AN: Annnd we have an update...Yay.
As always I own nothing other than my plot. Oh and the errors... *sigh*... those are mine.
Stay Sexy lovelies and enjoy.
8 Hours earlier
"Are you sure love? I mean have you gone to the doctor yet and had a blood test done to confirm?"
"No not yet. I've only taken about ten different at home tests and eight of them were positive."
Ray was silent for a few moments before he replied. "Ok look I don't doubt the results, but let's make an appointment with the doctor. Hopefully they can do an ultrasound at the same time and we can figure out how far along you are and then we can then figure out how this happened given how careful we are, well normally anyway."
"Wait, you're not mad or going to question if it's even yours?"
Ray reacted as if he had been physically slapped. His body jerked away from Quinn.
"How could you even think that? Let alone ask that? When have I ever once acted like a complete fucking douche towards you? When have I ever treated you as anything less than a fucking princess or given you a reason to think I am an ass or have acted like an ass to you? Don't bother answering because I know the answer; Not Fucking Once, Not Ever." Ray took a deep breath holding back the tears that wanted to fall at how hurt he was that the woman he loved could think that about him. "I think you should just go home tonight. I can't be around you right now. Call me when you have made the appointment." Ray turned around and walked out of the choir room.
As he stepped out of the room he saw Jewfro scurrying down the hall. The Jewish outcast looked over his shoulder and had a deer in the headlights look on his face when he saw Ray staring at him. Ray heard the squeak leave the other boys lips, confirming Ray's suspicions that the boy had been listening outside the door. Ray dropped his bag and took off down the hall after the school's gossip reporter. Quickly catching the boy Ray tossed him into the boys bathroom. Grabbing the frightened reporter by his shirt Ray hauled the boy up and slammed him against the wall, feet dangling in the air.
"I know you were listening outside the door Jewfro otherwise you wouldn't have tried to run when you saw me as I have never done anything to you. So here is what's going to happen, you are going to keep what you heard to yourself, you do that you get to keep breathing without the aid of a respirator. You don't and they won't find you for a week, you will never be able to type on your precious blog ever again nor will you be able to do any type of voice to text because you won't ever be able to talk again. I'll have your vocal cords damaged beyond repair that you will be a fucking mute." Ray snarled at the other teen. Ray frightened the jewish boy so badly that he wet himself.
Ray dropped the reporter in disgust and rifled through the boys bag finding the digital recorders along with the boy's laptop. Ray pocketed the recorders and quickly hacked the laptop deleting any recordings and backups that the boy had already saved from the mics he had around the school. Ray also followed the connection to the server that Jewfro thought that he had cleverly hidden in the av room and erased the entire thing. The next step he took was uploading a virus onto both the server and Jacob's laptop. The next time the gossip monger uploaded to his blog, the virus would wipe out the boy's website, destroy the domain, crash his computer wiping the entire thing making it non recoverable. It was a rather vicious multi purpose virus that Ray had created a while back. He had written it to disguise itself as a system file and once in, it lay dormant until the pre programmed command was triggered. He had also designed it to erase itself if he had wanted it to have a different purpose. Ray had managed to erase the files, wipe the server and upload the bug in less than five minutes. He had also created a backdoor into the laptop that he could hack into later tonight and copy the entire hard-drive before it destroyed itself. He placed the laptop back in the bag and stood up.
"You will find the recorders in the av room tomorrow. You breathe a word about this Jewfro, and there will be nowhere that you can hide that I won't find you. You think your scared of me now? Try me. I will know all your secrets by the time I get home tonight and I will do to you what you have done to almost every student in this school that has challenged me, I will rip your life apart for the masses to read about and then when you least expect it, remember my first warning." Ray turned around and left the bathroom leaving the reporter shaking in fear in a puddle of his own urine.
Ray walked back down the hall, retrieved his bag and left the school. He drove around for a while before eventually finding himself standing outside Shelby's door waiting for her to answer.
Ray had just summarized what had led him to his mother's doorstep when the tears began to fall.
"She thought I was going to leave her and question her if the baby was even mine. Like, like, I'm one of the many douche-bags we go to school with, when I know that she has only been with me since we got together. She actually thought that little of me when all I do is treat her like a princess, like she's my queen. And that hurts more than anything." Ray began to sob, wrapping his arms around himself.
