Fear would have set in, had she not recognized the velvety hands that cupped her stomach.
She slowly pivoted in his arms, watching the way his chest dipped beneath his tank top. Down. Up. Down.
She stretched out a finger to lightly trace along the shape of his forehead. His cheek. Behind his ear. Down to his jaw.
Had she been able to memorize, she would want to memorize his face. The mess of curls that made up his bedhead.
He stirred and mumbled out a garbled, "Bren?"
"Shh," said Brenda.
"Mm," Dylan's lips lazily smacked together. "What time is it?"
"It's four-thirty."
"Four-thirty?" Dylan groaned and smashed a pillow over his face. "Woman, go back to sleep."
"But I'm not tired," said Brenda.
She had thought her best sleep had occurred in Dylan's hotel.
It had instead occurred in her own room.
In Dylan's arms, she felt protected.
"Okay." Quilted in sleep, his voice gifted Brenda with the tranquility she rarely grasped. "Then if my girls are up," he yawned, "guess I'm up."
Dylan moved to sit up. Brenda touched his arm.
"It's fine if you keep sleeping," she said.
"You sure?" he frowned.
She traced the creases of his frown.
"I'm sure. She's still sleeping, so her Daddy doesn't have to wake yet."
He gave an enervated, lopsided smile and crashed back against the bed, curling up with Brenda's pillows.
She liked the sight of him in her bed.
But she couldn't let him get too close. She couldn't fall for a man who loved another. She couldn't fall for anyone, not when she had to focus on being able to function on her own.
Dressing was a chore. Nothing fit. Anything that did fit wasn't appropriate for the frigid weather.
Standing in just her bra and a pair of jeans she had tied together with a rubber band, Brenda examined herself in her floor-length mirror.
It seemed to Brenda that she had waited forever to see the contours of her daughter and now, Brenda's stomach had expanded past her waistline.
She wondered how her daughter would be able to fit with so little room to grow.
Brenda padded into the kitchen, her steps muted by fuzzy slippers. She pulled a recipe book off of a kitchen shelf and began to gather ingredients, intent on cooking for her family herself for once.
Pie crust. Spinach. Cheese. Ham.
She could do this.
She could.
Finding Brenda in the middle of a rage, Valerie had to duck from a flying carton of eggs.
"What is it?" asked Val. "What happened?"
"I'm just sick of not being able to do things on my own!" shouted Brenda. "I'm going to be a mother, and I can't even cook a fucking breakfast."
"Lots of people can't cook breakfast," said Val.
Her words hardly registered.
"I wanted to make a quiche for all of you, but I forgot to put in the fucking eggs. Then I tried to make waffles and forgot the fucking vegetable oil. Then I fucking went and burnt toast! I can't do anything right. I'm so knackered of being a burden to everyone."
"Hey, hey." Valerie lifted her hands as she neared Brenda. "Babe, I'm proud of you."
"How? I just ruined three different breakfasts and now we have nothing to eat."
"But you didn't burn your wrist like last time, did you?" said Val, putting the tip of her finger on Brenda's hand. "Besides," she added offhandedly, "there's always cereal."
"I broke the eggs," said Brenda tearfully.
"There are so many ways I could make that sentence mean something else."
Brenda laughed through her half-smile.
"I see a bit of a smile," said Val. "Can I see the one that almost won you the Little Miss Minneapolis pageant?"
"I was in a pageant?" asked Brenda.
"When we were eight. We both were. I hurled all over a Judge. Neither of us made it to the finals, but you would've easily won had Lacey Greenley's parents not bought her way to the top."
"You're so mean to poor little Lacey." Brenda's developing smile tripled in wattage.
"Look, sorry to say this in front of your kid, but I'm being nice when I say Lacey Greenley was a bitch."
"You say everyone is a bitch."
"Well, a lotta people are." Valerie cleaned up the cracked eggshells. "We take care of you because we love you, Bren. You, and that baby. It's not an obligation. Definitely not a burden. I mean, shit, I wish I had people to wait on me hand and foot." Val began to rummage around the kitchen. "Now sit your ass down and I'll make you some French toast. Doesn't that sound nice? Before you complain, I want to make you French toast."
Dylan found Brenda in immensely higher spirits, asking for more stories about her childhood with Valerie.
"What's the plan?" he asked, rubbing a towel over his damp hair.
Brenda thanked whomever that the only bare part of Dylan was his chest.
"Would you put on a damn shirt?" asked Val.
"Thought Bren might like what she sees," said Dylan cheekily. "What do you think, Bren?"
Fuck, he had nice form. Not too packed. Not too slim.
"I think we should get going soon," said Brenda with more calm in her voice than she possessed.
"Yes, we should," said Dylan.
"Not today," said Val. "I'm taking over the drop-offs and pick-ups today. Bren and I need to go shopping."
"We do?" asked Brenda as she finished her tea.
"Babe, you might be the stylish person I know aside from me, but that rubberbanded jeans look doesn't work for anyone."
"Rubberbanded jeans?" Dylan pulled on a jumper he had left slung over the back of a chair and walked closer to see for himself. "Bren, what -"
"My clothes won't fit," she said by way of explanation.
"Hence the shopping," said Val. "It's time. Gotta get you new clothes, Mama."
