Risenfromash: For some reason I'm really nervous that this chapter is crap. But here it is.

CHAPTER 2

"These are the books I need you to pick up for me," Maya had come over to stand by my desk while munching on a soda cracker. Saltines were the only thing she had successfully held down that morning.

The list she handed me had the titles of five books all of which had either "baby," "parent," or "expecting" in the titles. I grimaced. This wasn't as bad as having to go buy a girl tampons, but I still wasn't thrilled especially since I'd spent most of my morning listening to baby talk.

Since Maya hadn't told anyone else the news I was the only one she could share her excitement with and so she was talking to me about the baby all the time. The previous day's excitement aside I was finding it difficult to maintain my enthusiasm. At one point I'd felt like telling her to knock it off so I could get some work done but then I remembered that a) I didn't really have any work to do and b) Maya didn't have much family left and part of my duty as one of her closest friends was to act as her sounding board through her first few days of adjustment to her new reality…and to make sure she had a bucket within arms reach at all times.

Maybe pregnancy becomes beautiful when the baby is bigger, you know when it looks like mommy simply swallowed a basketball for fun, but right now? Right now it seems pretty miserable, at least to me.

"Can't you just order these books off the internet?" I said looking down at the list.

"No, he'll see the package when it arrives and, besides, I want to start reading right away. I have questions. Stuff I need to know."

I sighed. Apparently, I had become the errand boy.

Maya certainly is presumptuous.

"Besides, I don't want him seeing it on our bank account."

Oh, I'm financier as well. How nice.

"Maya, don't you think you're carrying this a little far?"

"Polly, Nick is an investigator just like you! He'll figure it out if I don't take precautions."

I grinned at her. "Isn't not taking precautions what got you in this state?"

She grinned at me. "That and lots and lots of wild sex."

"Ugh! I didn't need to hear that."

"Consider it payback for us hearing you and Vera." She laughed.

I groaned. For the record, Vera and I had only gotten loud once but they'd never let me live it down. Vera they didn't say a word to, of course, but me…me they tortured unmercilously about it every chance they got. Like right then, for instance and the last thing I wanted to imagine were me and Vera in the throes of passion.

Not when she's on the other side of the Atlantic and I'm…well, not. I frowned. How many more months of her being in Europe did we have to go? I wasn't entirely sure since they had told her "up to nine months"…

Nine months?

"Is Vera going to be back before you have the baby?" I wasn't sure how far along Maya was or how long Vera was going to be away. It made it difficult to imagine the future.

"I really hope so, Polly. For your sake and mine." She wrapped her arm around my shoulder, leaned close to my ear and whispered, "Polly, why don't you just tell Vera the truth…that you didn't want to break up? Why are you torturing yourself like this? She's not happy either you know."

I grunted. I don't know that for sure and at this point I'm unwilling to find out. We need time and space.

"I don't feel like it's something I can do over the phone. When Phoenix realized how he felt about you did he call you?"

"Yes."

"Oh. I thought he said he went to see you."

"Oh, he did. He called me and told me he was coming and needed to tell me something important. He said he had to see me…oh. I see your point."

"I can't do it over the phone."

She nodded. I had swayed her to my point of view amazingly easily. I wondered if that was because she genuinely agreed with me or if it had something to do with the fact she seemed tired again. She pulled away from me and walked over toward the couch.

"Well, I'll be here when you get back." She said sitting down.

I blinked at her in confusion.

She seems to have forgotten that I'm not Nick. I'm not her husband or the father of her baby and, therefore, I don't take orders from her.

But she just met my incredulous look with a sweet smile. "Thank you, Polly. You're such a good friend. I'm going to take a nap." And with that she pulled her legs up on the couch and closed her eyes.

Ugh! What a lazy butt! No, wait…she's pregnant maybe that's not fair. Being knocked up makes women super tired right? Her body is constructing a baby out of legos or something even while she's sleeping, right? That takes a lot of energy, I guess.

She looked so peaceful and happy especially considering not twenty minutes before she had been upchucking. Her eyes were closed and her hands were placed on her belly as though she were already snuggling the baby though even with my extremely limited knowledge about them I was pretty sure the baby was no bigger than a peanut at this point.

I shook my head. Why were Phoenix and I such suckers for girls?

I grunted to myself.

Apparently, I'm taking a trip to the bookstore.

~xxxx~

Normally, I shopped at the family-owned used bookstore in my neighborhood, but for this I headed straight to the nearest mall. I hate the mall with a passion, but I figured the bookstore there would be big enough to have everything Maya wanted and the sooner I got her the books the sooner Maya would have something to occupy herself with besides talking a blue streak to me, sleeping, and throwing up.

I scanned the store and found the sign proclaiming the area devoted to "Parenting/Pregnancy" and I entered it for the first time in my life. It was a scary aisle. Everything there was in pastel.

I'll have to ask Vera if there is some reason people insist on surrounding babies by muted tones. Don't they actually like high contrast better?

Ugh! I was thinking about her again, while in the baby section no less. The irony did not escape me as I tried to focus my thoughts on something besides her and our break-up.

You're pathetic, Apollo. They're other fish in the sea, man, and besides she'll be back in less than a year. Don't stand here pining because she admitted she had dreams of starting a family with you someday. After what you did you're lucky she's still talking to you.

I was hugely lucky to have Vera as my friend and I tried to remind myself that there was no reason to rush into anything with any woman, especially considering how much "fun" I was having dealing with Maya at the moment. However, I knew Vera was different. Vera had impeccable manners. She would have said please and thank you and never would have just assumed I would drop everything to go run an errand for her. But that's Maya. She is entirely driven by impulse. I'm sure she must have ADD or something.

