‹ Prequel: In the End
Status: Hiatus.

Worry Rock

Mother's Intuition

“Lie down.”

“Excuse me?” I asked, not bothering to hide the confusion from my voice.

Billie Joe sighed. “Lie down. Go upstairs and lie down or something—just rest.”

I bit onto my bottom lip and watched as my husband ran his hands through his knotted long hair, tugging at it. “I’m not tired,” I argued softly.

Billie Joe lifted his head, his eye catching mine. We both stared at each other for a moment before he answered. “Three months,” he muttered. “Fuck, Joe. Since May!” A silence surrounded us for a few minutes as both of our minds wandered to the last three months of our lives. Billie Joe hesitated but then stepped closer to me and wrapped his arms around my body. He placed a hand on the almost invisible bump. He laughed humorlessly. “The worst three months of our goddamn marriage and you’re pregnant. God damn.”

I also placed a hand on my stomach, over my husbands. “But our baby survived, she said it herself. He’s obviously a strong one.”

He sighed. “I know,” he agreed, “but Joe—fuck, you’ve been around me when I was smoking. You’ve been right fucking next to me when I’ve been smoking. I’ve put you through hell and back. We flew to New York and back. You were depressed. I fucking—I treated you like shit.” Billie Joe paused momentarily. “He? Do you know something I don’t?”

I felt myself grin as Billie Joe stared at me in a confused manner. I toyed with the silver band on my husband’s finger as he kept his hand pressed to my stomach. “Mother’s intuition,” I stated.

Billie Joe lifted his free hand to scratch the back of his neck as his eyes narrowed while he looked at me in confusion, obviously having no idea what I was speaking about. “Mothers intuition?” He questioned.

I rolled my eyes as I continued to play with my husband’s hands on my stomach. “Yes, mother’s intuition.” I paused while trying to think of how to explain. “It’s where the mother of the child knows what the child’s sex is before the sonogram, or after if they decide not to get the sex checked out.”

Billie Joe lifted his free hand to scratch the back of his neck, his eyes staring off to the ceiling. “Mother’s intuition,” he repeated slowly, as if trying to understand more, “I think Adrienne had said something about that when she was pregnant.” He shrugged. “I’m not sure; it was so long ago.” He paused to regain his thoughts.”But you never had it with Sydney?” Before I could answer, Billie Joe continued to speak. “Speaking of our daughter, I was thinking—her birthday is soon, and I was thinking of going to LA for it? We could leave Friday morning or afternoon and return sometime the week after?”

I settled myself down on the arm of the loveseat that Billie Joe had me pressed against and nodded. “I think that’d be great. We haven’t been down there in such a while, well, you have,” I corrected myself, “but not us as a family.”

Billie Joe shrugged again. “And I was only there for business; it wasn’t exactly like I got to hang out. I’ve been thinking about what we could do for it, and I know you hate Manhattan, which wouldn’t work anyway since we were just there about a month ago. Sydney gets bored in Hawaii, last year we brought her to Florida, and I really don’t feel like leaving the country. And, I don’t want to fly now with your pregnancy. We can just drive to LA. She said she liked LA, though, didn’t she?”

I nodded slowly, remembering how Billie Joe had brought Sydney down to LA late last year for only a couple days and she came back raving about how much she loved it. When she would be old enough, Billie Joe was thinking of letting her live in penthouse he had there since it wasn’t being used other than the times he went there for business or we all went—which was rare. However, we both weren’t sure we wanted to hand her a home especially in a place like LA. “Yeah, she loved it.”

“What does she even want for her birthday?”

I laughed and rolled my eyes. “The usual that teenagers want. Cameras, cell phones, iPods, clothes, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.”

“Jesus Christ,” Billie Joe scowled. “Didn’t we just get her that for Christmas? She already has more clothes than you and I have combined. Is she trying to bankrupt us?” I laughed, causing him to grin crookedly at me. “I say we just give her an ”I.O.U” note in a box and then give her a few more things at Christmas.”

I snorted. “Sure, we can do that.” I grinned. “But, you have to be the one to give it to her and explain what it means.”

Billie Joe was silent. “Alright, maybe that’s not such a good idea.”

