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The flourishing being residing in Stephanie was her soul's companion.
Her unborn child was but the size of a kidney bean and, already, her heart surged with a caliber of love so intense it was like nothing she ever experienced before. Euphoria washed over her with all the might of deep blue waves crashing onto the shore and faded out as her impending doom approached. The creation of a new life was an occasion of hope, reverence, and gaiety under any circumstances other than her own. The pregnancy itself was very much desired by Stephanie, but the viewpoint of the man who had actually fathered the child was a whole different story.
Her eyes danced over the nameplate attached to the door that lay before her in the Titan offices, and Stephanie brushed a hand over her stomach before swooping it upwards and knocking. The call for her to enter sounded clearly from the opposite side, so she turned the knob and ducked in, closing the door behind herself. Before she could start across the room, he was out of his chair and making rapid strides to reach her. The succor entwined in his enveloping hug reminded her of the assurance to be found in friendships that would never die, which was the embodiment of their longstanding rapport.
"Steph, it's been way too long," he mumbled against the top of her head, where his chin was resting - - and, indeed, it had been. An indefinite break temporarily removed Stephanie from her work duties at Titan Towers and the shows in order to travel the world and accompany Chris Irvine, her longtime boyfriend, on his Fozzy tours, but this time was different. On this go-round, she required space from him to formulate a plan that would allow her to drop a bomb on him without the resulting devastation. "How the hell are you?"
"Good. Nervous, but good."
"Why nervous?" he pulled away, her words triggering a knitted brow that embedded itself deep in his forehead, and she tipped her head and issued a response in the form of a simper. It was indicative of him to be concerned for her, and it was that very type of companionship that would aid her survival of the next nine months.
"I have something huge to tell you."
"Sit down, let's talk," Paul Levesque guided her to the seat in front of his crowded desk, corporate man that he was nowadays, and as he rounded his workspace, she swiped a framed photo of him with his hand on Trish's bulging stomach, when she had been pregnant with their daughter eight months earlier and was only a couple months away from her due date. Stephanie hadn't foreseen that she would end up in the same boat so soon after her friends, but life never allowed anyone to predict those sorts of things. A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth as she ran her thumb over the center of the glass frame and briefly pondered how she would look when she began showing, but that only lasted until Paul's uneasy prodding interrupted her musings. "Are you feeling okay?"
Stephanie peered up at him, casting the light off herself in an attempt to delay the inevitable, "How are you and Trish?"
"We're better than ever. Not getting so much sleep anymore, but having a daughter is worth it," he admitted.
"I'm so happy for both of you. How's Elisabeth?"
"She's incredible, and you can call her Eli - - I do," Paul chuckled as he reached for a framed photo that was facing away from Stephanie. He turned it around and slid it across the desk to reveal an image of Eli on her back, with a pacifier dangling out of her mouth, as she attempted to pull a knit sock over one of her feet. Stephanie snickered as she wondered what Paul and Trish must have had to do to get the baby's attention before they snapped the photo, because her sunny, hazel eyes were focused intently on the camera. "She mostly babbles, but she's come really close to saying 'mama' quite a few times. We're still working on the 'dada' thing."
"I'm sure it'll come soon," Stephanie estimated, still gazing at the photo in her hand. "She's beautiful, Paul, and I really mean that. I don't think I've ever seen such a gorgeous baby."
"Thanks," he glowed with the pride only a new father could have. "I waited a long time to have kids, you know that, so this was a blessing for Trish and I. I'm glad the wait's over, because this is honestly the best time I've ever had in my life. Eli's only six months old and I already can't wait to have another kid."
"Aww..." Stephanie pouted at his heartfelt words as she ran her fingertips down the sides of the picture frame before placing it back on his desk. "You're such a proud daddy. I never thought I'd see the day when you would settle down, but Trish sure put you in check."
"She definitely did," he laughed before turning solemn and losing some of the prideful gleam that had been in his eyes only seconds earlier. "You said you were nervous when you first came in here. Is there something you needed to tell me?"
Stephanie was down to the wire, the final seconds in the game before she would make a play and hope for the best. Paul and Trish were among her best friends, and she expected them to be more receptive than anybody, but with Trish away with Elisabeth while she attended a press event for her yoga studio in Vaughan, Ontario, Stephanie was leaving every shred of hope she'd attained in Paul's capable hands. This was his golden opportunity to stand strong and be somewhat of a hero for her, and she trusted in his abilities to guide her in the right direction. Paul had never given her any reason to believe he might steer her the wrong way.
