‹ Prequel: In the End
Status: Hiatus.

Worry Rock

Bullshit

”Mommy, where do babies come from?”

Both Billie Joe and I looked up from the computer screen that he and I had been staring at for the past few minutes, watching a video that Billie Joe had been sent in an e-mail. I looked at my husband from the side of my eyes to see that he was doing the same thing to me. “Uhh…what?” I asked slowly as I leant down next to the chair that Billie Joe was sitting in to be Sydney’s height.

Sydney looked to Billie Joe and I while biting her bottom lip. She giggled at the puzzlement on our faces, though not understanding our reaction at all. “Where do babies come from? This girl in school, Rachel, her mommy is pregnant and she says that she can feel something move in her mommy’s tummy and her mommy tells her it’s the baby moving in her tummy. How does the baby get in there?”

I slowly and turned my head away from my five-year old and looked up at my husband who was still sitting in the chair at the computer desk. He smirked. “She’s asking you, Joe.”

I scowled at him and stood up slowly so that I was level with my husband’s head. I pressed my lips to his ear. “Yes, but you’re the one who will never get laid again if you continue to laugh and do nothing else.”

Billie Joe giggled. He turned his head and kissed my cheek. I bent back down to see Sydney. Billie Joe leant down, picked her up and placed her small body on his knee while keeping his hands on her so that she didn’t fall. “Well, Syd,” Billie Joe started, “when a mommy and daddy really love each other, they have--,”

“The stork!” I blurted, staring at my husband in shock. “No, uh, they sleep in the same bed and if they really love each other, then the mommy gets pregnant.”

“But you and daddy sleep in the same bed and you two really love each other,” she replied.

I grinned. “And that’s why we have you, baby.”

“Oh, okay,” Sydney murmured with her fist pressed to her lips. She pulled one of her fathers’ hands from her sides and jumped down off his leg and to the floor. “Thank you,” she thanked and then ran off after the cat that had slinked out of the room a moment ago.

I scowled and turned to Billie Joe. I whacked his arm as he cackled. “I cannot believe you!” I cried out in shock.

Billie Joe leant back in the chair as he laughed while I continued to whack him. “Joe! Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe!” He laughed, “I don’t know what you were expecting me to say, but I was going to say that they have the stork visit them.” He began to cackle again in his seat, holding his sides. “But I like your explanation much more.”

I scowled again as Billie Joe’s snorts of laughter slowly turned into giggles and he reached forward to wrap his arms around my body. He pulled me close to him and kissed my stomach, being as I was standing up and he was sitting. “Hey,” he suggested into my stomach, “how about you and I go lie in bed and see if we love each other enough.”

He winked when I looked down at him.

I laughed as I pulled myself away from his grip. “I think you’ve got a better chance at calling the stork now.”


I burst into a fit of giggles which caused Billie Joe to jump.

He bit down on the bottom of his lip and watched me giggle and squirm next to him. I couldn’t believe it. Just my luck that our daughter would figure this out. How could a teenager figure this out? Or well, two in this case. Either way, how? Sydney chuckled nervously at my excessive giggling while Billie Joe sighed.

“No, then?” She asked slowly.

“No,” Billie Joe answered. Sydney went to get up and speak, but he took his arm from around me and held it out in front of him to stop her. “No, Sydney, I don’t mean no, as in, we’re not.” Billie Joe looked over to me and shook me slightly. “Joe,” he hissed, “cut it out. I’d appreciate some help here.”

Sydney swallowed slowly. “So…you are?” I had finally calmed down much to Billie Joe’s relief. “You’re pregnant?” Sydney asked again. She sat back down in the love seat and waited for an actual confirmation.

I slowly stopped giggling, and the amusement in my eyes turned to desperation as I pleaded with my husband silently to help me with this. After all, it wasn’t exactly like I had become pregnant without him—he was a big part of this. Billie Joe slid his hand from my back to my thigh where he patted lightly. Sydney continued to stare at us.