+++

Billie Joe and I decided to not tell Sydney about my pregnancy until after we came home from Los Angeles and after her birthday simply because we weren’t sure as to how she would take it. Billie Joe had explained to me time and time again on how all of his brothers and sisters had been happy with his mothers’ pregnancy with him, but I couldn’t help but worry. They hadn’t been only children for fourteen years of their lives—Sydney had.

Plus, I didn’t feel like spoiling Sydney’s birthday by confessing that her forty-six year old father and I were still very much sexually active. I imagined that that would have been a bit of a damper on it and all the money in the world wouldn’t be able to fix the mental damage that we would have provided.

Which brought me right back to how I was feeling about telling her to begin with—nervous as hell.

“Joe, chill out,” Billie Joe muttered as he rubbed my growing stomach, “I’m sure she knows we have sex anyway. You’re not exactly silent when it comes down to it.” He chuckled. “Actually, neither am I—so I really don’t think what we’re telling her is much of anything new.”

“Oh—oh my god!” I cried out in disgust. I covered my ears trying to drown my husband out. “Oh Billie, no! No!

My husband continued to laugh while rubbing my stomach. “Well, think about it. We have sex just about every other night--,”

“Stop!” I cried out again. “Jesus Christ, I feel like I’m being told that my parents are having sex instead of her!”

Billie Joe was laughing as he tried to calm me down, making it nearly impossible to do so. “Hey, hey, relax. We don’t need you giving birth at three months pregnant because you’re flipping out on the fact that our daughter probably knows what we do at night.” He shrugged. “I say we tell her when she gets home. Sydney, we’re three months pregnant. Our due date is February fifth and your mother thinks we’re having a little boy. Yes, we have sex constantly at night which would explain those noises you hear, which would also explain how she’s pregnant. Hey! Want to go to Los Angeles for your birthday? She’ll be fine, Joe.”

I gasped and whacked him, causing him to cackle with laughter. “Billie Joe Armstrong, if you say that I will promise you that the only place your dick will ever be is in your pants or your hands.”

Billie Joe wrapped his arms around my body. He kissed my cheek gingerly. “Aww, baby,” he cooed against my skin, “you say that all you want, but your pregnancy hormones always beg to differ.”

“…What?”

“Back when you were pregnant with Sydney, all those nights of you waking me up at two or three in the morning because you were horny.” Billie Joe grinned and adjusted his sunglasses, his sappy smile taking over his face as he moved off from next to me to lay back on the wooden deck that was built around our pool in the back yard with an arm under his head substituting as a pillow while I sat looking down at him on one of the comfortable lawn chairs. He picked up the pack of cigarettes and lighter that he had had resting on the ground from smoking one before and lit a new one. He took a short drag and then after a moment exhaled the smoke into the Californian air. “I mean, granted, there were the nights that I was painfully horny and you threatened to cut my junk off if I so much as moved close to you in bed,” he laughed at the memory meanwhile I fought back a grin, “but those nights—mm, they made up. That was some of the best sex we’ve ever had.”

I rolled my eyes, but it went unnoticed as I was wearing sunglasses also. Considering there was only one or two trees in our whole back yard, when the days in California were bright—they were bright. “I love how we go through nine months of torture from my mood swings, and end up having a baby, not to mention it being your only baby girl, yet all you can think about is how great the sex was.”

Billie Joe giggled as he exhaled more smoke. “It was amazing sex. I look forward to those nights again.”

“One track mind,” I muttered to myself.

My husband continued to laugh as he puffed on his cigarette for a few more minutes before crushing it in the ash tray he had placed next to him. I watched him as he sat up and wiped his hands on his bare torso, having felt that it was too hot to wear anything other than a pair of shorts so that he would be arrested for indecent exposure again despite the fact that he was at home. There was also the problem of stalker-ish fans that kept his pants on outdoors, also. “That’s not true,” he protested, “I also think of food.”

I snorted and lifted one hand from leaning back on it to give him a thumbs up and a sarcastic grin. “I married a winner.”

