“Shit…” I groaned to myself looking up into the bathroom mirror. Tears were silently falling down my cheeks. I couldn’t even fathom how I had let myself get to this point.

There was a loud knock at the door that made me jump followed by Alan’s slow, “Hey, Rae? Are you okay?”

“F-fine!” I choked out. “I’m fine!”

“….Okay?” He said and I slowly heard his footsteps disappear. I shouldn’t have come here. This was the absolute worst place in the world to come to do this. Throwing all of the evidence around me in my bag, I threw the bag over my shoulder and made my way back towards his living room.

“Here’s the lyrics I got down last night. Maybe we can do something with them today…”

I stopped in my tracks just as I came around the horror and saw Austin and Alan sharing a worried glance from me to each other.

“I need to go…” I said suddenly feeling like I was going to be sick and heading for the door.

“Rae, you don’t need to go.” Alan said jumping up and stopping my path to the doorway. “It’s fine. Sit and tell me why you’re acting so werid.

I turned and looked at the back of Austin head nervously. I was going to have to talk to him now.
There was going to be no way of avoiding it. How could I have been so fucking stupid anyway?

“I-I can’t right now, Alan. I need to go.”

“Where are you going?” He asked blocking my path again.

“I’m going home. I don’t feel well.” I said and with that he moved to the side letting me pass.

“Well, get out there! Go follow her and get an answer!” I heard Alan say.

“Dude, she’s done with me. She made it clear when she drove away last week. She’ll be more pissed if I go after her.” Austin said sighing heavily. “What was she doing in the bathroom?”

“I don’t know. She better not have been doing what I think she was doing…” Alan said.

“So she just came in here and went right to the bathroom?” Austin asked.

“Yeah, she came flying in here right after work and just said she needed to use the bathroom.” Alan said. “And then she was in there for like fifteen minutes.”
I leaned my back up against the door and tried to steady my breathing so that I could hear them better.

“This is why I said no to her when she was on the tour!” Austin said. His voice rising as he got angry.

“I knew she was going to get all strung out again! You don’t just go to rehab for a month and just get magically better.”

“Fuck man!” Alan said loudly. “What do we do?”

“I don’t know…” I heard Austin admit sadly.

I turned and stormed off down the hallway. I didn’t want to hear any more of their conversation.
Really nice that that’s what they thought was wrong. I mean, a part of me couldn’t blame them. They had every reason in the world to think I was strung out on drugs again. I almost wished I was.

I spent the next week curled up in bed, sick with the thought of actually having to talk to Austin but more sick with the thought that if I didn’t, things could and would only get worse. Sarah was the only person I trusted enough to tell what was really going on. She would bring me food and filled in for me at work when I needed her to.

“Rae, where are you?” Alan’s voice came through the phone so worried. “I haven’t seen you or heard from you in a fucking week.”

“What’s Austin’s number?” I asked ignoring his previous questions.

“Why?”

I sighed heavily. “Please don’t fuck with me right now, Alan. Please give me his number.”

“Well, he’s sitting right here…” Alan said and a moment later the phone was given to Austin.

“Hello?” He asked. He was confused. I could read it in his voice and I broke down in tears at that moment.

“Rae….Raegan…what’s wrong?” He asked.

“Can you meet me at the beach?” I asked quietly.

“Which one?”

“Any of them…”

“Of course. When? Right now?”

I was nodding even though he couldn’t see me. “Yeah.”

“I’ll be at Huntington in a few minutes.” He said hanging up.

I got up, dragging myself out of bed and throwing on a hoodie. I wiped the tears from my cheeks, grabbed my keys and drove down to the beach.

It didn’t take me long to find him. He was sitting not too far from the water with a black Aspire & Create shirt. He had his sunglasses on, which he usually did these days. I took a moment to admire his haircut as I came closer. If we had been on better terms I would have made fun of him for wanting to be a hipster with that haircut.

I took a seat next to him and stared out at the ocean, still crying. It felt like I hadn’t stopped in a week. I knew that this moment was going to change absolutely everything.

“Rae…” He said slowly looking over me. He reached out slowly, taking my hands and gently pulling me against his body. I allowed him too, which surprised even me and I suddenly found myself crying
harder.

“Rae…please tell me what’s wrong…” He said slowly, rubbing my shoulder with his hand.

“I don’t want this Austin!” I said throwing him off of me, a look of shock and confusion washed over
his features. “I don’t want to not be with you anymore! I’m so sick of being alone every single fucking day. I don’t know what the hell I can do to make you want to be with me Austin! I don’t get it!”

“Rae, I want to be with you, but not while you’re on drugs.” He said and I could see in his eyes he was trying his absolute best to understand.

“I’m not on drugs Austin…” I said scoffing and rolling my eyes.

“Raegan, you locked yourself in Alan’s bathroom for fifteen minutes and you were acting so fucking weird!” Austin laughed.

“I’m fucking pregnant, Austin!” I screamed it so loud a few people actually looked up at us. “I’m fucking pregnant. I was in Alan’s bathroom taking a pregnancy test and I was acting weird because I was so freaked out, okay?”

“What?...” Austin breathed. I let him take a moment to let everything sink in. “Who’s is it?”

“What do you mean, who’s is it?” I asked meeting his eyes for the first time in what felt like years.

“It’s yours…”

“When?”

“On the tour bus…in the back lounge…right before I left…”

“Weren’t you on the pill?” He asked and his voice was almost angry.

“Yeah, I was! But I wasn’t taking them right because I wasn’t having frequent sex.”

Austin sighed heavily running his hands through his hair.

Not too far from us, a little girl with dark curly hair was playing idly in the sand. I watched as she went about her own business, trying extremely hard to build a sand castle that just kept getting washed away from by the tide.

“If you don’t want it….it’s fine. You can sign your rights over.” I said slowly.

“What?” His eyes slowly left the little girl and found mine and I realized he too had been watching her. “Rae…no.” He reached out slowly taking my hand in his and giving it a squeeze. “I want this. I do. I really want this.”

“Are you sure?”

“Raegan, I know that I have been a piece of shit to you for weeks and you know what, maybe from
the very first day I met you I’ve been a piece of shit to you…” He said sighing. “But part of the reason is because I’ve been scared. My feelings for you have only ever gotten deeper and even when we fight and hate each other, I can’t help but think about how much I love you. I’ve never had this with a girl. Not that we have the best relationship, but I’ve never felt this way about anyone. There’s just something about you. I don’t think I could stop loving you ever and that scares me. And I think I was trying to because I wanted to have control over something. So I pushed you away. And I hated myself for doing that. I wanted you, but I didn’t want to let myself have you.”

“I’m sorry…” He said as I looked up at him and I could tell from his eyes just how much he truly meant it. “I’m really, really sorry.”

I couldn’t help but feel a bit of happiness surge through me as he spoke.

“I want us.” He said and with a laugh he pointed at my stomach. “I want this. I want all of it.”

“Do you promise?” I asked.

“I promise you. I’m going to do whatever it takes. We’re going to make it work. I’m going to take care of you. We’re going to make this work. We’ll see a councilor if we have to.”

I threw my arms around his neck knocking him back into the sand with a laugh. Kissing him hard I pulled back smiling wider than I had smiled in months.

“I love you.” He said smiling at me.

“I love you too.”