Chapter Two

Brooke's face looks back to us as she, her car, and her boyfriend head away from Tree Hill, her things following her in a trailer. She waves until she rounds the corner and disappears from sight. I glance sideways at Peyton, who's tearing up.

"I can't believe I didn't tell her," I said, beginning to cry myself.

"It's okay Haley. Brooke had other things to worry about right now, and if you told her she might not have left," she said comfortingly. I began to tear up too-I was getting so emotional. Was that a sign?

"But she's my best friend. She deserves to know," I countered.

"Nathan should know first," she reminded me. My husband, Nathan, did deserve to know first.

"Yeah, but you and Jake already know. And I don't want to tell Nathan until I'm sure," I said.

"How sure are you?"

"I skipped last month but I didn't really take it into account, because I've skipped before-and I've lost a lot of weight, you know?" I glanced at my tiny waist-before I'd gone on tour and become a celebrity, I'd been more healthy looking. "But then I found my old pill package and noticed the pill and counted back and realized it was a day that we'd definitely done it, and I should have started yesterday, but I didn't," I said worriedly.

"Haley we have to go do a test," she said. She'd been putting it off. "You're just lucky you're already married."

I was lucky. An odd coincidence was that we were both married, and both teenagers. She was eighteen, my birthday was in October. I was too young for this-Nathan was too. Nathan and I had gotten married as Juniors and then broken it off for a year when I'd run away to New York to pursue a singing dream-it had only been about three months since I'd come back. Peyton had married her husband, Jake, to put a custody battle in their favour.

"Fine," I said warily. She nodded and we both got into her car.

I felt awkward, giving the test to the man who was at the checkout counter, but glad I had my ring on my finger. He didn't comment on my purchase, just told me the total and bagged it.

"Are you sure you don't want to do this with Nate?" she asked, glancing down at the fate changing purchase.

"Yes," I whispered. We drove to her house, we knew it'd be empty. I stared at the leafy scenery-Nathan and I were planning on leaving Tree Hill in less than a month for California. It was the right thing for his job but I knew I wasn't ready to leave home so thoroughly-after all, I was only seventeen. I wasn't even a legal adult. Until recently I'd been under the legal control of my parents, even though they were never around. Now, creepily, I was fairly sure that Nathan was my guardian in a way. I preferred not to think about that.

Peyton waited nervously outside the door as I used the test, and entered as soon as I told her I was done.

"How long do we have to wait?" she asked as soon as she'd come in.

"About five more minutes," I said, glancing at my watch. Actually, I knew for a fact that it was four minutes and forty seven seconds. Forty six.

"You're probably not," she said.

"Yeah. I could have just skipped two periods, been constantly nauseous and have been having ridiculous chocolate cravings because of one great big coincidence," I shot back. She nodded gravely.

"Having a baby… I mean I don't know about the giving birth process, but I know that having one isn't so bad. Especially now that we're out of school," she said. We were just barely out of high school but we didn't particularly need to work, Nathan and I. My career had left me very wealthy.

"How's Nathan going to react?" I wondered aloud.

"He'll be fantastic. He'll freak out slightly and then support you completely, because it's the kind of guy he is and always will be," she said comfortingly. My husband was that kind of guy.

"He's not Dan Scott," I added. Dan Scott, Lucas and Nathan's dad, had abandoned Lucas after he was born to Karen, his high school sweetheart. He'd then married his college girlfriend, Deb, and his second child was born three months after his first.

"He'll never be Dan," she said comfortingly. The next two minutes passed in agony. As the buzzer on my watch went off, I looked at the device sitting innocently on the counter. I reached for it, pulled my hand away.

"I can't. Please?" I begged her. Slowly she reached out and stared at the screen.

"Positive," she said quietly, turning the device so I could see the two red lines, bold as anything.

I felt the colour drain from my face and slowly sank to the floor, crouching with my head on my knees. My hands found my stomach-a baby was growing there? It had been for two months? How was that possible? A surge of dizziness came, one to rival the intense nausea. In an instant she was on the floor beside me, her arms around me in comfort. I had done the right thing, going to her. Brooke wasn't levelheaded enough for it.

"How are you going to tell him?" she asked, after a long silence.

"Tonight. I'll just tell him, plain and simple. He'll probably stutter something, go out, get wasted, come back and be perfect for the next seven months," I said dully.

"Yeah. I hope so," she said. The look that flickered across her eyes made me wonder if she was thinking about kids for herself. Surprising the both of us, I burst suddenly into tears.

My thoughts flicked to Brooke. Already she felt like the odd one out because although she had a serious boyfriend, Peyton and I were both married. Peyton already had a child, which had distanced her from us before. In seven months, when we both had kids, would it be even harder for us to relate to Brooke? This was one of the many reasons I'd made the difficult decision not to tell her before she left for school.

"What are you going to call it?" asked Peyton, interrupting my tears. I looked at her-before she'd befriended me the only good friend I'd had was Luke, my best friend of those days. She had been my first good girlfriend and had taught me most of the things I knew about being a teenage girl. She'd also been incredible to me, let me dump my problems on her as she dumped hers on mine. She'd even been supportive when I'd begun to date the then bad boy-her ex, Nathan.

"If it's a girl I'm calling it Peyton," I promised her. I'd always liked her original name.

"I can't believe I'm going to miss all this when you move!" she said suddenly. I'd have liked to be near her when I did have it-she who knew so much about it. Jake would have been helpful as well, to Nathan and to me.

"I don't want to leave the apartment," I said sadly. The apartment meant to much to me-Nathan had first taken me there as a bride, I'd lost my virginity there, left him there, come back to him. It was within those walls that I'd become accepted of the highest social circle. And now I'd have to leave it, for a job offer and for my baby.

"Luke will be it's Uncle," she said thoughtfully.

"Yeah. I'll admit that I hoped he and Brooke would hook up, so we'd all be related, but…" I trailed off.

"In some ways I see what you mean-we've all paired off except for them, but she's so happy with Mouth and he's so in love with her. And honestly, though Luke is a good friend, he's a spectacularly bad boyfriend," she said.

"I haven't really experienced that, but I get it. God, I still have to deal with Chris," I said sadly. Chris had been the one to convince me to go on tour in the first place and he'd shown up again recently and still hadn't left.

"It doesn't really matter. I mean you're moving, right?" she said.

"And I guess even to him, having a husband isn't a strong enough reason to stay home but maybe having a baby is?" I wondered. It was easy to wonder about the logic of Chris.

"Who knows?"

"It's so weird! Now that I know I have an incredible desire to get drunk and I haven't been drunk in over a year!" I exclaimed. It was a good thing too, because apparently a baby had been inside of me for two whole months.

"That sucks," she said sympathetically.

"It's the kind of thing Brooke would have suggested-to go relieve stress, you know?" I remarked. Peyton stifled a giggle.

"I miss Brooke."

"Me too! It's so weird, because I used to hate her and after we became friends we didn't talk for a year but now we're as close as you and I!" I said.

"Brooke's like that. She seems like there's nothing going on with her except cheerleading and popularity but there's so much more to her that she just doesn't show."

"Yeah. She's probably start to call me Tutor-Mommy if I was still around," I said wearily.