CHAPTER TWO: Late

Jade had been on edge for most of the day. After dropping Jonah, Kendall, and Sabrina off at school, Jade lugged Rory around with her to do some errands. She didn't have a full-time job at this point, and she had the day free from any part-time work. She had been working on and off for most of her adult life thus far. It was definitely a hard thing to come to terms with, they not only could use the money from two full-time incomes, but constantly having small children to take care of or physically being pregnant made it hard for both Beck and Jade to work full-time. If they ended up having to pay for as much childcare as they'd need, it would end up eating a solid chunk of their income regardless. This way, at least, their kids weren't being raised by strangers. Despite her temper, Jade was a music teacher. She taught music lessons and would go into a handful of local schools and teach a music lesson every now and then. Arts programs were being cut left and right, and it just so happened that having sporadic music classes scheduled throughout the school year really worked in Jade's situation.

Today, though, there were no music classes or private lessons for Jade to teach. Her only plan was to go to the grocery at some point between school pick up and drop off. Jade was walking through the grocery store, pushing around a cart. Rory is sitting in the child's seat of the cart, sucking on his pacifier. Jade definitely realizes that it's time the two-year-old should start being weaned off the pacifier, but at this moment she just needs him to stay calm while they're in public and doesn't care that the pacifier is the key to that. He is absolutely over attached to thing, and it does worry her that it might damage his teeth down the line. As she looks down at him sucking away, she contemplates making him go without it later today when they get home.

She makes her way through the cereal, produce, meat, and dairy sections of the store and gets whatever she needs from those sections. Making her way over to personal hygiene and home goods, Jade picks up some shampoo and conditioner. She starts walking over to the cleaning supplies section when she passes through the sexual wellness section. Walking through the tampons and pads, she tries to remember if she's out or well stocked of the items. It's then she realizes that she can't remember if she has enough, because she can't remember the last time she needed one. Stopping in the middle of the aisle, Jade pulls out her PearPhone and opens up the calendar app, trying to pin down the last date she had her period. She can't pinpoint it, but she does realize she didn't have one last month. The familiar feeling of potential pregnancy anxiety is quickly, and forcefully, shoved out her mind as she rationalizes that she's just been stressed and that it will come back this month. She finishes her shopping trip and takes the groceries and her toddler home.

She gets home, unloads the groceries, and settles Rory down for his mid-day nap- it is then Jade stressfully goes into her and Beck's bathroom and opens up her most recent pack of birth control pills. She's about halfway through this pack, which means she should have gotten her period about two weeks ago. Why hadn't she noticed it didn't come once she got onto the sugar pills? Mentally scrutinizing herself for not noticing sooner, she takes a deep breath and again convinces herself that she's just stressed and that it will come once she's finished her current pack.

It's not until she's picking up the rest of the kids from school that she finally loses a grip on convincing herself. But now she has a car full of kids, and it's not like she can take all four of them down to a drug store really quick to pick up a pregnancy test. She'll just have to wait for Beck to get home.

It wasn't until four o'clock, and Jade was getting ready to start prepping for dinner that she remembered that Andre, Tori, Cat and Robbie were supposed to come over for dinner around 6:30. Jade immediately goes to mentally scrutinize herself once again when she has a sudden realization that it's possible she just hasn't been forgetful but, more specifically, that she's suffering from pregnancy brain. That thought freaks Jade out so much that she overly pushes herself into prepping for dinner to keep her mind off of it. She starts by getting herself and the kids properly dressed. Unfortunately, her kids are pretty messy at school and pretty much all need to change their shirts into clean ones. Luckily, Rory is all good to go and won't need to be changed until it's time for bed. Once the kids are dressed, she sends them downstairs to work on their homework. Jade goes into her bedroom and changes into a pair of black jeans and a puts on a gray sweater. She starts boiling enough spaghetti for 4 children and 6 adults immediately and starts working on a Bolognese sauce. While bouncing between helping the kids with homework and throwing some frozen garlic bread into the oven and starting to make a salad- the next hour and half breeze by. It almost seems that the kids get a sense that Jade's out of it and particularly stressed, that they're fairly cooperative.

Beck gets home from work around 5:45 and walks into a surprisingly quiet house. He hears noise coming from the kitchen and walks in to see Jonah, Kendall, and Sabrina working on homework at the breakfast table and Rory sitting in his highchair eating some plain noodles, pulled from the food Jade was making for everyone else later.

"Hi guys" Beck says walking in. All the kids look up, now realizing he's home, and burst into smiles and excitedly greet him as well.

Rory, in particular, gets very excited and starts banging down on his highchair and starts yelling, "Daddy! Daddy!" with his arms stretched out for his father to pick him up. Beck picks up the toddler and then walks further into the kitchen. Walking up and wrapping his free arm around Jade's waist he says, "hello to you too"

Still stressed, Jade quickly gets out a rather automatic, "hi, how was work?"

Beck, sensing something off, turns his wife to look at him instead of the pot of boiling pasta water. Now looking in her eyes, he asks "everything ok with you?"