"I agree with Val," said Dylan. "I'll give you my card. You can go wild."
"I can't take your money," said Brenda.
"Our money," he said. "What's mine is yours."
"But I -"
"Nice to know some things haven't changed."
"She won't accept it, but I will," said Val. "When a guy offers you free money, you take it," she told Brenda.
"What if I don't know him?" asked Brenda.
"You still take it," said Val. "Then you run like hell."
"Uh, no guy should be offering Brenda free money but me," said Dylan.
"What if Steve were to offer it?" asked Brenda.
"Then you take him for all he's worth," said Dylan.
He smiled in response to Brenda's laugh and opened the metal rubbish bin to discard his empty bag of coffee beans.
"That's a lot of broken eggs," said Dylan curiously.
"I broke them," Brenda confessed.
Dylan looked alarmed as he turned to Val.
"There was a little incident earlier, but we took care of it," said Val.
"Okay, I'm not going back to sleep next time," said Dylan.
"About that," said Brenda. "May I talk to you?" She glanced at Valerie and then back to Dylan. "Alone?"
He followed Brenda back to the bedroom.
"What's up?" he asked, taking a seat on the bed.
"You were in my bed this morning," she said bluntly.
"Ah, yeah."
Dylan rubbed at the side of his neck. Brenda wondered why she thought the action insanely alluring, and concluded her hormones must have kicked up a notch overnight.
"Sorry if I overstepped," he said. "You were, uh, pretty adamant I stay, but if it's too scary for you, then -"
"I liked waking up to you," she cut him off.
"You did?" he asked, startled.
"It's your snores," she explained. "I was right. They do drown out a train."
Dylan's face scrunched into a mocking expression, but he smiled nonetheless.
"I don't think it's the best idea for you to be in my bed, though," said Brenda.
"No." Dylan eyed the floor. "Probably not."
"It won't help you get Val."
"Bren, I told you I don't want Val."
"Even if that's true, it's probably better if we don't share a bed."
"If you think that's best."
"But we could share the room, if you wanted. And in the new place, we could get two beds."
"Two beds in the same room, huh?" asked Dylan, considering the idea. "How very Victorian."
"Not just Victorian," said Brenda. "You see it in the classic sitcoms. Parents did it for decades."
"Married couples did it for decades."
She ignored that.
"Plus," she added, "it'd be better than the couch."
"It'd definitely be better than the couch." Dylan cracked a smile. "It'd make it easier to get to you at night, or if you need something for the baby."
"It would. You might even be able to calm me before the screams start."
"You sure you don't want to think this over more first?" Dylan traced his finger over Brenda's knuckle. "'Cause you're gonna have a hell of a time kicking me out if you let me share a room with you."
"Why would I want to kick you out?"
"When you know more things. You'll definitely wanna kick me out."
Brenda thought it over. "Then we'll try it out and see how it goes."
"Take it one step at a time?" asked Dylan, adding, for some reason Brenda didn't understand, "little lady."
"One step at a time," she said.
Dylan said that worked for him, and then offered for Brenda to sort through his clothes.
She found a shirt that fit but failed to find bottoms that didn't drag.
Dylan was far too tall.
Brenda searched Brandon's drawers and found a pair of jeans that almost fit.
Dylan tried to give Brenda his credit card. Brenda refused. Dylan gave it to Valerie with implicit instructions that Val was to only use it for Brenda's needs. Val asked how Dylan would know the difference when he received the statement. Dylan said he would know.
And, he added to Valerie, keep the car at the speed limit.
Val said Dylan was a fine one to talk. Dylan said he knew that and Val could go whatever limit she wanted, as long as his girls weren't around.
"You flirt with Dylan a lot," said Brenda as she swung her seatbelt over her lap.
"What?" asked Val incredulously. "I do not."
"You do," Brenda insisted.
"It ain't flirting, honey," said Val. "It's not looking a gift horse in the mouth."
"A what in the what?" asked Brenda.
"A gift horse in the mouth," Val repeated. "It's something your grandma always said. When you grow up with your parents one bankruptcy away from welfare, you never turn down free cash."
"Okay, but I think you should date him."
Valerie sputtered out the swig she'd taken from her water bottle. "Date Dylan?" She chortled. "I don't think so." Throwing the car into drive, Val muttered something incoherent under her breath.
"Why not?" asked Brenda. "He seems a fine guy to date."
"Then you date him," said Val. "A. You've got the history, b. you're his Baby Mama so he already dotes on you. And C, he's crazy in love with you. He's always trying to hang around."
"That's because of the baby," said Brenda.
"How do you figure?" asked Val.
"Well, he's known about the baby from the beginning, hasn't he? So he's probably been protective over that, and then became even more protective when he realized she's his. It's just primal instinct, Val. I don't need a working brain to know that. Men have been doing this for centuries."
"First of all, don't diss your brain. It's working overtime right now and doesn't deserve criticism. Secondly, Dylan said he realized you were having his baby?"
"He said he didn't put two and two together to realize, until I slipped."
"I see," said Val. "I'll have to talk with him."
"So you will date him?"
"No."
"Then will you date David?"
"Hell no."
"But I thought you two liked each other," said Brenda.
"So did I, babe." Val parked. "So did I."
