Dislaimer: None of the characters contained herein belong to me. I am making no money from this fic.
A/N: Post Goodbye and Good Luck Originally posted on February 12th at LiveJournal for Jen Bachand's birthday. This fic is angst, followed by enough cheese to make Wisconsin jealous. And it is no where near worthy of the person it was written for.
I owe a deep debt of gratitude to the uber awesome Kristen Elizabeth not only for the beta, but for pulling this story out of me 100 words at a time. If there's anything here you like she is responsible. The rest I am responsible for and it's pretty much crap. Sorry.
The ceiling was a brilliant, unrelenting white. After staring at it for several hours, he believed he could see the faint lines of the occasional brush stroke. But that didn't make sense…wouldn't the painters have used a roller to paint the ceiling? He hadn't been there when they had painted the bedroom; but using a brush didn't make sense. Of course, nothing made much sense to him at the moment.
He wasn't suspicious by nature, but maybe the job had made him so.
He trusted Sara, he did. But maybe her leaving suddenly last year had made him a little gun shy. Or would that be girl shy? Yes, she had come back after four months, healthy and whole and ready to be happy. And she had said "yes" without reservation when he had proposed for the second time (in the middle of a rigged Scrabble game… "m-a-r-r-y-m" stolen from the bag prior to asking her to play and placed against the first available "e"). They had married that weekend in a beautiful and private ceremony at the Bellagio. They were happy.
Well, he thought they were happy. So, why was he suddenly afraid Sara was cheating on him? She wouldn't. She just wouldn't. Ever. And certainly not after just a few months of marriage.
The week before he had awakened in the middle of the day to find the bed empty and Sara nowhere to be found. When she had snuck in five minutes later (he reprimanded himself, she wasn't sneaking, she was being quiet so as not to wake him) and he had questioned her, afraid the nightmares of last autumn had returned. She had stuttered something about going for a walk. He had eyed her, not mentioning the heat of the summer afternoon or that she was not wearing her walking shoes or her constant canine walking companion was currently asleep, four paws up in the middle of her empty space on the bed. She had smiled nervously at him and pushed past to the shower. He hadn't wanted to press; so he had let it go.
The next night he overheard her on the phone. "Look, you can't tell anybody. It would break his heart." A pause. "I'm serious…he's my husband, I don't want to devastate him."
Devastation. That was a good description of the way he felt. Well, the way he would feel if he wasn't absolutely, positively sure she wasn't cheating on him. She wouldn't. It must mean something else.
He was able to ignore a hastily closed e-mail window. He tried to rationalize texts that came in all hours of the day and night that she never shared with him. But Sara, alternately looking dreamily radiant or extraordinarily guilty, was terribly hard to ignore.
He didn't know what to think. He had spent the last twenty five years of his life following the evidence. This was…circumstantial, at best. And he felt like a heel for even thinking it. Was he that insecure? Was he that distrustful? But where was she when she had lied about going for a walk? Who couldn't tell him a secret that would devastate him? What was the secret?
He vacillated between self-loathing that he suspected his bride of cheating and overwhelming pain at the idea that she actually might be. Living his life continually on edge was exhausting.
Trying to rationalize, he thought maybe she had found someone just to talk to. She had been through a lot in the past year…the desert, her recovery, the switch to swing, her sudden departure, the time with her mother, working through her past, coming home to him, resuming work part-time on third shift, getting married. Maybe she needed somebody to listen, maybe he just wasn't paying enough attention to her.
He came home with roses and while she didn't seem to want to talk, she did take him to bed and make him forget all thoughts of affairs or extramarital confidantes and his own name. Waking, he felt happy and secure for the first time in days; staggering out of bed he went looking for the woman responsible for all of the wonderful aches and pains in his body. She was in the living room, curled into the side of the sofa. He thought of sneaking up behind her and attacking the delicious column of her neck, up until he heard the whispered hiss of her pleading on the phone. "I swear I'm going to tell him. I'm just waiting for the right moment." A pause. "Please, please don't…I'm being careful, I swear."
His happiness (and other parts of him) deflated and, defeated, he had silently slumped back to bed to stare at the ceiling until it was time to go to work.
Taking a distant and distracted leave from his equally distracted wife, he wondered if she even noticed he had not kissed her goodbye or avoided her usual goodbye hug. She had the night off. Would she be spending it at home or with someone else? Anger warred with sadness. Should he confront her or just let the affair run its course? He had always thought infidelity to be a deal breaker in a relationship, but now…now he knew there was no amount of pain or anguish or humiliation that was enough to make him leave Sara. But that didn't make it any easier to take
He was overwhelmed with pain. Completely unable to concentrate, he left work in the middle of shift hoping maybe to…he didn't know what he was hoping to do, just that he wanted to be near Sara, loving and hating her at the same time. The irony of it settled over him like a shroud; the only comfort and peace available to him was from the person hurting him.
