Chapter Three

"The Tim is in the house!" said Tim gleefully. I rolled my eyes-at eighteen, we were too old for NBA live, but he didn't seem to think so.

"Shut up Tim," I said wearily. I glanced outside-I was expecting my wife, Haley, to come home soon so Tim could go home. Sometimes Tim didn't realize that this wasn't his home.

"So where's Holly?" he asked, his attention completely focused on the screen.

"Haley is with Peyton and Brooke," I said. He'd called her worse things.

"Brooke left this morning," reminded Tim. He looked oddly wistful for a second.

"She's too good for you. And yes, they went to see her off or something," I said.

"Her standards aren't as high-that Mouth guy is a total twig. And anyway, she never went out with you either," said Tim. I laughed.

"Okay, I'll give you that. But out of the three of them, widely acknowledged as Tree Hill's best, I've gone out with two of them. And you?" I said. Tim occasionally brought out the worst in me.

"Hey," said a female voice from the door. We both turned quickly-Haley. I smiled at her and noticed Tim gawking. She noticed too.

"Ew. Tim, look away. Nathan I need to talk to you," she said. She wasn't smiling.

"Tim, go home."

"Why? I don't have anything to do at home," he whined.

"Then go swimming. I don't mind, we just need to talk," I said, indicating Haley. He pouted but left and she came to stand stiffly in front of me. I took her arm and pulled her onto my lap. Wearily she rested her head on my chest.

"I have news," she said nervously.

"Hales you know how much I love you, right?" I said worriedly.

"And I love you!" she said.

"Right. So you can tell me anything," I said.

"Wait. Is this about Chris?" I demanded.

"No! It's about us!" she said. I relaxed.

"Okay. You're doing that thing where you know you have to tell me but you don't want to and you're hoping I'm going to guess so that you don't have to say it, but I have no idea what you're talking about. So just say it-I won't be mad," I said gently. She nodded and took a deep breath.

"I think I'm pregnant."

"You think," I said, trying as hard as I could to keep my voice at its normal pitch. Pregnant. With a baby. A baby we'd have to take care of.

"I know. I've skipped twice and you know I've been throwing up and today I took a test when I was at Peyton and Jake's," she said. She looked worried for my sake-how could she not be worried for hers. She jumped up.

"Hey, do you need something? A glass of water, a paper bag?" she asked.

"No, I'm good. How could I not be good? I mean we're married, we're perfect, we're having a baby! You're seventeen, a good age for it, right? I'm fine," I assured her. Even to my own ears my voice sounded weird. She raised her eyebrow.

"I'll be eighteen by the time it's born," she said.

"By the time… When?"

"Early February I think," she said. I quickly calculated.

"Two months ago. What were we doing two months ago?" I asked her.

"Um. Remember that day, after I'd gone out with Brooke and Peyton and they'd both gotten drunk and Peyton got that tattoo? I'm fairly sure it was then," she said.

"So what, it was just a fluke? What about those pills?" I asked. My voice was getting too high again.

"I think I forgot one," she admitted.

"So you forgot one pill, we did it once and I got you pregnant? How is that possible?" She shrugged.

"Do you want to maybe go out somewhere, clear your head?" she asked gently. I glanced outside-it was about seven and beginning to get dark out.

"Yeah. I'll go out. But not because I'm not completely cool with this-because I am," I said, grabbing my car keys and heading outside.

Really I was better off than some guys-Jake got Nikki pregnant and Nikki was crazy, and they'd been unmarried in high school. But I was so not ready for this. This was something my father had done. Twice. We were married. We'd always planned on doing this. But now? Neither of us had college plans but we were planning on moving to California for a job I'd been offered. We'd rented an apartment, hired a moving fan, begun to pack up our stuff. Neither of us wanted to leave the place we'd always lived in together, but the job, which could lead to a basketball scholarship, was good enough that we'd decided to do it.

Without meaning to I ended up at the local bar.

The blond waitress winked as she served me a pint of draft beer. I settled down at the counter and took a refreshing gulp. Haley was pregnant. With a baby. My baby. How the hell was I supposed to handle that? And how was she? Was she sitting at home, worrying I'd pull a Dan Scott?

"Nathan!" called a voice. I turned around-Jake Jagielski, Peyton's husband was making his was to the bar. He sat down beside me. Jake was a good guy-a better friend to my brother, but he was in my circle at school.

"Man, I just heard. Haley called Peyton and said you'd gone out, and…" he trailed off.

"You put the pieces together?"

"Yeah. I mean when I found out about Nikki I spent about ten minutes trying to calm the both of us down and then got down here," he said.

"How did you deal with that?" I asked.

"It wasn't exactly pure joy every waking minute. Nikki told me when she was already about five months in so I didn't have much time to prepare myself. And then she'd randomly disappear and reappear, which was hard. And then she had the baby, and it was amazing. Jenny was just so beautiful. Then she moved into my parent's house with me and we began to raise Jenny but then one Wednesday I woke up and she'd just disappeared. She broke my heart, but I was glad afterwards that she'd left Jenny behind. Then she showed up nine months later," said Jake.

"She could give Dan Scott a run for her money," I said dryly.

"Yeah. But you couldn't," he said.

"What would you do, if Peyton was pregnant?"

"I don't know. I mean we both know a lot about kids but she's going to school soon, and I'm trying to find a full time job and we're both trying to find a place for Jenny to start day care at a reasonable cost. I guess I'd still have to get the job and she'd have to quite school eventually," he said. "Or take on of those leaves of absence."

"She doesn't want go anyway," I remarked.

"Yeah, but she knows she should. Anyway, what does Haley want?"

"I don't know. We were both trying to calm down when I left. She likes kids-she's always doing all this volunteer work," I said.

"So not keeping the baby is..?" said Jake.

"Not an option," I said quickly.

"Okay. So you should go home, calm her down and then just go with it. It will turn out okay," he said firmly. We were getting too close into bonding territory, and we were both getting uncomfortable.

Haley was asleep when I got home, curled up on the couch. I walked over to her and carefully eased her head onto my lap. She stirred.

"Nate?"

"Shh. Hales. How are you feeling?"

"Sick," she said.

"Okay. Maybe tomorrow we can go to the doctor, make sure it's all healthy?" I said. I was already beginning to worry about it. Gently I placed my hand on her flat stomach, and hers joined me.

"Yeah. God, I'm going to have to tell my parents…"

"Your parents? I'm going to have to tell my parents."