Shelby quickly sat down beside him and pulled him into her arms. Her heart broke for her son. He had just turned 17 and he was going to be a father. That on its own was heartbreaking, but to hear how devastated he was regarding what his girlfriend had said to him was pulling at the heartstrings. Shelby could understand the place that Quinn was coming from. They were in high school and from what she had learned about the girl, Quinn had dated some very immature individuals in the past that would have asked her that very question. Shelby waited, until Ray's sobs died down before she broached the subject.
"Ray, I know it hurts. But I want you to consider something for me. Quinn is scared. She's a 17 year old girl who has potentially gotten pregnant. In the past she has dated guys who have used her for her popularity and looks and to see if they could bed the head cheerleader. You are the exception. You don't care about being popular, let alone her popularity. You love Quinn for Quinn and anyone with eyes can see that. You're a sensitive young man who takes responsibility. I'm assuming the first thing you asked her after she told you that she was pregnant was 'are you sure?'. Am I right?" Shelby waited until he nodded. "Ok so then I am also assuming that you wanted to go to the doctor to find out how far along she was?" Again Ray nodded. "Oh baby boy, your immediate acceptance baffled her. Due to mainstream media, movies, tv shows and even the books we read, we women have been conditioned to expect to be blamed and accused of cheating when something like this happens when we are teenagers. She subconsciously expected that question/accusation and had her defenses ready as a default due to that conditioning." Shelby let her words sink in for a minute or two as she gently ran her fingers through his short hair before continuing.
"I was only 18 when I got pregnant with you. It was during my senior year, well actually it was a few months before I graduated. The first question your biological father asked me was 'Is it mine?' and we had been dating for two years at that point. My parents initially disowned me and kicked me out when they found out. I couldn't go and live with your father as we had broken up and a month after our break up he was dead. I was essentially homeless and struggling to graduate when I saw the Berry men's ad in the paper. And you know the rest of that part of the story. My point is I'm sure that Quinn is frightened that she will be disowned by her mother and that you will leave her. I know you would never do that." Shelby continued quickly before Ray could say anything as she felt him shake his head. "And deep down I'm certain Quinn knows that as well. Give her a few days to realize that she is being an idiot for allowing her fears to get the better of her. You're staying here tonight. It's very late now and I don't feel comfortable letting you leave here and drive home at this hour while you have had a very emotional evening. I'll get you a pillow and a blanket so you can crash on my couch."
"Thank you." Ray said quietly. "I have no idea how I'm going to tell Sue. She is going to be so disappointed in me." Ray said, his head down as fresh tears began to fall.
"Never Baby-Ray."
Shelby looked over her shoulder, smiling softly at the voice as her son's head whipped up and watched as the tall woman crossed the room in three strides and gathered Ray in her arms. Her heart broke as she watched her son completely break down in his god mother's arms. She quietly left the room to give the two privacy and gathered the bedding for her son to stay the night. When she came back out to the living room she could hear them quietly talking before Ray handed his keys over and Sue left the apartment.
"Have you eaten at all tonight Ray?" Shelby asked as she set the bedding down on the arm of the sofa.
"No. After I left the school I just drove around aimlessly lost in thought. I stopped once to get gas and some water as well as a Gatorade but that was it. I didn't realize it was so late when I got here.
Shelby frowned her disapproval at him before walking into her kitchen. She quickly dished some leftover lasagne from dinner and warmed it up for him.
"You're eating that before you go to sleep. No arguments." Shelby stated as she set the plate in front of him.
Ray smiled softly at her words and inhaled deeply. His mouth watered as his stomach growled at the scent.
"Is that Nona's recipe?" He asked as he grabbed his fork before taking his first bite and moaned as his taste buds exploded.
Shelby laughed softly at his reaction. "Yes it is but I've added my own to it. Every generation in the family has. How did you know? Even Sue didn't recognize it until I told her."
Ray swallowed his food and took a quick drink before replying. "It was the smell of the sauce. When I was in Italy, I met your father. What I didn't know is that when he set up the dinner meeting, I would be meeting him, your mother and his mother. I was told that when she found out that I would be meeting him, she insisted that she be there and had been cooking for two days before I arrived. Sue had laughed as she insisted that I call her Nona and that she was going to fatten me up. That I was too scrawny." Ray looked mildly offended and baffled at the same time as he recounted the woman's words.
