Page 52 of Best Friend Burden

“How can I help you?”

It was the barista, smiling, but clearly a little impatient as it was my turn, and I was holding up the line.

“Large oat milk latte,” I said quickly, as if I could make up for the time I'd spent distracted by spitting out my order as fast as possible. He rang it up and asked for my name, and then I paid and stepped aside so he could move on.

And, yet, as I was waiting, my eyes wandered back over to that mother who was too engrossed in a crossword puzzle to notice her little miracle slowly rising. He was a good baby, not crying or screaming. Just waiting patiently for his mother to look down at him. In the meantime, he moved his hand in front of his face and became fascinated by his fingers.

If only life stayed that simple.

He turned away from the hand and made eye contact with me, and I felt like a movie star. This little baby noticed me! His face was full of curiosity, frozen in wonder as he looked at me. I raised my hand and, in an exaggerated fashion, wiggled my fingers like he had, in a kind of wave. He lifted his hand towards me and mimicked my movement.

I let out an audible giggle.

“Melody!”

My coffee was already done? Had I spent all that time just staring at the baby? What was wrong with me?

Why would I be...?

Oh no, I thought. There is no fucking way.

I grabbed my coffee and ran out of the shop, walking with determination towards a drug store.

With all the commotion surrounding the opening of the food truck, had I not realized that I had missed a period?

I tried thinking back to the last week or the one before. Of course, it could just be stress, or maybe I had my period and just forgot, but the sign the universe was sending me was too strong for it just to be that. I can’t believe I had drank the night before! Holy shit, but how could I have ever known? My stomach turned at the feeling of even the possibility of being pregnant and all the shit I had been through in the past 24 hours.

I chucked the coffee in my hand out, not like that was the biggest problem I had at the moment, but if I was pregnant, I wanted to make sure I put nothing else in my body that wasn’t safe. As soon as I bought a test, I headed back to my car as fast as possible to drive to the Airbnb.

As if I didn’t have enough on my emotional plate right now, with me breaking up with my would-be high school sweetheart and starting up a small business halfway across the country from any sense of support I’d ever had.

And now I'd possibly be responsible for the life of another human being?

Stuck in traffic, I contemplated calling Kiefer, just to let him know. But I almost instantly nixed that idea. It wasn’t coming from a pure place. I committed to the idea that staying together because of a potential baby is probably the worst thing we could do. That’s the ultimate trap.

It was already difficult enough for him to keep his distance. I didn’t want to put him in that position. It wasn’t fair to put that on him in the fragile state he was already in. It was better for right now that he didn’t know, plus I didn’t even know!

But if I was going to be a single mother, I needed to make sure I had everything in place. As soon as I made it back to the Airbnb, I ran to the bathroom and peed on the stick. I knew the wait would be excruciating, so I finished I sat on the couch and pulled out my laptop and started looking for a place I could live permanently, onmyown orourown, whichever.

And, as it turned out, there was an apartment available to rent not too far from the food court. Was it a little pricier than I would have liked? Sure, but this was LA. Everything cost too much.

I clicked through and scheduled an appointment to take a look. It was really happening. I was really doing it. I was officially becoming an Angelino, but in the bathroom, there was a little stick that determined even more of my future than where I was living.

CHAPTER22

***KIEFER***

On the way to the studio, I made a deal with myself to focus on work, letting whatever was brewing in my system come out through my music.

Perhaps it wasn't the best day for that.

We had a tween pop boy band that had recorded a rough demo of their new single. Our job was to create a more finessed backing track that they could then come and rerecord the vocals over. Because they were touring right now and because their time was expensive, the goal was to have them in studio for as short a period as possible. The cleaner the backing track we could provide, the quicker things would go when real money was on the line.

A lot of musicians and nonmusicians turn their nose up at these kinds of bands and, to their credit, there's good reason. A lot of them aren't very good. But The Beatles were essentially a boy band and, frankly, I never regret listening to BTS. Good music can come out of anywhere and it's a weak musician who phones it in out of disrespect for what the potential could be.

Ernie played the demo for me in the studio. It was rougher than usual. This was a recording made on somebody's cell phone while they were in the touring van. I could even hear the road noises. But the general idea was clear and, with the right production and engineering, this could be a real earworm.

“Natasha, can you take lead guitar on this?” Ernie asked. “Kiefer, you've got bass.”

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