Breaking eye contact, Jade says, "everything's fine, just trying to get dinner done before everyone shows up."

"Need help?" Beck asks. Before Jade can answer, Rory starts bouncing in her arms, repeating his father and saying, "Help! Help!"

Looking at the toddler, and then back to her husband, Jade says "just sit with the kids? Maybe help them with some homework?"

Despite not being convinced that everything was alright with Jade, he nods his head and walks back over to the kitchen table and sits with Rory in his lap and starts helping Sabrina with homework. When he realizes the four-year old's homework is only to color some line drawings of animals, he feels free to take a step back to stare at his wife, trying to analyze her and see what was wrong. He could push her and ask some more, but he knows that's not a good idea considering their friends would be over sooner rather than later. Knowing that if he aggravates her too much, it would take more time than they had for her to calm down. He wouldn't want them to fight in front of everyone, they've been extremely wary of that in the last couple of years after all the scrutiny that came with her last pregnancy. Beck is sure their family and friends notice they confide in them with things like that far less than they used to. They just don't want to add any fuel to the fire of judgement they proved exists. It's not that the wounds of that situation are fresh, nor is it that they're still actively upset about it- but the whole situation just damaged the trust they had in their loved ones far more than anyone of them would care to admit. Beck never thought that him confiding in Andre and Robbie when he was overwhelmed about the kids or money would come back to bite him in the ass, but when they used that information to fuel their concern over Beck and Jade's fourth pregnancy- it had really stung. It felt like they were using it against him. He knows that, deep down, they meant well and didn't intend to make him feel that way. Regardless, it's going to take some time for the walls they built up in response to that situation to come back down. They have dropped a bit in the last two and a half years since, but it's still not where it once was.

At 6:20, Jade has finished dinner and had started making the kids help set the dining table in the other room. She goes over to pick Rory up from his highchair and begins to carry him upstairs, to get him ready for bed before everyone shows up. As she starts up the stairs, Beck glances over to the other three kids, and determines that it will be fine for Jonah to watch the other two momentarily while he goes upstairs to talk to Jade.

Walking into Rory's room, he sees Jade dressing the toddler in his PJs while he tiredly let's her do so, making her task that much easier today.

"Need help?" Beck asks while standing just past the doorway, startling Jade who didn't see him walk in.

"Oh shit, Beck how did you open the door so quietly" Jade says as she begins to slip Rory into his onesie.

"Sorry, didn't mean to freak you out…" He says as he approaches her. Grabbing the now dressed and drowsy toddler from her arms, he looks at his wife in her eyes again saying, "are you sure you're okay? You seem really out of it today."

Jade stands there trying to decide whether or not she should share this information with Beck right now or not. He can tell there's something wrong with her- that she's stressed and being uncharacteristically quiet. But then she also considers that their friends will be showing up at their door any minute now, and what good will it do to stress him out so much when he's just going to need to bottle it up immediately for a few hours.

On the other hand, this is weighing on her so heavily she knows that if she keeps this to herself that she will seem so off to their friends and Beck will actively look concerned and this will just make the whole night's energy awkward for everyone. Might as well have Beck and her on the same page, right? If they're both going to act weird, it might as well be about the same thing. With that she says, "I might be pregnant again."

That was definitely not what Beck thought she'd say. But then again, he's heard it enough times to know how he needs to process this information. Taking a deep breath, he says, "okay…okay."

He turns around and puts Rory in his crib and pulls the blanket over his little body. Jade comes to stand next to him, looking at the baby together as they speak. "How sure are you this time?" Beck asks.

"I don't know…" Jade starts, pausing to sigh before continuing, "I just know I'm a couple weeks late."

Beck takes in a deep breath and says, "Okay, well let's get a test later tonight once everyone leaves… we can take it from there, I guess."

Jade is silent for a moment, before going to put a hand on Rory's belly and rubbing until she's sure the boy has actually fallen asleep. Starring at her hand, Beck wraps his hands around Jade's waist and rubs up and down her sides. This prompts Jade out of her trance and she says, "how are we so irresponsible…"

"We're not irresponsible… we've done such a good job with the cards we've been handed, I think" Beck says.

"Then why can't we stop? I can't keep pushing babies out, I need us to be done at some point… I'm exhausted."

Turning to look at his wife, he says, "Jade, you know if it ends up being that you are pregnant, you don't need to go to term with it." Jade looks back at him and says, "If I couldn't convince myself to terminate any single one of my pregnancies before, how do you expect that I'd finally be able to this time?"

"I'm just saying, there are other options if you'd want to take them…"

"I know, but just because I know I could take them doesn't mean I can."

"What? What do you mean by that?" Beck asks. Just as Jade's about to answer, the doorbell rings. She quickly says, "we'll talk about this more later."

Jade walks past her husband and out of Rory's room, down the stairs. Beck slowly follows her lead, shutting Rory's door on his way out and carrying his baby monitor down with him. He's using this trip down the stairs to quickly figure out how he's not going to act like he just had the conversation he had for the next couple of hours.