It isn't until she has to get up in the middle of the night to vomit, twice, for three days in a row, that she starts wondering. It's two days later that she sneaks out of the studio under the guise of getting a soda (which she is, really, just, that's not what she really—) and walks into the nearby gas station, picking up the little purple box that reads First Response. Fifteen dollars later and she's standing in a gas station bathroom, staring at a stick and the two little pink lines—lines, she thinks, and re-reads the directions on the side of the box, just—double checking—but no, the plastic stick in her hand is telling her Congratulations! You're pregnant!
She closes her eyes and sinks to the floor, not caring about how dirty it is.
It's not like it's unheard of for girls to have babies out of wedlock but she didn't want it to happen to her, is the thing. CeCe hadn't thought about it, back when Gunther—when Gunther forgot—she hadn't even thought of the possibility. It was just the one time that he forgot and—
CeCe goes through the rest of her day the same as ever, ignoring the slight cramp above her hip—she knows what that is now—and the headache she's had for maybe a week—because she knows why she has that now too. She tries to smile as everyone around him grins and smiles and says, "New routine is coming along great, CeCe!" She just smiles and nods at their remarks. CeCe is the main choreographer for Shake It Up, Chicago! What time isn't spent at the studio teaching is spent in meetings with the producers, agencies, and all other boring people. That's where she currently finds herself. She's tired and thinks maybe that's the baby too, but then stops, because she's thinking about—she can't—a baby.
It's been nearly two-and-a-half months since she's seen Gunther. And the father—the other father—is Gunther. It has to be, CeCe doesn't even need to wonder, or think, or calculate. There's nobody else—there's never been anyone else, even if, even if they're not together, or, or—or whatever. Se lets her imagination wonder what Gunther will say for a few seconds, and then snaps her eyes open and sits up straighter in her chair, her assistant, Sarah, looking up at her from across the table, images of prospective dancers strewn across it haphazardly.
"CeCe?" she says. "You okay?"
No—and it's barely thirty seconds later that she's puking into a basket Gary has thrown at her, and Sarah is rubbing her back, saying, "Oh, it's okay, shh."
She desperately wants to believe that it is, but somehow, knows that it isn't, and telling Gunther—that's something she can't do. She starts to cry, and hopes that this—crying and puking and the cramps and the stress of everything, being sick, missing her old friends, just—everything—won't last for very long. But the real question is how long she can keep anyone from noticing it's happening in the first place.
And why.
She goes back to her crumby apartment early, after she overhears Sarah arguing on the phone to make it happen. ("She's sick and exhausted! We've been working her too hard lately, just give her a day!") It's not like she's really that important right now. Her weekly routines are finished. The other choreographers can do anything she can. Sarah and everyone else can decide on whatever was going on in that meeting. She never disagrees with what they decide to do anyway, so. When she gets home though, she can't sleep at all, and ends up watching old episodes of Jimmy Neutron on Nickelodeon in-between crying and yelling at her pillow.
If she does the math right, and she's think it's like, basic elementary math, so she's pretty sure she's doing it right—she's in her third month. She does some research, logging on the internet whenever she can manage to get time alone. She can't—she doesn't look at anything about the baby really, her stomach too tied in knots to let her. She skips to the information about what the mother is supposed to be expecting when, um, expecting. She's supposed to start gaining weight, apparently, in the third month, but she hasn't yet—not that she can tell, anyway. That's what she's scared of the most, beyond the headaches and nausea and frequent bathroom breaks. Really, what's going to happen when she suddenly starts carrying a basketball around under her shirt? She can't—she can't hide that forever, and she's kind of in the, the public eye, sort of, so she's going to be found out any day now, what does she do? As such a well known choreographer, she's one of the most sought after young celebrities in the dance universe. But she can't—she can't think about that, if she does, she'll go crazy. There's more important things right now—the show, for one. She's worked— Everyone, everyone's worked so hard on it, to make it known all over the country as the best dance show on television-no longer just Chicago. She can't ruin it just because she forgot to tell Gunther to use protection three months ago.
Everything's incredibly busy right now, but she breaches the topic with Sarah anyway. Not—not thats he's pregnant—she doesn't know how she's going to tell her that, or—or anyone, even, she doesn't want to think about it, she can't think about it. Which is why she's decided to make the move—permanent.