"What about Steve?" queried Brenda. "He doesn't seem like much, but maybe it's one of those on-the-surface things. He might not be so bad to date."
"Why do you want me to date someone so much?"
"Because you deserve to have a little fun. You're in your twenties. Early twenties. You shouldn't need to be bogged down, taking care of me."
"What did I tell you at breakfast?"
"Fine," sighed Brenda before getting out of the car for her routine.
She asked her occupational therapist if they could focus primarily on preparing meals and explained what had happened with the eggs.
Brenda frequently did well in practice.
It was applying those techniques in her daily life that she struggled with.
Just as she struggled with the rack upon rack of maternity clothes, and their price tags.
"We've got to find somewhere cheaper," said Brenda. "I can't spend this much on clothes I might only wear one time."
"We've got the card of a millionaire." Val held up the shiny plastic, spinning it between her fingers. "It's like having the world at your perfectly polished feet."
"Dylan's a millionaire?" Brenda accidentally swiped a dress off of its hanger. She bent to pick it up, but Valerie got to it first.
"He didn't tell you?" asked Val. "Why'd you think the cons stole his money? How do you think he bought the store?"
"You said grandiose. I was thinking thousands. Possibly hundreds of thousands. Not millions. I figured he had taken out a loan."
"Dylan McKay doesn't take out loans. The boy's got millions. And now they're your millions."
"I can't take his millions. People are gonna think I got knocked up just to get his money."
"Bren, I'll give you a pass because you're having to learn everything all over, but you'll eventually realize that caring what everyone else thinks is fucking moronic. You learned that before, and you'll learn it again. I have to remind myself of it, from time to time."
"I'm still not buying a three hundred dollar dress."
"Stubborn ass," said Val. "Alright, come on, we'll go somewhere else. But I'm not letting the day end without getting you new clothes, so if you need to suck it up on the price, then suck it up."
The majority of Brenda's clothing was bought in a vintage boutique located a block away from the library. Valerie wasn't overly pleased at being dragged into the library when Brenda charged in there to borrow a heap of books.
She set them before Dylan, who looked up from where he sat discussing shop business with David and Steve.
"Bren?" asked Dylan. "What's with the books?"
"I heard you're a millionaire," she said. "And Val tried to get me to buy a three hundred dollar maternity dress because of it, so here's books on budgeting your finances for both you and her. There's even a book in there about how to keep cons from stealing your wealth."
Steve made a guttural sound akin to a sizzling pan full of scrambling eggs. David let out a proper belly laugh.
"She told you I'm a millionaire, huh?" asked Dylan, fighting his amusement. He opened himself towards Brenda, who against her better judgment, sat on his lap.
"I didn't get pregnant for your money," she said.
"I know you didn't." He kissed the beauty mark that sat close to her eye.
"But people will think I did," said Brenda as she tried to conceal how much his affection had affected her.
"I don't give a," Dylan covered her stomach, "fuck what people think. For as long as I've known you, Bren - which is a long-ass time - you've never cared about my money. You're one of the only people I know who's never asked me for any. I'm giving my money to you, willingly." He shifted Brenda to face the other men as his arms crossed diagonally over her chest and his cheek greeted her hair. "Now, we were just discussing the layout for the shop. Steve here was repulsed by the very thought of helping to choose paint colors."
"That's a chick thing," said Steve.
"And David's color choices suck," added Dylan.
"Sad, but true," said David. "Plus, your baby daddy won't let us paint the whole shop black."
"You should paint it like the ocean," said Brenda. "I was thinking that might be a good theme for the nursery."
"That's the perfect theme for the nursery," said Dylan, absentmindedly stroking Brenda's stomach. "Just so you know, I'm happy to plan things, too."
"I can't help it," she said. "Ideas just come to me."
"You better let Dylan help with the theme," said Steve. "He's the worst at choosing furniture."
"You've never even had to choose furniture, Sanders."
"But if I did, I would've done a whole lot better than your old futon."
"Old futon?" asked Brenda.
"In my old place," said Dylan, watching her cautiously in that way he tended to do when he hoped a memory might spring up but didn't want Brenda to see his hope. "I had a futon."
"Yeah, and it was ugly as shit." Valerie entered with several shopping bags, along with one box.
"I told you I could get those," said Brenda.
"And I told you there was no way I'd let you, or I'd never hear the end of it from your baby daddy," said Val.
"It's true," said Dylan. "That box must weigh five hundred pounds, the way Val's hunching over."
"It's just things for the nursery," said Brenda.
"Wasn't today supposed to be about shopping for you?" asked Dylan.
"I did get things for me, and then I found things for her."
"Maybe we oughta work on your own budgeting," he said. "Except instead of budgeting, it'd be a how to on spending when you're practically a millionaire's wife."
"Not a wife."
"I said, practically."
"There's nothing wrong with having good financial sense."
"You sound like your father."
"I do?"
David jumped up to get the box from Valerie. "Hey, Val," he said warily. "Been a bit."
"Dylan, tell your friend it hasn't been long enough," said Val as she pointedly ignored David.
"Val, you gotta talk to him sometime if you're gonna work on this project together," said Dylan.
"We aren't working on the project right now, are we?" asked Val. "He's a guest in my home and, since he's a guest, I don't need to speak with him."