“Yes,” I admitted honestly. There was really no other way to go around it. What else could I say? “Kind of?”

An awkward silence spread throughout the room and I felt myself begin to feel slightly sick. This is what I had been beyond nervous about when telling her. Sydney was nearly fourteen, she knew how babies were made now—she knew exactly where they came from. “Wow,” Sydney mumbled without looking up at us. “Wow, wow, uh, well,” she stopped stuttering for a moment but then stood up and clapped her hands together slowly. “Well, thanks for telling me. I’m glad I, uh, got that cleared up then.”

I stood up as Sydney turned to leave the room but Billie Joe pulled me down. “Billie,” I hissed, “let me go. I need to talk to her!”

Billie Joe didn’t ease up on his grip on me. “Joe, let her go to bed. We’ll talk about it with her later.” He pressed his lips to my cheek and placed a finger underneath my chin, tilting my head up to face him. “It’s a lot right now, especially since she’s obviously been thinking about it a lot to notice things such as you placing your hand on your stomach and I’m sure she wasn’t ready for us to agree with her.” He kissed my cheek again and then pressed his nose into it. “Just let her think about it, baby. She’ll realize it’s not as bad as she thinks.”

“But it is!” I argued. “Billie, she’ll realize that you and I are still having sex!”

“Shh,” Billie Joe whispered. He pressed a finger to my lips to stop me from talking and being slightly too loud. “Think about it, Joe. She’s fourteen.” He removed his fingers from my lips and lips from my cheek to gently kiss me. I sighed against his lips but allowed him to keep his lips placed on mine as long as he wanted. He pulled away slowly and rested his forehead against mine. “I’m sure she’s not exactly as thrilled as we are to have another baby, especially now that she knows how babies are conceived.” I smiled slightly at that. “I’m sure once she stops being so skeeved out over this, she’ll be happy.”

I kissed him again. “I hope so,” I admitted. “This is just what I feared—her not wanting us to have another baby.”

I felt my husband slide his hand into my own and grip it lightly. “Joey and Jacob didn’t resent me when you got pregnant with Sydney—well, alright, Joey didn’t.”

I laughed feebly. “I wonder how they’ll take the news about Zachary.”

Billie Joe chuckled slightly nervously. He placed on hand on his leg and rubbed it anxiously while biting his bottom lip in thought. “I don’t think they’ll care that much, if that’s what you’re saying,” he admitted, “like Sydney is about the whole sex ordeal. Joey is twenty three now, he’s past being a virgin--,” I couldn’t help but wonder if that was weird for him to say, “and in a few years he’ll be having kids of his own.” Billie Joe hesitated now. “Jacob shouldn’t care much either. He’s nearly twenty.” He paused and lifted his hand from his leg to stroke his chin a few times and then to run through his hair, tugging on it a few times. “I don’t know,” he admitted while staring down at the table in front of us, “Jacob has been kind of distant from me since the divorce, I can’t really tell how he’ll take it. He didn’t talk to me for a week or two when I told him about Sydney.”

I shrugged and placed a hand on my husband’s shoulder, finding myself comforting him now. “But he was much younger then. He’s grown up and matured now, and plus, it’s not like when he stops by he shuns Sydney; they actually get along pretty well. And he refers to her as his sister—not half sister, or step sister or something like that.”

Billie Joe mirrored my movements by also shrugging. “True,” he agreed. After a moment he sat back against the back of the couch and closed his eyes. “I think they’ll be happy with little Zach here.” With that said Billie Joe reached out to me and pulled me back against his relaxed body. He moved one arm to rest around my growing waist and the other on my stomach where he rubbed affectionately.