Billie Joe grinned back at me and pushed himself up from the wooden ground. He adjusted his shorts, in which were falling and then fell back onto the lawn chair that I currently occupied, laying his body over it sideways so that his head and legs both hung off. I shifted next to him on it so that the part of his torso that was on the chair was being used as a pillow for myself while my legs hung off the end of it. “You really feel as if this baby is a boy?” He asked, picking up our conversation from the other day.

I nodded my head as I crossed my arms over my chest, closing my eyes. “Yes,” I admitted, “I’ve got a real strong feeling about it.”

“But you never had one for Sydney?”

I shrugged. “I was only twenty when I got pregnant with her. I mean, I’m probably wrong when I say this, but I think I was too young to have a mother instinct. Plus, now that we’ve had one kid together, I can compare the likes and differences between both.”

“What’s different about this baby?”

“I don’t have as much morning sickness,” I stated simply. “Like, at all.”

“So because you’re not up-chucking last night’s dinner, you believe we’re going to have a boy? Perfect.”

I scowled and twisted my body around to whack Billie Joe’s stomach. He laughed and sat up slightly, though not much because I was leaning against him, making it hard to go up far. “I mean other things, too, Billie Joe.”

Billie Joe chuckled as he lied back and lifted his arm from where it had laid next to his body. He moved it around next to him, as if trying to find something before he placed it on my arm, trailed it down to my hand and laced his fingers with mine. I couldn’t help but grin. “Like what?” he asked.

I shrugged again against his torso while fooling around with the silver wedding band on his finger. “I don’t know specifically, it’s just the whole feeling in general. Like I’ve said, Beej, mother’s intuition.”

“I know that you’ve said that, I just don’t know what the fuck it means.”

I rolled my eyes as I curled up on the small amount of lawn chair I was left with and rested my arms on my husband’s chest with my head on them. “It means that I know the sex of our baby before I have it. It’s a feeling that a lot of expecting mothers get, and apparently mother’s intuition is about 70% correct.”

“You looked that up?”

I smirked. “Well, I’m not guessing.”

Billie Joe chuckled. “Well, then can we see the sex of our child when we’re allowed?”

I hesitated and closed my eyes. “I really hate doing that.”

“I know, but we didn’t see with Sydney and since you’re so sure, this wouldn’t be such a big deal, would it?” I groaned in response. Billie Joe sighed. “Come on, Joe. I don’t want to have to paint our kids room yellow or green or light blue again because we don’t know what our child is.”

“Sydney’s nursery was perfect!” I objected. “The yellow was perfect!”

Billie Joe sighed again. “Just think about it, please?” He begged softly. He hesitated. “Or, I want to pick the names.”

I shot up at that and looked down at him as if he had just told me that he had been having an affair with another man. “Excuse me?” I asked slowly.

Billie Joe rolled his eyes. “I want to pick the names if you refuse to let us see the sex.”

“I don’t want to know, Billie!” I cried out. “I’d rather it be a surprise other than what I’m feeling! And for that you bribe me so that you can either chose the name of our child or see the sex!? How dare you!” I continued to blubber as tears made their way down my cheeks. “It’s not like you’re the one that has to go through nine months of carrying the baby! You don’t have the mood swings, the sickness, the cravings, the feeling like a goddamn whale! And now you’re acting as if I’m being unfair! How about you carry this baby around for a month or two!?”

Billie Joe sat up and stared at me in complete shock, before the word hormones registered in his mind. He wrapped his arms around my shaking body and exhaled softly into my hair. “Alright, alright, Joe. Calm down, darling. Jesus, I didn’t expect you to get so upset about it.”

I continued to sob, yet laugh into my husband’s chest. “It’s the goddamn hormones already. I’m almost as emotional as you are when you’re drunk.”

Billie Joe rolled his eyes. “Thanks, babe.”

I felt Billie Joe’s hands travel from my back to the front of my body, down to my stomach, where he began to gently rub affectionately. “I’m a mess,” I admitted into his shoulder.

My husband chuckled. “You’re beautiful.” I decided not to speak after that, but to let him continue to rub my stomach. We both sat in silence for a moment until he broke it. “Savannah.”

“What?” I asked slowly.

“If you were going to let me pick the name for a girl if we had another, I’d name her Savannah. Savannah Alexandra Armstrong.”

