CeCe finally texts Gunther about an hour after they get to the hospital. The doctor has her in a little room anyway, and is smiling and talking and saying things that she doesn't actually care about right now. She's too busy trying not to freak out. The text is short, and to the point, "False alarm, sorry."
It's not like Gunther can stop the plane, so he's still coming, CeCe knows that, objectively, but she still doesn't open the immediate responding text for a good five minutes, her hand just—not pushing the button.
"Okay. I'm still coming." is what it says when she finally opens it.
By the time Gunther gets back in Chicago, CeCe and her family have gone back to the house, quiet and exhausted. She told her Mom and Flynn to take her bed, but they refused, and sent her up. She would have said no—"Gunther's coming!"—but she's too exhausted to argue, and she'll just—this is going to be the worst moment of her life, she might as well be comfortable.
It figures she'd end up falling asleep; that the one time the baby doesn't stay up kicking her, or sending her into the bathroom or kitchen every fifteen minutes, is when she needs to be awake. (And it's so much harder to tell herself that she has to tell Gunther the truth when she wakes up and he is asleep on the couch downstairs, arm hanging over the edge, hair and clothes all messed up like, like he'd gotten there in a hurry, as fast as he could possibly go.)
She wakes him up by touching his arm and saying, "Gunther."
"Mm." He kind of like, rolls a little, and swats out an arm before opening his eyes. "CeCe? Oh, baybee, should you be—sit down." He scrambles up, moving to one side of the couch and grabbing CeCe's hand to pull her down too. He yawns, once, but looks alert, awake.
"It's not like I'm on bed rest," she says, but let's herself be tugged down anyway.
"Close enough. Your mom let me in, told me all of it. You okay? I mean, that was terrifying for me and I was in New York," Gunther says. "By the way—I'm not leaving this city again until after this is over, alright? It's too crazy to try and—"
"When it's over?" CeCe interrupts, looking at his face, tired and smiling anyway.
"You know, when she's 'left the wagon'," Gunther says, grinning.
"I know what you meant, but this is never going to be over," CeCe says. "This—it's going to get harder, not easier. There's going to be a baby here, I'm going—it's a baby. One that cries and eats and poops—real, and tiny, and with toes and fingers and feelings and wants and needs and—this isn't going to end, Gunther. Oh, Gosh, I'm crying again, aren't I?"
She wipes at her eyes with her hands, while Gunther reaches up and grabs one of her shoulders, moving his thumb back and forth tightly—trying to be comforting. "That's okay. It was a hard day, CeCe."
"That's not—that's not what this is about." CeCe pulls away from his arm, watches as he pulls it back. "I need to tell you something."
CeCe breathes, one of those long, deep breathes that they teach you at the doctors' office, and says, "I lied."
It's quiet for a minute. CeCe is looking down at her hands, trying to keep them still where she's holding them over her stomach, huge and in the way. The baby isn't kicking, for once. Finally, Gunther says, "What?", sounding confused and uncertain.
She squeezes her eyes shut, and then turns a little and looks up at him—he looks confused too, brows furrowed and lips turned down. "Please don't hate me," CeCe says, "You can be mad. You should be mad. I'd—I'd be angry. But I didn't—I didn't know what I was doing. I thought—I thought this was mine, my problem, my responsibility. But it's not. It's not. I've had—you've been here the whole time, Gunther. And I was scared of that too, because I don't know what you want, why you're here all the time, and talking to me all the time and just—being amazing. I don't know how you're—going to react to—to this. I don't want things to change, but, Gunther, they won't stop." She says, ignoring the long wet tracks running down her face, just letting them be, because this is more important.
"Huh?" Gunther sounds, moving on the couch, just—adjusting, looking at her. "CeCe, you aren't making any sense—"
She takes a shuddering breath, and keeps going. "I—I lied to you, when you asked me if it was yours. I lied, and I'm so sorry."
"What?" he says, smiling in this—awkward sort of way. She watches the smile falter, and then "What? It's—she's mine?" And then comes the anger. Gunther yanks himself back, against the edge of the couch, away from CeCe. As far from her as he can get, and she can't even blame him, no matter how much it hurts.
"You—I'm—CeCe, I'm the father, I'm the father, didn't you even think—I can't believe you were going to keep this a secret! Didn't you think about my feelings? About my rights as a parent? I've been going crazy and you—what, why would you—am I not—did you think I was going to be mad?" Gunther—Gunther is yelling, angry and, and hurt, and CeCe didn't mean for—she can't—
She shakes her head, and turns even more, so she can—she doesn't—she has to explain, she has to make him understand and—he can't—he can't hate her, he just, he can't. "I don't—I don't know what I was thinking. I wasn't thinking, I was freaking out! And at first—at first I thought if I just ignored it, it would go away. But it didn't. It just—it just kept getting bigger, and I didn't want to tell you, because, well, it's not like we were going to be a family. I thought it would be better if I did it by myself. It's not—it's not like we were aiming for this to happen. You didn't want this anymore than I did!"