My husband slid his hand from my stomach to my waist so that both hands were on each side of me. He shifted slightly from how he was sitting to a terribly uncomfortable looking position just to face me. I giggled softly as he pulled me onto his lap and turned back to how he was lying back before though sitting upright. I rearranged myself on his lap so that I was straddling him and managed to wrap both arms around his thin waist as I leant forward to rest my head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat. I laughed. “Look at us,” I giggled, “just a few days ago, you and I were both on cloud nine from this pregnancy, and now we’re sitting here worrying over what our other kids are thinking or will think.”

Billie Joe chuckled as he lifted a hand from my waist and ran it through my hair idly. He sighed softly and rested his chin on top of my head, closing his eyes. “I’m not so worried,” he opposed, “well, alright, maybe slightly, but this is nothing new to me,” he stated, “this is my fourth kid that’s growing in your stomach—I’m pretty used to breaking the we’re pregnant! news to my kids. It’s just every time I’ve got to say it, there’s another kid that I’ve got to say it to.”

I laughed. “Well, have no fear; I’m not getting pregnant again after this one. This is as far as I go on the pregnancy wagon. “

“What if you accidently get pregnant again? Just because you don’t want to get pregnant doesn’t mean I’m going to live the rest of my life without any sex.”

“I’m not expecting you to,” I mumbled, “God knows you can barely go a week.” I rolled my eyes while he giggled slightly. “If I get pregnant again I’ll just have to get you neutered like we did with Charlie.”

Billie Joe laughed loudly and I smirked. He kissed the top of my head a few times and then inhaled my scent. “I’m going to have a cigarette and then head up to bed,” he mumbled, his voice muffled by my hair, “why don’t you head up now and I’ll be up in a few minutes?”

Because I’d rather you skipped the cigarette and came right to bed?

And well, the only way to get my husband to do that was to lure him to bed with sex—and right now I wasn’t exactly in the mood, or feeling comfortable having sex with Sydney in the house after her reaction. I groaned. “I don’t want to walk all the way upstairs.”

Billie Joe rolled his eyes at my laziness. “What do you want me to do about that? Carry you up and then come back down and have to go down even more stairs?” I nodded and he chuckled. “I’m old, Joe. You’re really going to make me do that?”

“I’m pregnant,” I countered.

Billie Joe sighed loudly and sat up. He slid one arm underneath my legs and another under my back and stood up, holding me wedding style. I grinned as I wrapped my arms around his neck and rested my head on his chest as he carried me throughout the penthouse and into the bedroom where he gently placed me on the bed. Because I was already wearing sweat pants and a t-shirt, I pulled my t-shirt over my head and decided to sleep in my sweat pants and bra seeing as I was too lazy to move myself. Billie Joe cocked an eyebrow and watched as I crawled underneath the blanket with my bra on. “You’re really not going to bother changing?”

I giggled as I curled up underneath the blanket and shook my head. “No, I don’t want to stand up.”

“Jesus Christ, you’re fucking lazy.” With that said Billie Joe pulled open a drawer and pulled out one of his t-shirts. He crawled into bed next to me and pulled me up into a sitting position before he un-clasped my bra. Without pulling my bra off, Billie Joe gently pulled his t-shirt over my head and my arms through the short sleeves before actually removing my bra. He threw it off the bed and then laid me back down slowly. I watched as he pulled his t-shirt over his head and removed his cigarettes, lighter, car keys and cell phone from the pockets of his shorts before placing them on the dresser next to the bed.

When he crawled into bed next to me and brought the blanket up around him, I rolled over to face him and cuddled against his chest. “You didn’t have to do that,” I murmured into the bare multi-colored skin.

“You would have been real uncomfortable and would end up regretting it halfway through the night.”

“What happened to the cigarette you were going to have?”

Billie Joe slid an arm underneath me and around my back. “’Getting you and Zach to bed is more important to me. I’ll survive without one.”

I lifted my head from his smooth tattooed chest and gently pressed my lips against his chin, brushing the beard that was growing since he hadn’t shaved within the last week and a half. “What are we doing tomorrow?” I asked after a moment of silence.