If she played Devil's Advocate with herself, Stephanie came rigidly close to talking herself out of speaking the truth aloud, for what would be the first time since she had learned what her future held. The father of her child was away, most likely on a stage in England right at that very moment as he played a raging gig, and she couldn't leave him thinking he was unattached in the world. As far as he knew, he had no children to speak of, but his parental status had shifted without his knowledge, and it was Stephanie's responsibility to find a way to break it to him. The first step in that was admittance, so with baited breath, she clamped her eyes shut and dove in headfirst.
"Chris got me pregnant," came her hasty admittance.
Her explanation didn't quite flow with the serene grace she imagined in her head, but it was effective enough. After a period of silence that seemed to drag on for eternity, only the tick of the second hand on the clock providing background noise, Stephanie opened her shielded eyes one tentative step at a time. When she resumed eye contact with Paul, he was nodding his head knowingly, which didn't make much sense to her, because there was no way he could have been expecting that sort of bombshell. Nobody knew about her pregnancy: not her doctors, not her family, not her friends - - nobody.
She longed for Paul to have the magical response that would make her panic disappear so she wouldn't have to feel so alone anymore. The entire story involved much more than anyone could have guessed, and Stephanie was in an especially showy mood. Rather than search for the words that would most effectively express the events in her life as they happened, she decided to display it to Paul instead. Picking her purse up from the floor, she unzipped the size pouch, grabbed a flat medicine container, and tossed it onto the desk in between them.
Paul's eyes clicked with hers, and he made no attempt to reach for what she had thrown before him. He licked his lips, folded his hands over his suit jacket, and stated, "Congratulations, first of all. Secondly, is there a reason you're saying that as if you weren't a willing participant?"
"Huh?"
"You said Chris got you pregnant as if...I don't know, the way you said it was just odd," Paul expressed. "You didn't want him to get you pregnant is what you're trying to tell me?"
"No," she shook her head before pointing at the item she had set out. "I'm telling you the exact opposite of that, actually."
Taking a hint from her cues, Paul reached across the table and picked up what she had provided. It was a petite, plastic carton - - lime-green in shade and enclosing a blister pack of pills - - and he recognized the contents right away. After being with Trish as long as he had, Paul recalled very well when they were still only dating and taking drastic measures to avoid reproducing before they were ready. The pharmacy sticker on the package announced Stephanie as the patient the medication had been prescribed to, and the only thing left to figure out was why she felt the need to show it to him.
"These are your birth control pills," he spoke indifferently, sitting back in his seat and waiting for further explanation.
"Yeah, and they're all still there."
"Right, so..."
"I lied to Chris."
"What about?" Paul inquired, though the wheels were mid-turn in his head, and he grasped the gist of what she was attempting to admit. If it was what he conjured, Chris would be wrecked, but even more than that, he would be betrayed.
"I told him I'd been taking my birth control regularly, but I wasn't," Stephanie filled in the remaining blanks and, suddenly, their lighthearted conversation wasn't so much fun anymore.
All traces of humor evaporated from his countenance as he slid the pills back across the desk and tried, for Stephanie's sake, to remain as impartial as he possibly could. That was what Trish would have wanted him to do, so he honored her wishes the best he could, but truth be told, Paul needed her there. Trish had an answer for everything and would have known how to handle the disaster of a situation Stephanie was laying out for him. Paul always tried his best where it concerned his friends, but he wasn't fully-equipped to handle anything like what he was hearing.
"So you got pregnant on purpose and he has no idea about it?"
"You're making it sound worse than it is," Stephanie defended, but even as the words left her mouth, she understood full well there was no acceptable excuse for her actions. She was going to have to pay the price, even if it meant losing her child's father in the end.
Paul held his hands up to stop her, "Hey, by all means, go ahead and clarify this for me, because I'm having a very hard time wrapping my mind around this one."
"Chris and I have been together for all these years, even longer than you and Trish, yet I've seen you commit to her way more than Chris has for me. You made her your wife and had a daughter with her, and that means something," Stephanie pointed out while he nodded along. "I've always wanted that with Chris, but he's so worried about Fozzy and building the band's image. I ask him about marriage, and he says to wait until he slows down on the road because he doesn't want to be an absent husband to me. I ask him about kids, and he says he wants to wait until he would be home enough to see them so he's not an absent father. He just keeps pushing everything back, so I took matters into my own hands."
