Hung (14 page)

"No, Clay" she smiled, "I'm fine – more than fine, in fact."

I still didn't get it. "You don't look fine. I think you should go get checked out—"

"Clay, it's morning sickness…" She smiled radiantly.

That shut me up.

"It's—"

"Yup, morning sickness!"

"But it's half past three," I exclaimed, my brain still processing what she'd just told me.
Was I actually going to be a father?
"How irrational."

"You can get it all day," Alicia babbled excitedly. "It's not just
morning
sickness. I'm sure I'll be, well, sick of it soon enough – but right now, it feels incredible! Well," she amended, "not
incredible
. But, Clay, I'm pregnant!"

I'd never heard anything as incredible as those final four words. I immediately reached over and gripped Alicia in a huge bear hug.

"Clay!" she yelped.

I let go in a heartbeat, terrified that I might have done damage to the kid – my kid. No, our kid. "My God, I'm sorry – are you okay? I didn't hurt you, did I?" A horrible thought tore through me and a shiver ran up my spine. "Is the baby okay?"

"Clay, chill – the baby's fine. Hell, it's only a bundle of cells at the moment, probably no bigger than a hair. I just couldn't breathe, that's all."

I kissed her, relieved and happy and excited all at once.

"How do you know? About the pregnancy, I mean – have you checked?"

She nodded. "I had my head deep in a basket of roses at the florist and I'd never smelled anything more disgusting in my life! I felt queasy as hell and had to sit down. The old woman who ran the place gave me one look and told me I was pregnant!"

"We need to get a test; we need to check, make sure," I said in a hurry.

"Slow down, Clay – I didn't just believe some old lady like she was some kind of old-school witch doctor." Alicia giggled. "I did go get a test, you know…"

"Just one?"

I shot him an amused look. The truth was, I’d practically swept the entire shelf into my cart. "Well..." I joked, "to be honest, I did the first two at the same time. I couldn’t bear the thought of a false positive. "

He wrinkled his nose. "Wasn’t that…messy?"

I laughed and hit him on the arm. "Get a grip, Clay – if you think that’s bad, I’d stay the hell away from the birthing room…"

He gripped my hand tightly, and stared into my eyes. "Trust me, Liss, there’s no place I’d rather be."

I
gratefully accepted
a cup of freshly squeezed orange juice from Clay. I'd done plenty of reading over the years when I thought I'd never be able to bear a child – mainly to find out what I was missing out on, and now that I was miraculously pregnant, that instinct had kicked into overdrive. Medical professionals seemed split on whether or not caffeine was or wasn't okay – but there was no way I was going to risk the health of my baby just because I wasn't a morning person.

"Thanks."

I took a big gulp, desperate to moisten my mouth after a much-needed night's sleep, but no sooner had the cold liquid hit my tongue than I made a face and rushed to the sink to spit it out.

"Liss, what's wrong?" Clay asked worriedly. "More morning sickness?"

"No," I gasped, washing my tongue clean with a refreshing stream of tap water, "but that orange juice is well past its date… Clay, you have to be careful with these things now!"

Clay picked the glass up from the sparkling granite surface and lifted it to his nose. He took an experimental sniff, then raised the glass to his lips and took a long gulp.

"You sure you're okay? It tastes fine to me, and I squeezed the oranges this morning myself."

The draining area near the sink was, indeed, covered with now-drying parts of Clay's high-end fruit juicer, which must have cost thousands of dollars but barely looked used.

"Give me that," I said, looking at the glass in his hands suspiciously. I raised it to my nose and gave it a sniff.

"Oh, for god's sake!" I muttered irritably. "This is the last thing I need."

"Seriously, Liss – talk to me. Do you want me to take you to a doctor?"

I stared at him, my mood softening as I saw the worried lines on his face. I set the glass down to rest on the counter and close the space between us, linking my arms around my lover's waist. "No. I'm sorry I snapped at you – I know you've done all this specially, and I really appreciate it."

"What's wrong?" he asked, still clearly worried about my well-being.

"The juice tastes…" I cast around for a word to describe the foul taste that had just invaded my mouth, "metallic. Like I was chewing on a coin or something."

"Gross," he interjected. "Is that—"

"Normal?" I interrupted. "Unfortunately, yeah. Not all women get it, and it's pretty unusual to have it this early, but I guess I'm just one of the lucky ones!" The annoyed expression on my face made it perfectly clear how I
actually
felt about the fact that I could no longer have either my first or second favorite drinks…

I looked at Clay, marveling at how much he'd changed from the man who'd strolled in to my life, topless and bleeding from the lip. I had no idea what I'd been thinking when I first hitched my wagon to his in the hope of kick-starting a career in music, but now that I was with him, I couldn't imagine being anywhere else. Or for that matter, being
with
anyone else.