"For fuck's sake, Val!" said David. "Isn't there anything I can do to get you to talk to me normally again?"
"Ooh, don't open that can of worms," said Steve.
"Steve, tell him I think there's a glacier not far from here where he can fall into," said Val. "If he lets me push him into it, even better."
"Oh, so you're talking to Steve again, but not me?" asked David through his blatant vexation.
Valerie swung to face David, looked him straight in the eye, and said, "Steve isn't the one I made the asinine mistake in trusting with every fucking thing. Everything! Including Johnny!"
Val took off with Brenda's bags, leaving a crestfallen David in her wake.
"Who's Johnny?" asked Dylan and Steve.
"What did you do?" asked Brenda, flabbergasted.
But David wouldn't answer either question.
Steve wouldn't answer Brenda's. Nor would Valerie; nor even Dylan, which began to frustrate Brenda.
Brandon didn't know himself, or so he claimed.
Since no one would tell her, Brenda decided she would simply have to figure out for herself what had happened between Valerie Malone and David Gold.
Gold. That could be a nice color for the shop. They could paint wooden cartons gold, so that digging for CD's would be reminiscent of digging for treasure.
She would have to remember to mention it to Dylan.
She liked that he cared about her input.
But she didn't like that he wouldn't let her lift anything, in both the shop and the nursery.
It also didn't help that when David answered his mobile with an oh hey and an additionally whispered it's Kel before saying he'd have to call back later, Brandon competed with the structure of a surfboard. Dylan took on the composure of a brewing tea kettle.
Brenda wondered what a kel was. Her dictionary didn't hold the answer.
She asked Valerie about David, slipping in a question about kel. Of the former, all Val would share was that she didn't know a David. Of the latter, Val said that kel, short for Kelly, was the sister of the David she didn't know, as well as Steve's and Brandon's ex.
"Steve and Brandon?" asked Brenda.
"Yup," said Val. "She dated both of them, but I'm not about to go there with all the guys I've dated and/or fucked."
Brenda wondered if Kelly was the ex of Brandon's.
"She's also my archnemesis," said Val.
"You have an archnemesis?"
"I do when it's an ultra bitch like Kelly Taylor."
"What's an ultra bitch?"
Valerie explained that there were different levels of bitch: semi, regular, mega, and ultra.
Brenda didn't know if Valerie's explanation was concocted or proven, but she didn't feel like arguing.
"Does Kelly have her good moments?" said Val. "Sure, sometimes she's less annoying than other times, occasionally she can actually be relatively nice, but then she's right back to another ultra bitch moment. I wouldn't mind her so much if she actually owned that she's a rich bitch, instead of playing the victim all the fucking time. Literally. Girl's been in a hell of a lot of shit."
"If she dated Brandon and Steve, did I know her?" asked Brenda.
"'Matter of fact, you did. Who knows why after having a best friend like me, but at one point, Kelly was your best friend."
"Was?" asked Brenda. "What happened?"
"Summer sublet," said Val.
That perplexed Brenda more.
"What is she to Dylan?" asked Brenda. "He looked really mad when she called. I almost thought he was gonna throw something. Has she been a bitch to him?"
"I'm not even gonna touch that. You'll have to ask Dicklyn."
"Why do you call him Dicklyn?"
"Feel free to ask him that, too."
So Brenda decided she would.
xx
How fucking difficult was it to cook a chicken?
He'd learnt to make pasta, the kind that came out of a box. Easy. Fill a pot with water. Place it on the stove. Salt the water; seasoned salt was his preference. If making spaghetti or linguine, don't halve the pasta noodles. Put in noodles once pot is boiling. Stir occasionally until complete.
But cooking a rotisserie chicken was a fucking nightmare.
"Dammit, B! You're supposed to help me!"
"I am helping you! I'm getting the spices."
"You are not. You're flirting. Get your ass back here."
Brandon returned to their station. "I was not flirting," he said. "I was merely asking Sasha which spices were the best ones to flavor the chicken with."
"Sure you were," said Dylan.
He was swathed in a patterned apron and, though his cooking lessons with Brandon had gone relatively decently at first, Dylan had soon realized he didn't know what the fuck he was doing.
"Does Bren even like chicken?" asked Brandon, helping to season the chicken. "I thought she's a vegetarian."
"She was 'til Mina introduced her to duck and Shane made her try lamb," said Dylan. "Your sister's go-to lunch was lamb kebabs, with chips. She'd dip her chips in garlic aioli."
"Lamb on wooden sticks?"
"That's American kebabs. These are more like gyros."
"Haven't had many gyros."
"If we were in London right now, I guarantee you Bren would be craving kebabs like crazy. Besides," Dylan skimmed the recipe given to them by their instructor and bent the wings of the chicken for Brandon to tie its legs, "if Bren doesn't want chicken, my kid will. It's my kid. Just a matter of time 'til Bren starts craving a megaburger and I have to fly across a couple ponds to get it for her."
"Pretty sure megaburgers don't do well on planes. There's got to be an easier way to cook a damn chicken."
"If there was, we would have done it by now, wouldn't we?"
"Grilled chicken lunch meat?"
"I'm not feeding my kid grilled chicken lunch meat for dinner."
"You've come a long way from - what did Bren used to call your dinner of choice?"