Billie Joe shrugged. “I think we pretty much need to kiss Sydney’s ass for the next few days until she get’s over it and is able to grasp the fact they you’re pregnant.” I nodded again. “And I think I’ll call Joey tomorrow then, since we’re around where he is—better to tell him now than later and he’ll be more understanding. Not to say he won’t be surprised, considering he’s twenty three and his father is still having children,” he added and then laughed, “I guess he’ll feel the same way Allen did when my parents said that they were pregnant with me.”

I smirked while idly tracing some of his tattoos. “It’s funny how things that were so gross and odd when you were younger make so much more sense at times like this.”

Billie Joe chuckled. “It’s funny how things like sex are so gross, especially when you think of your parents, and then you get laid for the first time with someone who knows what the hell they’re doing, and it’s like fuck, I get it now! Still gross at the thought of your parents—actually pretty damn nauseating—but you completely understand why you were born.”

I giggled for a moment and then our murmurs slowly faded into silence. After a few minutes of silence, as I began to drift off to sleep, Billie Joe shifted around in the bed next to me. I opened an eye slowly and gently pushed him down to keep him from moving. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

My husband seemed to hesitate while placing a hand on his stomach. I lifted my head from his chest and looked down at his hand, my eyes becoming fixated on the wedding ring that was reflecting from the lights that peeped inside from the city streets. “I don’t know,” he admitted. He winced in what looked to be pain and I sat up more, starting to become slightly worried. “I just got a wave of nausea all of a sudden.”

We both lied there for a moment, or rather, he did as I sat up next to him and stared down at him in confusion. “You don’t think it’s something you ate, do you?” I asked slowly while resting one hand on his stomach on top of his while using the other to rest my chin on. “I mean all you had to drink today was one Corona at the restraunt, that wouldn’t do it. Could it be the heat?”

“I don’t know,” he mumbled and shrugged. “It wouldn’t be the beer—I can hold my liquor better than that or else I wouldn’t drink as much as I do. I’m almost positive it’s not food poisoning, because I’d be sick right now rather than feeling sick. And the heat isn’t nearly as bad now as it usually is, especially since we’ve got the AC on.” I continued to sit next to the nauseas Billie Joe for a few minutes, but he soon pulled me down next to him. He took a deep breath and sighed. “Lie down, go to sleep. I’m sure it’s nothing.”

I lied down without even a slight protest, figuring if I argued with him about it he’d end up feeling sick again. We both lied together for a moment and like before, I began to drift off again. However, this time, instead of shifting around in the bed, Billie Joe pushed me off of him roughly and threw the blankets back from his body before he dashed into the bathroom that was [thankfully] built into the master bedroom that we were in.

Upon hearing the bathroom door close with a bang that hopefully didn’t wake the girls, I lifted my body from our comfortable bed and paced over to the bathroom. I pushed open the door slowly and peered inside to see my husband hunched over the porcelain bowl, emptying his stomach.

I entered the bathroom and shut the door behind me before finding a wash cloth and running it under cold water. I set the wash cloth down on the side of the sink before stepping over to my husband’s body, where I rubbed his back gently.

Within the next few minutes, Billie Joe had flushed the toilet and was leaning up against the tiled bathroom wall, breathing heavily with his eyes closed and the washcloth over his forehead. I slunk down beside him against the wall and slid one arm behind him to rest on the opposite side of his body from where I sat while I rubbed his stomach. “I don’t know where the fuck that came from,” he admitted breathlessly.

I shrugged my shoulders and removed the washcloth from his forehead to feel if he had a fever before moving my hands to his cheeks. “You haven’t got a temperature and you’re not clammy. You could have eaten something that your body disagreed with.”

“I really don’t think that’s it, Joe. I really, honestly don’t.”

“Then what?” I asked as I placed my head on his tattooed arm.