"Is there anything else I can get you?" he asked. "Should you be, I dunno, eating for two or something?"

"What are you trying to say?" I laughed, prodding his chest lightly. I laughed even more when I saw the rabbit in the headlights expression on his face – as though he was worried that he'd mortally offended me.

"Nothing, I mean…" Clay said, stumbling over his words as his eyes widened, and I saw him gain a full appreciation of what it was going to be like living with a pregnant woman for the next eight months.

"I already told you, silly, the baby's only a little bundle of cells right now. But don't get me wrong, I'm going to have you out there all times of the night buying ice cream."

"Whatever you need, I'm your man," he said confidently.

"Let's see if you're anywhere near as happy about it when I'm turfing you out of bed at three in the morning." I giggled, twisting the knife a little bit just for fun. I knew how much Clay valued his time under the covers – even when he wasn't buried between my legs.

"Trust me, whatever you need," he said, undeterred. I sat down, taking the weight off my feet. "Listen, Liss – we need to talk."

My blood ran cold, the offhand remark suddenly awakening an instinctual, primal fear within me that Clay was going to leave me, and by extension, leave our child defenseless.

"What do you mean?" I squeaked, irrationally fearful that he was about to end things.

He shot me a funny look, but the concern that underwrote the glance immediately reassured me that this wasn't some spur of the moment breakup. "You still feeling bad?"

"It's nothing," I replied, my mind spinning in circles as I tried to work out whether my reaction had been hormone-driven, and if so – whether I'd be on a hair trigger for the entirety of my pregnancy. I sure as hell hoped that wouldn't be the case… "What were you saying?"

Clay looked embarrassed, as though whatever he was about to say would be difficult. All I could think was that if he knew about half the crazy shit going on in my head, he wouldn't find it nearly as hard. "It's about," he paused, clenching his jaw as if to steel himself to keep going, "the way you saw me yesterday. I was pretty worked up…"

"Don't worry about it," I replied, impressed that he was bringing it up at all. As far as I was concerned, it took a hell of a lot of emotional maturity to be able to broach difficult topics like this in a relationship, and most of the men I'd dated had never managed it – no matter how long we'd been going out.

"I do," he replied simply. "Listen, Liss – I've been speaking to Mike, and I don't think that Atlantic is going to release this record. At least not without butchering it
and
paying us way less than we deserve."

"What do you mean butchering it?" I said, shaken by Clay's certainty that the record wasn't going ahead. Even after I'd seen him punching his troubles away the day before, I'd secretly assumed that everything would be okay – that this was just a negotiating tactic. Judging by Clay's miserable expression, it wasn't.

"I spoke to Mike again this morning on the phone, and he thinks that Atlantic won't release the EP like it is – they don't think it's commercial enough—"

"Not commercial enough?" I burst out. "It's incredible. Just because it's vocal, just because it might not be played in some Vegas super club doesn't mean it's not
commercial!"

"Hey, Liss, I know, I'm with
you
– I think it's perfect the way it is. I'm not one who wants to butcher it with auto-tune and backing singers, so don't jump down my throat, okay?"

"Sorry, Clay," I said, biting down on the anger surging through my body. "I just wanted it to come out so desperately, you know?"

"I know, believe me. I feel terrible about it. It's all my fault, Liss – I shouldn't have reacted like I did in that meeting."

I let my head sink forward and groaned. "Clay! Is your head made of clay or something? How many times do I have to tell you, what happened in that room wasn't your fault. That bastard of a CEO came in there looking to pick a fight just as much as you did. I'm just glad you weren't weak. I'm glad you stood up to him."

I couldn't help but notice that after that, Clay stood a little straighter, and I concealed a little smile, just glad that what I said clearly meant so much to him.

"Clay…" I said, an idea striking me like a bolt from the blue.

"Liss…" He smiled, mimicking my singsong tone of voice.

"Do you need the money – from this record, I mean?" I asked slowly.

"It'd be nice," he said, looking slightly nonplussed. "I've had my eye on a Ferrari…" He smiled. "But not really, no."

"Why don't we just do what worked last time?" I asked more excitedly, eyes lighting up the more I considered my plan.

"Last time…?"

"You know, with that video from the bar – the night we met. Couldn't we just release the record anyway and put pressure on Atlantic that way? Do we really need a label?"