"'Frozen lard and hydrogenated bean oil,'" said Dylan, chuckling as he shook his head. "I used to get so pissed with her for it too, but now I'd give anything for Bren to remember when she'd sit there in the old bungalow, arguing about the inadequacy of frozen burritos." He popped the chicken into the preheated oven. "You're so fucking lucky she doesn't have to fight to remember you."
"Remind me of that next time Steve mentions a moment we were all in and Bren doesn't know it." Brandon began tossing the greens of a salad. "Val said you told Bren that you didn't put two and two together about the baby being yours."
Dylan confirmed Valerie's statement.
"Why?" asked Brandon. "Isn't that lying to her?"
"Not really," said Dylan. "If I'd paid closer attention, I could've noticed things. Like Bren constantly asking for ice-cream. I just figured it was a request for her normal ice-cream fix, coinciding with Val's cravings."
"You didn't know, man. You should tell her that."
"Bren thinks I've known about our baby all along. If I tell her I didn't, she'll want to know why I said I did. If I tell her the truth about that, then she'll know the lie you and Val weaved."
"So why don't you tell on us?"
"Because Bren isn't strong enough to sever her connections with you and Val. I won't make her think she has to choose between her child's father and her siblings."
"Not that it helps any, but Bren not being ready is exactly why I started the lie in the first place."
"I thought Val did."
"Technically, yeah, but she started getting cold feet once Silver showed. Speaking of Silver," Brandon chopped at a carrot in swift motion, "Val also said Bren was asking about Kelly."
"Fuck." Dylan pushed back his hair. "I knew that would come up."
"You haven't told her?"
"I was going to. Bren asked me to tell her everything bad that has ever happened in our relationship. I figured I'd go chronologically. Started with missing our first date."
"Standing her up."
"Missing it."
"Well, Val says she told Bren to ask you about Kelly, so doesn't look like chronologically's gonna work."
"Yeah." Dylan's fingernails tautened into his palms. "And everything was going so fucking well. As well as it can be, that is."
"You gonna tell her?"
"I told her I'd tell her everything. I meant it. We all agreed we wouldn't bring lies into our household. So I'm not keeping anything from Bren. If she wants to know, she'll know."
"What are you gonna do when you do tell her?"
"Hope like hell my girl still lets me touch her."
Dylan sat enshrouded in nerves as he waited for Brenda to walk to the car.
Would his plan to get her back blow up in smoke? Would she listen to his confessions, and then tell him she hated him and never wanted to see his face?
She'd see his face, because she'd let him raise their child.
But would that be the only reason?
Would they divorce before they married?
It seemed Dylan's piñata stomach would tear apart by the time Brenda opened the passenger door.
"How was it?" he asked, maintaining as normal a tone as possible.
"Great!" Brenda tossed her satchel in the backseat. "Alina thinks I can get down to once-a-week sessions soon."
"Bren, that's fantastic!" Dylan reached over to help Brenda with her seatbelt. "Hungry?"
"Famished."
"How do you feel about going out tonight?"
"I think I could do that. How'd it go at the cooking class?"
"It's fufrickin' hard to cook a chicken, apparently."
"Fufrickin?"
"She might have ears."
"You are too cute." Brenda dotted a jagged line down Dylan's nose. "But if she does, auntie Val's already spoilt her innocence."
"I'm gonna have to have a talk with Val about watching her language around our kid."
Even Brenda's giggles couldn't cure Dylan's anxiety. It had been harrowing enough to tell Brenda the first time he had been with Kelly and now, he had the added bonuses of everything he'd said whilst Brenda was in fucking recovery.
But she had to know.
All of it. Everything.
If they were gonna make it work, she had to know.
Dylan picked at his seafood as Brenda twirled her pasta around her fork.
"What do you think about Italy?" asked Brenda as she took a bite of her dinner.
"One of the best places on the planet. We loved it when we went," he said. "Why do you ask?"
Alina had told Brenda about her father's home of Greece and the Mediterranean, leading Brenda to ask Alina about other countries Alina had personal experience in.
"Do you think you could live there?" asked Brenda.
"Hundred percent," said Dylan. "Tuscany. Toscana. Near the snow for you and the surf for me. Or both of us, if I get you back on the board. Good culture scene and plenty of legends to pique her interest." Dylan lifted the carafe from the table to pour water into his glass. He took a sip, then asked, "Would you like us to live there?"
"I'm considering it, once I'm given the all-clear to move. I wanted to hear your thoughts first."
"If we could move there today, I would."
"But it's known for its wine, isn't it? Neither of us can drink."
"Plenty of other things to do."
"It's weird to be able to eat pasta." Brenda circled her fork around her plate. "When morning sickness was really bad, I was convinced I'd never be able to look at it again."
Dylan asked when the morning sickness had stopped. Brenda said it still came on occasionally, but that it had largely ceased in the beginning of her second trimester.
Dylan yearned to know more. When Brenda had first felt their daughter move. How it had felt. Her first craving, and who had satisfied it for her. Who had held her hair back at the toilet; Val, usually. The first scan. The early days. The moment she found out.
Everything he'd missed.
Everything he might never have the chance to get with Brenda. Everything he ached to get with her.
She answered his every question.