I looked at the spines of the books attempting to find the specific ones Maya had requested. I kept grabbing the wrong ones because they all had similar titles.

One book caught my eye. It was titled, Sharing the Gift: Placing Your Baby up for Adoption. I wondered if it might help me better understand my mother's decision to give me up, but I didn't even bother to examine it. If it were called Abandoning your Child to the Foster Care System: A How-To Guide then I would have picked it up for sure. I laughed at my own self-pitying joke and collected Maya's books.

I headed toward the checkout, but on the way I passed the comic book and manga section. I used to read quite a few comics when I was in jr. high, but I hadn't read any in years. I glanced over not expecting anything to appeal to me, but there it was drawing me in. It couldn't have been more perfect if it had had my name written on the cover of it. There was a manga with an incredibly kick-ass gigantic RED robot on the cover! I was quickly reverting back to my seventh grade self as men so often do in the presence of cars, cool toys, or hot chicks or in this case massive robots drawn in bold black lines. I was going to have to check that book out.

I love robots. I don't know what it is about them, but I have always loved robots. Some guys have an obsession with zombies or ninjas or pirates, but me it is big ole robots. I set the baby books down and picked up the manga and examined the illustration on the cover that looked like a cross between a medieval knight and a metallic penguin. I know, it sounds cheesetastic, but somehow they had pulled it off. The thing looked awesome. I allowed myself to become engrossed in the description on the back of the paperback.

I'm here. I may as well enjoy myself.

"Herr Forehead, I'd be more than happy to loan you that entire series if you're interested. It's quite good."

My eyes got wide.

Damn it. Klavier's here. There goes my fun.

"Oh, you've read it, huh?"

"Ja. It's very good. Very emotional. Don't let the poor description on the back and the cheesy slogan fool you. It is very high quality."

I nodded. I know almost as little about manga as I do about any other art form.

"It has a very sweet love story, too."

"Well, maybe I'll borrow it from you sometime…"

I put the manga back and out of habit picked up the pile of books I was purchasing.

Klavier leaned towards me, invading my space in that mildly intrusive way of his to take a peek at the books in my hands.

"Let's see what you picked out, today." His brows knitted together as he saw the baby books.

"Interesting choices, Herr Forehead." He looked concerned, genuinely concerned.

"They're for a friend."

"Has Trucy gotten herself in a bind?" He searched my eyes for signs of guilt.

"What? You don't think I? Klavier!" I whined his name. How could he think that?

"It seems plausible. You two do spend a lot of time together and I never said I thought her baby would be yours."

I squirmed under his gaze.

That's true. Why had I assumed that's what he meant? Must be because everybody always thinks she's my girlfriend.

"For the thousandth time, Klavier. I don't like Truce like that! She's not my girlfriend. I'm with Vera."

He raised an eyebrow, but remained silent.

"Ok, we're broken up right now…but…you know what I mean." I said sheepishly and then recovered. "ANYWAYS, they're for a friend who isn't Trucy. Ok? Is that ok with you?"

I was sounding defensive for some reason, but Klavier tended to do that to me. "Well, I can assure you that Fraulein Ema doesn't need information in that department."

Ema and Klavier had been dancing around being in a relationship with one another for as long as I'd known them. Honestly, I had no idea what was going on between them. All I knew was even though Ema claimed to hate his guts if they were alone together in his office I would not only knock before I entered but also give them thirty seconds before I opened the door. I didn't think I wanted to see what they were doing in there.

I groaned. "I have other female friends than just the two of them."

He smiled. "Of course you do, Herr Forehead. I was merely using my deductive reasoning skills. You know how hard they are to turn off."

What a load of crap. Ema does all his investigating. I'm not sure he can reason anything other than how to play a guitar.

"Herr Forehead, I did not mean to pry. I am merely interested in your life and your family. You are all very dear to me. As you can imagine I get lonely."

Oh, my God. Klavier is opening his heart to me in the middle of the bookstore. I hope no paparazzi are hiding behind the Arachnidman section listening to this.

"Look, I don't mean to be acting like a jerk. I'm just sworn to secrecy about this whole baby thing. It's not my kid. I'm just a friend."

He nodded and smiled. "Someday it will be. You are very lucky to have Vera."

"But-" I had been under the impression lately that he feared I was going to ask Ema out because he wouldn't leave the two of us alone together. He was always there like some kind of gnat making my crime scene investigations virtually impossible and making Ema even grouchier than usual, if that was even possible.

"Herr Forehead, Vera loves you and you love her. Everybody can see that." I glanced away embarrassed to have his penetrating eyes seeing so accurately into my heart.

"Klav?"

"Ja?"

"Do you think there are a ton of guys in Europe trying to get with her?"

"Ja. Of course. She is hot." He grinned widely at me. Leave it to a rock star to appraise a girl strictly on her looks.

I hung my head, my shoulders sagging. He placed his hand on them and leaned down to peer into my eyes.

"But do not worry. Vera likes you best. As I said you are very, very lucky. I find myself constantly jealous of you."

I attempted a smile. "Thanks, Klavier."

"I will bring these manga into my office. You can pick them up anytime and keep them as long as you like. I should be going…I'm meeting Ema for lunch. Tell your pregnant friend I wish her and the baby well."

And then he was gone leaving me with the feeling that even though it was just a chance meeting in the graphic novel section of a crappy mall bookstore, the conversation I had just had with him revealed more to me about who Klavier really was and how much we had in common than anything we had said to one another before. It was then I realized he was a better friend to me and to all of us than I had ever believed he could be.

Standing in line at the check out I found myself thinking that maybe I shouldn't get so mad at him for calling me Herr Forehead all the time.

I mean, when he isn't playing air guitar the guy's not entirely unpleasant.