Clay stroked his chin thoughtfully, tending to an imaginary beard. "I like it," he said, a broad smile beginning to erupt on his face. "I like it a lot. We'd be able to get it onto the digital platforms like iTunes and Spotify, that's for sure. I can't see how we'd make physical CDs without having a label on board, and there's definitely no way we'd be able to get them to stores, anyway, but I think it could actually work! But…"

"But what?" I asked anxiously.

"I'm pretty sure Atlantic would take us to court the same day we tried a stunt like this, and now that I've put all that money in the trust fund, we might not have enough to fight them off…"

I frowned and massaged my temples, trying to work my way through the problem. My brain had another solution, I just knew it did, but trying to get to it through the waves of nausea that were now assailing me was another matter entirely.

"Remind me to get a gyno appointment booked in, will you?" I said offhandedly to Clay. I was pretty sure that my mom never had morning sickness this early, and I wanted to be entirely certain that there was no chance it was a symptom of anything more serious.

"Sure… You okay?" Clay asked solicitously.

"Don't worry about it," I said, forgetting about the topic entirely as my brain landed on the solution it had been working on. "I've got it. What if we publicly announced that we were going to donate all the proceeds from the record to charity? I know a hospice that could do with some donations…"

Clay smiled broadly. "You serious? You know you won't get any of the money either, right? I'll do it in a heartbeat, but," he gestured around at the mansion, "I've got all of this. And until we
actually
get married – for real, I mean—"

I interrupted him. "I know, Clay. I've got everything I need right here," I said, looking around and patting my belly.

"Then I say hell yeah! Even Fred Peters isn't crazy enough to sue the freaking children's charity. I don't think he is, anyway…" Clay smiled. "You know something, Liss?"

I cocked my head inquisitively.

"You're a goddamn genius, you know? I've sat in hundreds of record company marketing meetings, and in all of them, I never heard even one idea as good as either of the two you just had. If you didn't have such an incredible voice, you'd make a damn good CEO for Atlantic…"

I smiled sweetly back at him. "Why not both?"

Clay laughed gustily at that. "Funny, too. How did I ever luck out with a broad like you?"

I laughed back. "You sure as hell don't deserve me, that's for sure." I winked, just to soften the blow, but Clay was more than man enough to take the jibe. "When do you reckon we'll be able to get the record out? I guess it's better for us to do it sooner rather than later – the less Atlantic sees this coming, the better…"

"You're right. I'll call Mike today." He fixed me with a steely glare. "You better watch yourself, Liss – this ride could get all kinds of bumpy before it gets better."

I
know it's hard
. I loved her
too. Stay strong.

The screen of the iPhone in my hand was blurry through my tears, and it took me a few moments before I was able to read Mike's text.

Launch day had swung around faster than I could have imagined – two weeks gone in a flash, and somehow, like destiny had beef to pick with me, it had fallen on September twenty-third. The day Sarah had died.

Christ, I needed a drink. I looked over the chocolate beauty still sleeping next to me, even as the clock slowly reached eleven in the morning, her hand unconsciously resting on her belly. I didn't want to wake her – knew she and my baby needed every moment of rest they could get. In a few months, after all, none of us would get much rest.

I stared at my lover through teary eyes, trying to discern the faintest outline of a bump on her belly. Sometimes I saw it, sometimes I didn't. Right now, I felt like a glass half empty kind of guy, and I couldn't see it at all.

"I want to be the best daddy in the world," I whispered under my breath, gently laying my hand on Liss's stomach. She stirred in her sleep, and a warm, contented smile slowly appeared on her face. "But I'm scared, kid, so fucking scared."

My hand was trembling, and I had to exert myself to stop the tremors. The truth was, I was terrified – terrified that I'd screw up like I'd screwed up everything good that had ever happened to me, terrified that Liss would see who I really was and wouldn't like it, and worst of all – terrified that this kid would be cruelly snatched away from me, like Sarah and the nephew I never knew.

That was what kept me up at night and woke me early in the morning – an overwhelming, inhibiting fear that I was powerless to affect. I couldn't stop whatever fate decided to throw my baby – only stop myself from making it worse. And sometimes, it seemed like I couldn't even do that.

I knew the smart thing to do would be to call Mike. If there was anyone who knew what I was going through right now, it was him. But I still remembered how I treated him in the days after Sarah's death, and the memory embarrassed me. He'd been hurting just as much as me – hell, probably more.

He hadn't just lost a wife, he'd lost a kid, too. And yet he'd never fallen off the rails, not like I did. He'd held himself together, grieved in private, and given everything to stop me from losing myself to grief completely.