They wandered the cobblestone streets of the medieval town, Dylan's arm around Brenda's shoulders and Brenda's hand in the back pocket of Dylan's jeans for warmth.
"When you're up for it," said Dylan, swinging her other hand in his, "I'd like to take the two of you around the country. Maybe across the sea or down to the continent."
"That sounds lovely."
They stopped in the Brunberg confectionery for chocolates for Brenda, and then walked in silence around the varicolored buildings until Brenda sat on a bench near the lake.
"I need to ask you something," she said.
Here it comes, thought Dylan.
His leather gloves did little to dry the sweat on his fingers.
"Ask away," he said, sitting beside her.
"Why does Val call you Dicklyn?"
"Besides the fact that I can be an ass?" Dylan looked out at the lake before facing Brenda. "She's saying I think with my," he gestured in the event that their daughter overheard.
"How do you do that?"
"I've been with a lot of chicks, Bren. A lot."
"Before me?" she asked.
He nodded.
"After me?"
Another nod, as he told Brenda an after didn't exist.
"What is Kelly Taylor to you?"
He couldn't cry, not when he didn't deserve to do so. "You really wanna know?"
"Yes. Val says she's a bitch. An ultra bitch, I think she said. Brandon used to date her?"
"He did."
"And Steve?"
It went on like that, until Brenda asked, "But what is she to you?"
"She's my," Dylan swallowed down a tetherball that spun back up and threatened to choke him, "she's my ex."
"Like Toni?"
"Sort of."
"So you were with Kelly while we were apart?"
"Yes," said Dylan, "but also - also when we weren't."
Brenda inquired what Dylan meant by that.
"I mean when we were in high school, our senior year, you and I were together, but we were apart for the summer. And I - I cheated on you." A powder keg had joined the tetherball. "With her."
"Summer sublet," said Brenda quietly, to Dylan's puzzlement.
He told her it all. How they had lied to her for months. How she had discovered the relationship when they had randomly run into each other in a restaurant.
He didn't tell her about Rick.
He didn't think it the appropriate time to tell Brenda that she had also cheated.
The situations weren't comparable, but Brenda had wanted to know how she had hurt him, too.
"I see," said Brenda. "And that was in high school?"
"We had an on-again, off-again relationship in the early years of college. Broke up I don't know how many times. Never should've gotten together to begin with. We're awful to each other."
"Is there anything I should know about?"
"I tried to convince her we were soulmates." Dylan's entire stature contorted as he grimaced. "Pretended I wrote her a book. I underwent dream hypnotherapy when you moved to London and came out of it thinking Kel and I had been married in another life. Longer. That's, ah; that's when she was first dating your brother. Brandon and I; we kinda - no, not kinda. We did fight over her. I told him Kelly and I were connected in ways he didn't understand. We weren't. She chose herself, but it was obvious she actually wanted your brother."
Brenda digested the information. "Is that why we got back together?"
"Not even close," said Dylan. "First, I married Toni, and then, we got back together."
"Then is that why we got back together?"
"It's what brought me to London, but it is absolutely not the reason we got together," he insisted. He loathed the idea of their love and the conception of their child to be devalued as exes in a rebound relationship created from his grief over Toni.
"Were you with anyone while we were apart the second time?" asked Brenda.
He almost corrected her to say third.
Fourth, if their temporary breakup before the summer of sophomore year counted.
"I was."
"We aren't even together. I shouldn't've pried."
"No. We're having a baby, Bren. You deserve to know everything."
"Then I'm listening."
"I tried to get you out of my system, the only way I knew how." He breathed out. "So yeah, I was with a lotta chicks after I left London. A lot. Dated Gina Kincaid for a bit, on and off. That was a mistake. And -"
Fuck, he thought he could do it.
"And?"
"And I; God, Bren, I'm so sorry." His shoulders quavered uncontrollably.
"Sorry? For what?"
"I - I chased after Kelly. And I," fuck, it was like watching Brenda leave for the tour all over again, "I - I slept with her."
Brenda sat rigidly against the bench. "Is that all?" she said in the voice she'd had when she asked Dylan how he knew her name.
"Should we take a break?" Dylan's suggestion reeked of apprehension, driven by the fear that he had said too much too soon whilst simultaneously wanting to get it all out in the open where it belonged. "Return to this later?"
"You said I deserve to know everything."
"You do."
"Then finish what you've started. Is that all?" she repeated with gravitas.
"I wish."
He told her about Battleship, of the erasure of their connection.
And the two years.
"So this baby isn't yours." Brenda spoke impassively, mien devoid of emotion as if she were a monotoned meteorologist reading off the week's weather. "You lied to me."
"No!" The powder keg detonated. The tetherball strangled. Jagged shrapnel scattered within his chest. "Our daughter is very much mine. I lied to Kelly, not to you."
"You did lie to me. You lied when you let me think you care. You lied when you let me start to trust you."
"Bren, I swear -" he began.
"Answer me one question," she said.
"Any - anything."
"Battleship. When you slept with her. Did all that happen before the train? Before I knew about the baby?"
Seven thousand armies plunged their swords into Dylan's trachea, twisting their jeweled handles until every blood vessel had been drained. "It was after," he managed. "But I - I didn't know. About any of it."
"Fuck you," said Brenda as she stood from the bench.
"Bren!" He leapt up and reached out for her hand.