"That's not the fucking point," Gunther says, and he takes a hand and runs it through his hair, and then asks, "Am I not good enough?"
"What?"
"Me, the guy sitting right in front of you—am I not good enough for you?"
"That's not what I meant," CeCe says, staring at him with wide eyes. "How could you—no. Gunther, you— No."
He's moved to hunch forward, his elbows on his knees, and he's looking at the ground, like he's trying to gather his bearings, but she can hear the anger and hurt when he says, "Fuck," under his breath. "Christ, CeCe," he says, looking up and moving over, and all the sudden he's pressing his forehead against her belly, and he's—he's crying. "CeCe, this is my kid. This is my daughter. How could you not tell me?"
CeCe stays as still as physically possible, terrified of moving and ruining this—delicate string she seems to be balancing on all the sudden. "I think—I didn't want things to change. I liked what we had. It was like, a box, and everything was supposed to stay in the box. But now, it's—I was scared you wouldn't care." Her voice is rough, chipped, from how much she's been crying lately. "At first I thought you wouldn't—care. Or—or you'd be mad. And then, you were just, you were being Gunther, my friend. Just my friend. I didn't want to lose that."
"Not telling me wasn't a good way of 'not losing that'. How do you even know, CeCe? That I'm the Dad?"
"You're the only one it could be," she says, still unmoving. "I've never—" She stops.
Gunther shakes his head, and sits up, keeping a hand on her stomach for a minute before tightening it into a fist and bringing back to his own lap. "So this whole time, I've been jealous of myself? That's awesome, just great."
"Gunther—"
"I've been in love with you since before I knew you were pregnant."
CeCe squeezes her eyes shut and then opens them slowly, and breathes carefully. "You're what?" She finally asks.
"I've been going mad. I've been freaking out over—over who the fucking sorry son of a bitch who'd gotten you pregnant and just—just left, was. And even though you were having somebody else's kid, I was still—I can't stop thinking about you, I can't—God—you have no idea how much I wanted to be the Dad. To have you. Both of you. You have no idea."
CeCe, still not having moved, asks, "You're in love with me?"
Gunther just looks at her, angry and—something. Finally he says, "CeCe."
She kisses him. It's probably stupid, but she can't help it. That's Gunther, and he's saying he's in love with her—or was in love, something, anything, it's more than friends, and more than friends-with-benefits, and more than a family forced together because of a baby, and she just—she kisses him.
He puts a hand on her shoulder and pushes her back after a moment, and then they're both—they're both all wide eyes and confusion. Gunther gets up, and puts a hand in the air, like "stop just, don't talk, give me time to think." CeCe doesn't stop him when he leaves the room, headed into the kitchen.
It's five o'clock in the morning according to the clock on the wall. She sits on the couch and holds her arms down, over her stomach, over the baby, just—protecting her, from all the—everything, right now.
Her mom eventually comes downstairs, dressed in her PJ's, looking for CeCe. She says, "Cecelia Jones," on the stairs, stopping to hold onto the railing, "if you don't get your rear-end back in bed right now—"
"Mom, I'm just—" she starts.
"You just came home from the hospital. I don't care if you didn't actually have the baby—you are not going to be awake and downstairs at five thirty in the morning while I am in this house. Bed, now."
She's totally planning on staying downstairs anyway—she's waiting for Gunther, right now, and she can't—she can't go to bed after—after everything that just happened. She just can't do that, she has to wait for him, for him to say something, tell her what they're doing, now.
"Come on, CeCe," Gunther says, from the kitchen doorway. "Your mom's right. You thought you were having a baby earlier today. You shouldn't be—you should be in bed."
He walks with her to her bedroom, and waits until she gets into bed, and then says, "Look—I'm very angry. But I'm still in love with you, and I'll do whatever you want me to do. If you want me to just be—an Uncle—no, I can't do that. What I mean is—"
"I don't want you to just be an Uncle, Gunther."
He doesn't say anything for a minute, but after what seems like forever, just staring at each other, he moves, slow, so unbelievably slow, down, and puts a hand on the bed next to her, pushing his weight against the mattress in order to press his mouth against hers. He pulls back.
"I love you," CeCe says, before he can say anything else—anything about—anything. "I think I've loved you for a really long time. I just—I didn't think about it, because that's not the sort of relationship we had, and I didn't want to get hurt. You say I'm amazing, or honest, or nice, or whatever, like all the time, Gunther, but I'm just—I'm really selfish."
"Why'd you decide to tell me?" he asks, brokenly.
"Because… because this is yours, all of it, everything."
He stands there for a long while, before finally walking to the other side of the bed and lying down. He puts a hand on her shoulder, but she doesn't know if he pulled it away or kept it there, because she was suddenly more exhausted than she'd probably ever felt in her life, and she fell asleep.