"You deserve better than me," I whispered to both of them this time. To everyone who I'd ever disappointed, and everyone I'd ever let down. I stroked Liss's beautiful, soft stomach one last time and crept out of bed. I threw on a pair of jeans, held the belt buckle tight so that I didn't wake my beautiful lover with the noise, and shrugged on a plain white T-shirt.

I slid open the door of the walk-in closet, stepped in, and went straight to a spot that I hadn't visited in a year. It almost felt like a betrayal of Sarah's memory, but I couldn't do it myself more often than that – it was too hard. Perhaps I was too weak. Perhaps it was both.

I picked up the gorgeous, aged green leather photo box from where it sat, undisturbed on a shelf, shifting a thin layer of dust that danced in the air and sparkled in the sunlight streaming in through cracks in the curtains.

The box felt heavy in my hands – far heavier than the contents justified. It was the weight of a life – two lives. I carried it respectfully, like a pallbearer, taking slow and measured steps until I was downstairs and sitting by the kitchen island. I gently unfastened the bronze catch that held the box shut and paused to wipe a tear from my eye. It was hard to keep going after that. Every fiber of my body was screaming at me to stop, crying out that I didn't need to relive the memory, but I shut them all out.

Sarah was my sister, even if she wasn't here with me, and I owed her at least that much.

I opened the box, and as soon as I did I was assaulted by memories – some good, some bad, but all laced with an overwhelming sense of loss. I picked up an old, frayed photograph that lay on top – an image that was burned into my mind from the countless hours I'd spent staring at it over the years, stained from all the drinks I'd nearly spilled on it, wrinkled from all the times I'd fall asleep clutching it.

A twelve-year-old Sarah in stained dungarees only buttoned on one side stared back at me, smiling for the camera. I felt a tear falling from my eye and pulled the photo away just in time to avoid the huge wet droplet falling on it. I was on the other side of the scene in my hands, standing on the beach and looking for all the world a mirror image of my twin sister – the same blond hair, though mine was cut short, and the same ice blue eyes, and of course the same damn dungarees.

Mine, though, were buttoned up fully. Back then, she was always the bad one.

I put the photo down, smiling through my tears at the memory of that day. We'd both begged Mom to buy us an ice cream, badgered her for hours until she finally gave in. Of course, after spending half an hour standing in line under the baking hot sun, it didn't take five minutes before Sarah dropped it all over her front. The photo must have been taken earlier in the day.

I looked through the rest of the box, fingering through photos one by one, and every time, I was rocked by another happy, yet equally painful memory. In one corner, my mother's old wedding ring – an unadorned gold band – lay tangled in the simple silver chain it was looped through.

My mother left the band to Sarah in her will when she passed, and my sister had worn it around her neck for years. I remembered the moment that Mike gave it back to me like it was yesterday – the way he'd brushed away a tear, told me that it wasn't his to keep, and pushed across the table.

I toyed briefly with the idea of giving it to Alicia, and even through the pain, the thought brought a smile to my lips. I daydreamed of getting down on one knee on a beach, somewhere tropical, because my Liss deserved nothing but the best. I dreamt of a backdrop of lit torches flickering in the darkness and reflecting off her warm, rich chocolate skin as I proposed.

I knew I had to do it.

After all, we'd been living a lie for months – telling the world we were already engaged to be married, when really it was just a selfish plan I'd formulated without ever asking for Alicia's input. It wasn't fair, especially not now she was bearing my child. I picked up the necklace with my little finger and lifted it up to the light to study it for any imperfections, and – reassured, returned it to my pocket.

I heard Liss waking up upstairs and hastily began packing away the assembled photographs. I didn't want her to see me like this – emotional, teary. I needed to be a rock for her, and I didn't know how I could possibly open up to her about the darkest part of my life without cracking.

I didn't mean to delve further into the box, but it was as though I was drawn to it by some outside force. I hadn't seen the scan in years, but as I was packing the photos away, I saw the corner sticking out and my hand leapt towards it unbidden.

I pulled it out, the other photographs shifting and moving out of its way. It was dated 1996, and the name read
Sarah Hunt
.

It was her five-month ultrasound scan.

It hit me like nothing else had, and tears that I thought I'd beaten back flew back to my eyes with gusto, building like a bursting dam, ready to overflow at the slightest excuse. Perhaps it was because I'd just learned I was going to be a father, perhaps the last couple of months of bliss with Liss had somehow opened me up emotionally and allowed me to connect with part of my memory that I'd locked away for years. Whatever the cause, I held it to my breast and began to sob uncontrollably.