Shelby laughed at the words. Her grandmother was a force to be reckoned with and constantly told Shelby the exact same thing everytime Shelby visited.
"Yeah Nona is old school. She lives by the old world 'Eat and be Merry' philosophy. She means well and has the best intentions. Nona was just so excited to meet you finally. You know she was the one who finally got through to my father about how he was wrong to disown me?" Seeing Ray's shock she nodded and continued. "I know it seems strange given she is a devout Catholic and still lives by the old world views. She simply stated family was family no matter what and you didn't toss them aside like garbage when they made a mistake. She told him that if he continued to act like an idiot that she would refuse to talk to him or to see him until he apologized to me and made things right. By the time that happened, I had already given birth to you and those two men adopted you had forced me to sign away all parental rights to you and had moved away from New York."
Sue had come back in with both of Ray's bags that he had in his truck and had been listening as she got Ray's laptop out of his messenger bag. She had set it up on the coffee table and was waiting for the file to download. Ray had told her about his encounter with Jewfro and Sue wanted to see the contents of what was on the hard drives of the snivelling little creep. Sue had silently seethed when Ray told her that the lil creep had been piggy backing on her video and audio feeds of the school. As much as she liked to say she had the school bugged to serve her purposes, it was honestly for the security of the students. It definitely explained how the gossip monger always seemed to know about the secrets of the student body. She made a mental note to delete the audio file regarding the bathroom encounter once the current file finished downloading. She grabbed a second thumb drive from her Nephew's bag and copied the file onto it so she could review the files later as she needed to get some sleep. She placed the recorders beside the laptop knowing that Ray would deal with them before he finally fell asleep. Quickly logging in remotely to her school computer, Sue searched for the audio file by the time and location before deleting it from the server. She would check the backup copy once she was home. She still had concerns regarding Ray's anger and rage that sometimes still leaked out when his emotions were running high, and wanted to make sure he didn't go overboard when he threatened the little cretin.
"Alright you two," Sue began as she stood up and yawned. "I'm going to sleep. Ray I'll have you excused from your morning classes as I know that you are ahead in them but you will have to show up for the afternoon classes alright. I expect you to stop by my office when you get there."
Ray nodded and said goodnight to his aunt before getting up and washing his dinner dishes out of habit, much to the amusement and delight of Shelby.
"So wanna explain to me why you were being irresponsible by not having safe sex?" Shelby asked seriously once Ray had finished wiping down the counter.
"Quinn has been on the pill since before school started this year. Before we even had sex the first time I had a mobility test down to see what my count was due to the suppression. I was told that I had low count, low but healthy and that there is hope that because I'm young that my count will bounce back within the next two years now that I'm no longer taking a suppressant. Over the winter break Quinn ended up taking antibiotics for an infection just after she switched her type of birth control. We only had sex once during that time before remembering that antibiotics reduce the effectiveness of the birth control not to mention that she had only been taking the new type for two months. We used condoms the few times we were intimate afterwards. If she is pregnant it's down to the timing of everything." Ray sighed out as he explained.
"Why was Quinn given the antibiotics?"
"Some sort of infection in her lower intestine. There were concerns at first it was appendicitis but was quickly ruled out after an ultrasound was done and revealed that Quinn didn't have her appendix apparently she was born without one as Judy swears up and down that Quinn never had surgery to have it removed when she was younger." Ray paused for a moment. "What are the odds of a false positive?" He quietly asked.
"With the timing of everything, low but not impossible. With the stress of everything that has happened before Winter Break, the change in medication plus the infection, it's not surprising that Quinn may have missed her period. If she honestly believes that she is pregnant than in an extreme situation her boy may produce the hormones that would lead to a false positive. It happens very, very rarely. Only way to know for sure is to have both a blood test and an ultrasound done to confirm." Shelby replied thoughtfully after thinking over everything that her son had told her.
During their quiet discussion the two had made up the sofa for Ray to sleep on for the night.
"There isn't much that can be down tonight so try and get some sleep baby. If you want a shower the towels are in the cupboard beside the vanity in the bathroom."
"Thanks mom." Ray replied quietly.
Shelby's heart broke once again as she took in the completely lost and scared expression on his face. She gently kissed his forehead and whispered a quick goodnight before she left him to his thoughts for the night.
AN2: look no cliffy this time.