I replayed the name in my mind multiple times after he had said it.

Savannah Armstrong. Savannah Alexandra Armstrong.

“I love it,” I finally admitted. “I honestly do. I think that’d be a great name for our daughter, if we have another.”

Billie Joe grinned down at me and attached his lips to me forehead. “See, I’m not that bad. I wasn’t thinking of naming our kid like, oh, I don’t know—Winfred, Apple, or some shit like that.”

I laughed into his warm skin and then thought for a moment. “What about boy names?”

Billie Joe hesitated. “Daniel?”

“Oh, god no,” I mumbled, “I hate that name. I always have.” Billie Joe nodded slowly and went back to thinking as did I. “Joshua?”

“Nah.”

“Anthony?”

Tony? No thanks.”

“It’s better than B-i-l-l-i-e.”

“Hey, hey now,” Billie Joe mumbled. “My name is great. It’s unique.” I giggled as I pulled my head from the crook of his neck to press my lips against his, allowing him to deepen it easily. After a few minutes, Billie Joe pulled away. “Nicholas?” I snorted and shook my head. You know Billie Joe is motivated when he’s stopping any kind of making-out to talk.

I shrugged. “It’s alright, but I’m not thrilled with it.”

Billie Joe nodded. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

“Aiden?” I asked, but in reality I didn’t like it.

“No, it reminds me of the band and those guys piss me off.” I laughed at that while Billie Joe grinned down at me. “Connor?”

“No. I know too many people with it.”

“Well, it’s a name, baby. I know a lot of Amanda’s, too.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

“Mm, yeah,” he hummed, “and they were all pretty damn ho—ow!” I grinned up at my husband as I elbowed him in his ribs. He groaned. “Thanks, Joe. For all you know, I was going to say they were all pretty damn homicidal. Like you.”

“You deserve it.”

It was about fifteen minutes later, and about fifty names later when Billie Joe threw his arms up into the air and collapsed back against the back of the chair. “Alright, alright! I give up! I say, boy or girl, we name the damn kid Savannah Alexandra Armstrong. That’s the only name we’ve been able to agree on.”

“If we have a boy and name him that, he’ll stab us in our sleep.”

“He’ll probably do that anyway, I figure if I’m going to have four kids, one of them is going to be psychotic.”

“Your logic amazes me.” Billie Joe chuckled at that. He sat up again and wrapped his arms around me from behind, placing kisses on the exposed skin of my shoulder. “Zachary,” I finally stated.

Billie Joe cocked an eyebrow. “Zachary,” he murmured to himself, just like I had done with Savannah. “Zachary Armstrong…I like it.”

I thought for a moment before I spoke again. “Zachary Andrew Armstrong.”

My husband didn’t say anything for a moment, and I became slightly worried that he’d snap at me for wanting to partly name our child after his father. I almost regretted it, but before I could apologize, Billie Joe’s lips had fully engulfed mine hungrily. I tried to pull away to ask if he had liked it, but with the way his mouth was practically eating mine, it was hard to do.

When Billie Joe finally realized that he needed air, he let go of me, still kept his arms around me to keep my body unnaturally close to his. I cocked an eyebrow, wiping saliva from my mouth. “You hate me that much, huh?”

Billie Joe grinned as he leant against me to peck my lips now. “Andrew, after my father? Fuck, Joe, you don’t know how much that means to me. You really, honestly don’t.” His lips caressed mine again. “You have no idea.”

I rested my head on his chest, outlining some of his tattoos. “Well, that’s good. I’m glad I could make you happy.”

Billie Joe hesitated. “You’re not just naming our child after my father to make me happy, are you? I mean, you like the name, too, right?”

I nodded as I let his arms surround my body. “Billie, darling, if I wanted to just make you happy, I’d just do new things to do you in the bedroom.”

“Good, okay, good,” Billie Joe hummed. He stopped. “What? New things in the bedroom? Like what?”

I could feel my mouth almost literally hit the floor as I turned to stare at Billie Joe in shock. I sighed at him and removed myself from his arms, grabbing my water bottle that I had next to the chair and his empty beer bottle. “One track mind,” I muttered to myself as I pulled the gate to the deck behind me shut. “One track mind.”