“I don’t know,” he hissed. I disregarded his attitude, knowing that it was because he had just gotten sick. “But it’s going away. If it was something I’d eaten, it wouldn’t just go away like this.” I bit onto my bottom lip, trying to think what had symptoms like that. Billie Joe slowly used his legs while still leaning back on the wall to push himself up so that he was standing, though still fully depending on the wall. He pulled me up with him and then pulled me against him tightly. “I want to go back to bed,” he mumbled.

“Of course,” I hummed. I pulled one of his arms around my neck and slowly helped him back into the bedroom, then back into his side of the bed.

I stood up from leaning over him and watched him lie there for a moment when a conversation with my brother that I had had a long time ago popped into my head. I snapped my fingers, causing my sick husband to open his eyes slowly. “What?” He asked.

“I think I know what it is,” I confessed as I crawled over him on the bed to my side.

Billie Joe sat up next to me and cocked an eyebrow. “What is it, then?”

“You said you don’t feel anything anymore? Like, it pretty much all went away? And it even came on randomly?”

Billie Joe nodded. “Out of nowhere,” he agreed. I sat down on the bed and folded my legs Indian style so that I was facing him while he continued to watch me in confusion. I giggled and placed a hand over my mouth to stop myself from doing so as he scowled. “I don’t get what’s so goddamn funny about vomiting, Joe.”

While he continued to scowl at me, I continued to grin furiously at him. Eventually he reached over and pushed me gently, as if to tell me to spit what I was thinking out. I moved closer to him and wrapped my arms around his neck, kissing his cheek since I didn’t feel like tasting vomit at the moment—especially being pregnant which made me unfortunately queasy to anything that only used to skeeve me out. “Okay, do you remember when my brother and his wife were pregnant with Landon?” I asked. Billie Joe merely nodded. I continued to giggle sheepishly. “Do you remember what I ended up telling you that he went through at that time?” I continued.

Billie Joe shook his head. “He was…happy?”

I laughed while he grinned crookedly. “No, no. He actually wasn’t at all. Well, he was happy that they were pregnant with Landon and he got his son, but during most, if not all the time that Elizabeth was pregnant, he had something called sympathy pregnancy.”

“Oh fuck no,” Billie Joe moaned. He leant back against the headboard of the bed and tilted his head back, squeezing his eyes shut. “Don’t fucking tell me that.”

I kissed his chin now, the small hairs growing there tickling my lips. “Yes. Sympathy pregnancy. You know what that is, right?”

“Fucking torture?” He snapped.

I snickered. “Well, I guess you could say that, but no, not really. It’s where you get symptoms what I go through during the nine months!” I kissed his chin again. “This random nausea and vomiting is most likely it. I’d say the recent mood swings, but you’ve always had mood swings—,” he growled at that while I grinned, “any weight gain you might notice about yourself would be it, increasing hunger,” I paused to giggle and to mute myself, I buried my head into his neck, “it’s like we’re both pregnant.”

“No,” he continued to moan, “that’s not fair. It’s fucking cheap.”

I rolled my eyes at his complaining. “Look at it this way, at the end of the nine months you’re not the one that going to be pushing a baby through your body, so get over it.” I kissed his neck now. “I think you can handle a few months of vomiting, cramps, weight gain, cravin—,”

“Joe, Joe stop!” Billie Joe whimpered. He lifted his hands to cover his ears. “Stop, stop! This is bullshit! Bullshit!”

I shrugged. “I think it turns out well, actually. Now you won’t be able to snap at me when I’ve got mood swings because you’ll understand. And you’ll understand when I don’t feel like having sex every waking moment that we’re together.” Billie Joe scowled loudly. He gently pushed me off him, having been rougher if I wasn’t pregnant and turned over so that he wasn’t facing me. He sighed loudly. I started laughing. “So you’re not talking to me, now?” I asked. “You can’t really blame this on me, you know. At least we know you haven’t got some rare disease.”

“No,” he scowled, “I’ve just my wife’s fucking hormones for the next six months, because that’s so much better.”