
“At least you haven’t lost your self confidence yet.” She looked down at her belly and lifted her shirt.
“I got a baby growing inside of me. I’m gonna get big. I don’t mind it, though. I would mind getting fat. Being pregnant is a whole other story.” She looked at him, putting her shirt back down. “What do you mean, yet?”
“Well when you get so big you’re knocking things over, I think you might get a little self-conscious and not want to go anywhere. You know, when you’re so big you can’t fit behind the steering wheel.”
“I’ve given up on driving already. I don’t drive anywhere anymore.”
“Already?”
“Yeah, I don’t want to anymore. I like being a pain to other people.” She smiled gleefully. “It’s fun.”
“Oh God.”
“So you going to go get me chicken fingers and a milkshake?”
“What?”
“I’m in the mood for Steak ‘n’ Shake.”
“At four in the morning?”
“It’s four fifteen in the morning.”
“I’m not going.” She poked him.
“Zakky, get me some food.” He put his head in the pillow. “Zac! Get me food! I will so make your life a living hell if you don’t.” He groaned and got out of the bed. He grabbed his coat. “And could you get me some Pretzel Flips too?”
“What kind?”
“Chocolate.”
“I’ll be back.” He walked out of the room, and a few minutes later walked back in. “I need keys.” He grabbed the keys off the table and walked out again. Kris wanted for him to come back in. He did. “I need pants too.”
“Hurry up, I want my food now!”
“Let me put some clothes on first.”
“No, get me food.”
“They’ll get me for indecent exposure or something. I need clothes.” She huffed and waited. He put on his clothes and walked out of the room again, with the keys. He walked back in again. “Wallet.” He grabbed his wallet from the table. “Shoes.” He put his shoes on.
“Hurry up!! Your child is hungry.”
“I’m going, I’m going. If you don’t shut up I’ll make you get it yourself.”
“Leave!”
“Fine.” He walked out of the room.