"Don't touch me!" she screamed. "Brandon told me. Val told me. Even you told me. You are a tosser. You're the biggest tosser of them all. You warned me I wouldn't want to have anything to do with you. You're right. I don't. And I'm glad I don't remember you. I hope I never remember you."
Hope. It brought cheer and gloom. It mitigated tensions, and it stung worse than a swarming beehive.
"Brenda, please." Dylan unleashed more emotion than he had upon hearing her voicemails. "I love you."
"No you don't," she said. "You don't treat someone you love like this. I don't think you ever loved me."
"I did! I do!"
Dylan stepped forwards. Brenda stepped backwards.
"That's - that's it, then?" He clung to the bench. "I broke our family? You want me to move out?"
"I won't do that to my child. If you are her father, she has every right to have you in her life, including as she's developing."
Brenda fought welling tears of her own. Dylan wanted to hold her. Wanted to make her pain vanish.
"But," she said, "if it doesn't have to do with her, you won't be in mine because clearly, I never mattered much to you."
"You're the only thing that matters to me. Our family is all that matters to me."
"And I don't want your fucking money. You can keep it all. Give it to Kelly."
"I don't want to give it to Kelly."
"Then throw it in the fucking river, for all I care. I hope you treat Val better than you've treated me."
"I don't want Val!"
"You don't know what you want."
"I know exactly what I want. Italy. With you. And our child."
Brenda squinched her eyes. She pressed the flexion crease of her wrist against her forehead.
"Baby?" chanced Dylan, worried she had a migraine. He shuffled closer. "Does your head hurt? Should I - should I call your doctor? Is it your blood pressure?"
"Back the fuck away from me!" Brenda thundered. "You said you told this Kelly person you have connected with two people in your life. Two. Kelly. And Toni. Why then should I believe you when you claim we have a connection now? Why should I believe you are my daughter's father?"
"She - she is mine."
"Can you prove it?"
Falling off a bucking bull onto a craggy cliff would have been less agonizing.
"Wha - what?"
"Can you prove she is?"
He lost all feeling in his limbs.
"You want me to - you want her paternity tested?"
"If that's how you can prove it."
Niagara Falls was arid in comparison. "I swear to you," Dylan sniveled, "I swear on everything we've ever been that I would not lie about something like this. We don't need a fucking test to know that is our little girl." He pointed; first, to Brenda's abdomen and then, between them. "Ours," he stressed.
"Why not; you've lied about everything else. To me. To that Kelly woman. Probably to the Gina one, too. Do you get your satisfaction from lying to women you've fucked? Do you enjoy being a Dicklyn?"
"You - you - fuck! Brenda, please just listen -"
"Listen? To you?" Her chilling laugh addled him. "Why should I? For more falsities? How do I know you aren't secretly glad about my memory loss so you can manipulate my memories, the way you manipulated yours? How can I trust I am not just an obligation to you? A burden you would otherwise discard if I weren't pregnant?"
"God no! Baby, I - you are not -" Brenda began to talk over him, but Dylan pressed on. "You have never been - I was a fucking bonehead; we do have -"
"I am carrying your baby, allegedly. I am not your baby. I don't know how it worked with your other girlfriends, but I can't be bought with your millions. I will never be your baby. I will never trust the world's biggest tosser."
Unable to come up with a counter response, Dylan managed to stutter out a question. Could he take her home?
"I don't accept lifts from twatwaffles," Brenda shot out.
Languages. Vocabulary. Diction. Dylan had always found words, ways to communicate to a level his mother often referred to as an old soul. He had achieved fluency in three languages. He knew bits of others.
He no longer possessed the ability to speak. Sputtering out filler words and garbled protests, he once more attempted to approach Brenda.
He received a violent shove to his chest.
In his upset, Dyan lost his footing and knocked his shoulder against the bench's rough texture. By the time he scrambled up from the sidewalk, Brenda had disappeared in the throng of passerby.
He searched for her, to no avail.
Dylan contemplated returning home - to the apartment, he corrected himself.
His home had always been, and would always be, Brenda.
It had just taken him longer than it should have to realize it.
The still evening had grayed. Ominous clouds bunched up ahead, as if the skies themselves were mocking Dylan's agony.
He whipped out his phone. No, said Valerie, Brenda hadn't been home. And, added Val furiously, what the fuck did you do to make her run?
I told her about Kelly, he answered, then hung up.
Dylan ignored his smarting shoulder as he rang the hotel concierge, in the event that Brenda had dropped into his former suite to sleep through the train. Andrea. David at the shop. Steve at his apartment. Brandon, who received the same terse response Dylan had given Val. Alina. Brenda's occupational therapist. The library, forgetting it had closed for the night. Every place in the town Brenda loved.
His gut told him to try the hospitals. Dylan shamed his gut and told it he would know if Brenda had returned to a hospital.
Spotting the bookshop where he had found her, he darted inside. Searched through every row. Stumbled through a broken fourth language to ask the shopkeeper if he had seen Brenda, until the shopkeeper assured Dylan in perfect English that his attempt was appreciated but unnecessary.
His search proving fruitless, Dylan collapsed against the shop window.
Someone gave him a coin.
He must have appeared as haggard as he felt.