"By being deceptive and getting pregnant on purpose without giving him a choice?" Paul grilled. Stephanie tried to find the words, but her throat had parched, and even if it hadn't, she wasn't sure she had sufficient words to say. "I'm sorry if I'm being harsh, because you know I love you, but this is not okay. You made Chris think you were on birth control when you weren't, and now he's about to have a kid he wasn't ready or willing to have. You've gotta tell him."
"I'm going to, but I need advice. I wanted to talk to you and Trish together, but she flew to Canada at the last minute, and I felt like I needed to get it off my chest before I exploded. Here's the thing, I know I sound like a horrible person..."
"Not horrible but definitely misguided. This is really bad, Steph."
"I know, I know it is, and I'm so sorry."
"I'm not the one you should be apologizing to."
"I get that, but just hear me out," she requested. Paul was coming down on her a bit harder than she hoped, but Stephanie needed it. She needed someone to tell her the truth about what she had done, because when Chris found out from her what was going on, he was going to give her the truth, and then some. "I love Chris, and he loves me too. We've been together so long, and he said he didn't want a baby, but I felt like if we just had one anyway he'd see how rewarding parenting can be."
"It wasn't your right to make that choice for him."
"I know, and I'm so sorry for doing it, but I think he'll be happy in the end. We'll be a family, and he'll see this is more important than Fozzy. I know we can be happy together, but it's going to take him a while to not be so mad at me about what I did."
Paul sighed and brought his curled fists up underneath his chin, resting them there. "All I can really say is you'll always be a close friend of mine, and I'll always fight for you if I see anyone not treating you right, but you were so wrong about this. Chris will probably forgive you, but I imagine it's gonna take a while. You broke his trust over something huge. You're bringing a life into the world without having consulted the one person you created that life with."
"Don't you think I know that?" Stephanie screeched. "I get that I've hurt Chris, but I need some encouragement, okay? That's why I came to you. I just needed you to help me see that there's a way to get through this, even if there isn't. Lie to me if you have to."
"That wouldn't do you very much good, now would it?" Paul demanded. As soon as the words left his mouth, she knew he was right.
Stephanie needed the cold, hard truth, and the reality of the situation was that her boyfriend had gotten her pregnant under false pretenses. Chris had forgone a condom, or any other means of birth control, under the impression that Stephanie had been taking the pill daily, and now he was going to have a child for the rest of his life - - a child he didn't know about or probably even want. A wave of torment struck Stephanie as she ran her hand over the top of her stomach again and considered how much longer she had until she would be showing. The morning sickness had already kicked in, and it was only a matter of time before Chris noticed the changes in her.
He might not think much of the weight gain or nausea, possibly not even the indigestion, but when he added the entire equation, it wasn't going to be very difficult to see. Stephanie had to get to him first and be the one to explain what was going on before he either found out himself or was told by someone. Paul and Trish would never go behind her back and beat her to the punch, but Chris was their friend just as much as she was, and there was only going to be so long they would hold onto a secret like that before they would crack and tell Chris for his own good. She had to do it first.
There was no other way.
"Chris will be home in two days."
"That's 48 hours to get your story straight and figure out how you want to tell him. I suggest you drop the bomb to him better than you just did with me. It doesn't even involve me directly, but I was practically shitting bricks over here."
"That doesn't make me feel much better," Stephanie admitted before placing her chin in her hand and releasing a sorrowful sigh.
"I can either tell you what you want to hear or tell you the truth, but you can't have it both ways," Paul answered firmly, shrugging when she looked up at him in surprise. "I'm sorry if you think I'm being an asshole, but Chris is just as much my friend as you are. The part of me who's your friend wants to comfort you and say it'll be all right, but the part of me who's his friend wants to tell you how badly you fucked up."
"What do I do?"
"Call Trish tonight. I'll call to forewarn her and let her know you've got something serious to tell her, so try to call after six, because that's when Eli goes down for a couple hours. She'll have better advice than I do, but there's really no way around telling Chris. He deserves to know about this."
"If something happens, and Chris and I don't make it out of this as a couple, would you not want to talk to me anymore?"
"I'll always be your friend," Paul answered without hesitation.
He was solid enough in his answer that she believed, with every fiber of her being, he was truthful. If Chris was equally as bold in his resolve to still be with her after what she had to say then life would be marvelous, but life wasn't that easy. Chris was the most upstanding man she could have ever wished for, and if she lost him to her own carelessness, it would hurt plenty worse than if anything else had put the kibosh in their relationship. Through all the haze and uncertainty of what was to come, the fact remained that if Stephanie was to lose the love of her life, all fault would lie with her.
Her fingertips roamed her stomach as she said a silent prayer for the future of her child - - her soul's companion.