He found her, surrounded by papers, weeping, in the middle of the living room floor. "Sara?" Concern competed with rage; he told himself to breathe through it.
"Oh god," she moaned, desperately scrambling to pull the papers into a single pile. "What are you doing home? You're not supposed to be home…"
His hand grasped her wrist, stopping her frantic movements. "Sara, tell me what's going on." He steeled himself for the inevitable and sordid truth even as he breathed in the sweet citrus scent of her hair.
Her shoulders slumped and her eyes filled with tears. "I'm…I'm no good at this," she sobbed.
"No good at what?" He kept his voice low, trying not to let the fear overwhelm him. No good at marriage? No good at loving him? No good at having an affair? No good at deception? No good at what?
"I wanted to tell you…" she sniffed, "I should have told you days ago. But I couldn't seem to find the right way, the best way." Tears were flowing faster.
He released her wrist, suddenly unable to bear touching her. "Tell me what?" he asked flatly.
"I've been keeping something from you," she swiped at her face, her expression and tone of voice miserable.
He moved away from her slightly. "I had begun to suspect as much."
She looked at him, eyes and nose red. "I didn't plan this."
"I'm sure you didn't." He tried to keep his tone even, beating down his anger and sense of betrayal. "Sara, I…"
"Could you let me get this out?" She took in a shuddering breath. "I've been practicing this stupid speech in my head and I just need to get it out."
He shrugged and gestured to her with an open palm, indicating she should go on.
"There's someone…" she tilted her head, as if considering her words no matter how much she had practiced her speech. "There's someone new in my life…well, it definitely impacts you, so, yeah, there's someone new in both our lives. And well, I think we should get used to the idea of sharing each other."
His head snapped back as if she had struck him. Was she saying she wanted an open marriage? That she expected him to tolerate her infidelity? That she wanted him to consider…no, no, no. His mouth opened and he started to barrel forth with a blistering denial when her next words robbed him of his words and his breath.
"I'm pregnant."
The force of the words knocked him back against the wall. "Wait…what?"
"I've been plotting and planning and trying to find a way…the perfect way to tell you."
"Pregnant?" he questioned incredulously. He blinked at her several times in rapid succession. "Wait…the other day, where did you go?"
"I tell you I'm pregnant and you want to know...?" She huffed then continued, "Fine. I lied." She flushed. "I went to the store, to buy a pregnancy test. I should have just said I had gone to the store…but I panicked." Not meeting his eyes, she shook her head. "All the times I've talked about getting away with murder and committing the perfect crime? No way. I'd suck as a criminal."
Perplexed and processing the new information, taking assumptions and replacing them with revelations, he croaked, "The phone calls? The text messages?"
Her face grew even redder. "Brass. I, uh, sort of almost fainted at a crime scene the other night and he was going to call you. I had to tell him, to stop him, because I really wanted to surprise you with something…special." She shrugged. "And he's been bugging me non-stop, threatening to tell you if I don't, threatening to tell everyone." She indicated all the papers, "Do you know how many stories there are on the internet? About clever and creative women who found these amazing ways to tell their partners they were pregnant. I mean…"
Her tirade was cut off, mid rant by the press of his lips against hers. She melted against him, closing her eyes, enjoying the warmth of his lips and the delicate stroke of his tongue against her mouth. Gently breaking the kiss, he rested his forehead against hers. "Pregnant?"
Eyes still closed, she nodded.
"Are you all right?" He pressed a soft kiss to her cheek.
She nodded again. "Yeah. The dizzy spell was a one time thing." She opened her eyes and smiled. "I have an appointment next week. You can come with me if you want."
He slipped an arm around her, pulling her into his side. "Of course I want to go." Hesitantly, his hand slid over her stomach, vowing silently never to let her know about his insecure suspicions.
Then it struck him with all the subtlety of a five-ton tanker truck full of nuclear waste. Pregnant. Sara was pregnant. Sara was going to have a baby, his baby. "A baby?"
She gave a watery snort. "Yeah, that's the usual end result of pregnant."
He was stunned and relieved and ashamed and overjoyed all at once. "When…when are you due?"
"Well, we'll have to ask the doctor for sure, but, according to a calculator I found online, February 12."
She looked adorably flushed and rumpled with her mussed hair and tear stained cheeks. He found himself falling in love with her all over again. With her and their child. He hugged her closer. "February 12? If that's our baby's birthday, it will forever be known as the day all the best babies are born."