What were the signs of a heart attack? Was he having one? Or had Brenda pulverized his heart?
He gave a derisive snort at the consistency in their relationship. Sprinting. It had started with Brenda, jogging with hair she believed to be the result of a bad dye job. It had been Brenda again, dashing down a sidewalk.
When it wasn't Brenda sprinting, it was Dylan.
Sprinting opened a chasm every damn time, but Brenda sprinting with an attached component of Dylan was something else entirely.
Did Brenda know how to get home on her own?
It petrified him where she could have gone.
Petrified him further that she didn't have a mobile to ring incessantly.
She didn't get into a cab. She wouldn't do that. Bus? Did she get on the bus? No; she didn't bring change. No use considering the station. Not the airport; she won't have a ticket. She had to have gone on foot. But where?
Fucking hell! Dammit, God, please let me find my girls.
Dylan had known it wouldn't be easy to tell her. He knew Brenda's words would be a blow.
But this? Brenda thinking he didn't care? Thinking she didn't matter in his life? Thinking he'd tried to buy her love? That he'd lied that he cared? Lied about being their child's father? He had done that. He had caused her to think like that.
And Dylan loathed himself for it.
He'd had the opportunity to help Brenda remember. She didn't want to remember him. He couldn't make her remember if she didn't want to remember.
If she thought he was using her amnesia to his advantage.
If she thought he was glad for her amnesia.
She'll say things that hurt you.
Brandon's words rolled as a flashing drive-in marquee through Dylan's head.
Because she can no longer control what she says.
Hurt was an understatement.
His actions, his words had brought it all on. Some would call that the wrath of a divine being. Reaping what he'd sown. Others would call it karma. The universe's payback for Dylan's ongoing ill manner. Still others would say he didn't deserve Brenda, or their child.
He didn't care about others. He knew he didn't deserve his family.
That didn't make him want them any less.
Didn't make him love them any less.
If he could get Brenda to trust once more that he was the father, then Dylan would still be allowed to touch Brenda's stomach for their child. He wouldn't be permitted to hold her hand. Wouldn't be permitted to kiss her hair or forehead. No more holding her. No more dancing with her. No more seats where she belonged, on his lap.
She'd wince when he touched her stomach, as though mere contact with his skin charred hers.
Chekov and music wasn't going to solve this.
He feared it couldn't be solved.
He'd had the opportunity to give his child the family he'd never had. The family he'd always wanted. Two parents; she'd have two parents.
Apart. Separated. Joint custody. Stepparent. Stepsiblings. Half-siblings, on her maternal side. A mother who loathed her father, but desperately attempted to conceal it. A stepfather who Dylan would want to gut like a haddock every time the man stepped near his kid.
And his Brenda. He'd have to watch her fall in love with another. Their kid would skip down the aisle as the fucking flower girl when Brenda married the fucktard.
Why the fuck did I have to go and sleep with Kelly? Dylan inwardly shouted. Why did I lie? Why did I say two years? Why did I erase our connection? Why did I leave London? Why didn't I go with her? Why did I go back to the drugs? Why did I agree to summit fucking K2?
How am I gonna take care of Bren now? How the fuck am I gonna get her back now?
The girls are right. I am a Dicklyn.
Dylan couldn't fathom that he and Brenda had just discussed sharing a room, moving their family to Tuscany, and now, he'd be lucky if he still got the couch.
Would helping her in the mornings count as being part of their child's life? Would car rides to and fro her sessions?
Unlikely, not when she wouldn't accept any from - what had she said? Twatwaffles?
A word often spoken by Shane.
Had he set back her progress?
Goddammit, he hoped not.
Despite his newfound sobriquets, Dylan would still try to help. He couldn't not help the mother of his child. The great love of his life. The woman he just had to be with; somehow.
He tried to think of the silver lining, as Brenda would do. She knew the worst things he had done to her. If she were to ever forgive him, there wouldn't be any hurtful surprises.
The downside was, Brenda didn't know about the brevity he had hooked up with Valerie.
He couldn't tell her. Val meant too much to her.
Eighteen weeks. He was nearing eighteen weeks.
Eighteen weeks to salvage a life with the woman who didn't want him in hers.
But first, he had to find her.
Again.
The skies revolted, dunking Dylan in an unpleasant, unwanted, intrusive ice bath.
He pulled the lapels of his coat up and yanked at the cords of his hood. Burrowing his head in his arms, he received another coin in the process.
He was well and truly fucked.
-x
I know, I know. The DK shit had to come out in one fell swoop.
Don't worry; I know exactly where Bren is and she isn't in hospital again.
Taken from quotes - Val: "When I was eight years old, Cindy Walsh and my mother entered Brenda and I in a Little Miss Minneapolis pageant." Kelly: "You're kidding." Val: "Yeah, we didn't make it to the finals, but at least Brenda didn't throw up on a judge." (Season 6, Episode 4) / Val: "Excuse me, Miss Holier-Than-Thou. Didn't I hear about a little summer sublet with Dylan when Brenda was across the pond?" Kelly: "You don't know what you're talking about." (Season Six, Episode Six) / And, of course, the two BD moments in Season 1, Episode 15 and Season 3, Episode 2, respectively.
(Shout-out to KJ to express my continued gratitude and appreciation.)
Thanks a million! x