She's been looking at houses here in Chicago since she was seventeen. She's nineteen now, has a steady job and paycheck, and she didn't want to tie herself down in one location before, but she isn't going to have the luxury of traveling anywhere for much longer. Basically that's what she tells Sarah when she's asking her to help find her a house. She's tired—she's tired of living in different crappy apartments for more than half the year and she can't live with her mother again, there's no point in that.
She doesn't really care where she lives. She knows she doesn't want it to be some huge mansion or whatever, and as long as there's a fence and trees or bushes or whatever to dodge the unpredictable paparazzi when they get, um, excitable, she's happy. Sarah drags her around Chicago to like fifty different places though, and they're all either huge or open or, er, really weird. Like, there was one with triangular shaped rooms? She doesn't know how someone could live in a triangle, how would you push things against the wall, or whatever? That's just weird.
She ends up finding one, finally, that only has two floors and isn't that big, although the yard is kind of huge, twice the size of the house, easy. But it's pretty, and has a smallish kind of room right next to the master bedroom, where she can put a nursery for the—baby. The realtor guy who has been running around the city with them all day had suggested turning into a master bath instead, but CeCe shook her head and said, "No, I just want to move in. No, um, construction or anything. It's kind of perfect the way it is."
She liked the kitchen—it was big enough that she didn't think she'd run into anything when she gets up in the middle of the night for a glass of water, something she's always done. And the bathroom is just down the hall from her room anyway, so that's good. The living room is really big, and has a fireplace (like, electrical, not with real wood, that wouldn't be safe for crawling infants, CeCe is pretty sure—) and a window that's sort of, um, outward, and she can see how a Christmas tree right there would be really nice, so. It takes two hours to sign all the paperwork and then two more for the realtor to get back to them that the owner is more than happy to sell the house to CeCe. (Probably because she's buying it all at once? She had the money thanks to her big SIUC paychecks and monetary advice from her lifetime best friend.)
Moving in doesn't take too long—the house was empty and all the legal stuff goes through really quickly. CeCe isn't sure if that's how it usually works or if her management did something to make it go quicker, but either way, she's glad she has her own house all the sudden. Her mom is kind of—she's a little upset, when she tells her, but she can tell she's okay with it. She's nineteen, and—it's not like she isn't ready.
Her first night all by herself in the house is kind of—weird. It's just—it's not a apartment, or his mom's apartment, or a friends' house, it's hers. She spends most of the night unpacking, before making the bed and getting under the covers, quickly tweeting All moved in! Exhausted, goodnight!
It's not really a problem that night, maybe because she was so tired? But the pregnancy hormones are driving her a little crazy. It's like—she's constantly just—she went through the formative teenage years, okay, so she knows what it's like to get turned on by anything and everything, but this whole thing is awful. She's pregnant; she shouldn't be all whatever all the time, hot and achy and irritable.
Add this to the list of things she hates about this situation.
Sarah is smiling when CeCe lets out a long breath after three interviews and a photoshoot. She's tired and relieved that they're over, and then Sarah says, "So, you ready for that live interview at Chicago Radio?"
She wishes she was ready for anything but falling into her bed and sleeping for hours and hours and hours. Of course she goes with her anyway, and when the interviewer asks, "So, you still haven't had that first kiss—" she winces at the embarrassing 'fact' that spread about her a year ago, when she first blew up in the celebrity world, and instead of shaking her head like always, she smiles kind of shakily and says, "I think—no, yeah, I have. But um, it wasn't—it wasn't a big deal. So can we not—I mean, next question?"
And it wasn't—it wasn't a big deal. It was just a—thing, that she and Gunther have done since—since senior year, and it's never been anything but that. It's never been something she talked about or him talked about or—that whole dimension of their relationship used to
just disappear after it was over. It never felt like lying when she said she hadn't been kissed, even though Gunther had kissed her—kissed her everywhere, on the mouth and down at her neck and running long trails down her chest or arms or anywhere he could reach, practically, Gunther really liked to—the point is, it had never felt like lying, because it wasn't—it wasn't real, it was something they put in a box and didn't talk about, didn't bring into the open.
It's only now that CeCw doesn't really have a choice. This thing—it's a baby. She can't put it in a box and hide it in her closet until Gunther calls her up and says, "Come on, I need to see you, I need—"
She can't pretend it doesn't matter anymore.
It's bigger than she thought it was.