A decade's worth of grief was pouring out in one horrific moment, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

"Clay?"

I heard Alicia's worried voice behind me, and knew that I couldn't let her see me like this. I grabbed the ultrasound, my back still turned to my beautiful lover, folded it and stuffed in my pocket.

"I'm going out," I somehow said over the sobs racking through my body, "for a drive…"

I couldn't look at her, just brushed past and shut out her concerned pleas for me to tell her what was wrong.

I ran down to the basement, grabbed the first set of keys that fell into my hands and almost fell into the car that responded as I pushed the buttons on the remote control.

I threw the contents of my pockets down on the passenger seat, saw but didn't register my cellphone disappearing off under the seats, and climbed in. The engine roared to life and I stepped on the gas, barely slowing down enough to let the automatic garage door open and let me out.

I didn't check the mirror. There was no need – I knew exactly what I'd see: Alicia.

There were two places on my mind – one that would help me remember, and the other would help me forget. I went to the second one first – a small, seedy looking liquor store. I grabbed a handle of bourbon from the shelf without bothering to look at the label, slammed a fist full of notes down onto the counter and left without collecting my change.

"Sir!" I heard the surprised Hispanic cashier call out behind me. "You haven't—"

The rest of his sentence was lost as the store's heavy glass security doors swung closed, air hissing out as they met the door frame. I had no conception of how much I paid, and I didn't care. The bottle of bourbon landed on the car's passenger seat with the contents of my pockets, and the dark amber liquid gurgled as the car eased into drive.

The next place on my list was somewhere I'd avoided visiting for almost ten years – St. Thomas's Hospital on the outskirts of town.

I drove fast, but in every direction but the hospital, my brain entirely unwilling to face up to the pain of going back to the place where Sarah had died, and the place that still regularly haunted my dreams. I drove for hours, aimlessly, racing cars that didn't know they were being competed against and speeding down empty backstreets in the warehouse district.

By the time I finally steeled myself to visit, the lights were already beginning to flicker on in the vast visitors’ parking lot in anticipation of the sunlight beginning to fade. I drove around for what felt like hours, trying to pick out the perfect spot – a space where I wouldn't be seen drinking, and grieving, but from which I could also stare at the huge, forbidding, monolithic hospital. For a place of life, it looked an awful lot like a prison…

The expensive supercar's tires screeched to a halt as I finally chose my spot – far enough from the nearest streetlight that it was unlikely I'd be noticed, but close enough to the covered awning where ambulances pulled up to the Emergency Department that I could watch, to some extent at least, what was going on – even if the characters involved looked no bigger than ants.

It was where they'd brought Sarah a decade before. It was the entrance she should have left by – not the back. She didn't deserve that. Nor did my nephew.

Seeing the hospital again brought back a nauseating wave of emotion, and my shivering hands reached directly for the bottle on the seat beside me. I wasn't an alcoholic, far from it – but right now, I could have drunk any follower of the twelve-step program under the table. The bottle was calling me, singing a siren song to tempt me into breaking the seal. There was only one thing that held me back from cracking it immediately – Alicia's disapproving face in my mind's eye.

"
Why are you doing this, Clay?
" I imagined her saying.
"Don't you care about me? Don't you care about your son?
"

I did – more than anything, and that was the only reason that this bottle wasn't already half drunk. The whole duration of my drive, I'd seen it gazing up at me and heard the amber liquid gurgling every time I turned the steering wheel, and I'd somehow avoided cracking the seal. I wanted nothing more than to feel the whiskey burn its way down my throat and warm my belly before dispelling the demons of grief that still haunted my memory – and yet.

And yet I hadn't touched a drop, the better angels that laid buried somewhere in the dark morass I called a conscience somehow holding me back from the brink. I picked up the bottle and stroked it, my finger tracing the outline of the letters that spelled out –
Evan Williams Bourbon
.

And there it was again – Alicia's face in my mind. And then, as the glass bottle's contents shifted from side to side in my trembling hands, I heard my child's laughter.

And that made my mind up for me.

I couldn't do this.

I was better than this. And Alicia deserved better. My child deserved better, and I was going to live up to those expectations, even if it killed me.

"You've got this, Clay," I muttered, pressing the start button that fired up the keyless ignition.

The moment I did, my heart sank. The screen in the center of the console lit up, displaying a dozen missed calls and more than twenty texts. The most recent was from Mike.

Clay – it's urgent. Get to the hospital. Now.