But I Never Promised You

I looked back and forth between all of the guys. I saw them each giving me a look of worried anxiousness. I was really hoping I wasn’t going to have to tell all four of them at once. It would have been so much better on my mental stability if I would have been able to tell just Rian and have him help me find a good way to tell everyone else. Especially Alex. I was more nervous about telling him than I probably should have been.

I knew I was psyching myself out. It wouldn’t be as painful as I was making it out to be. It’s not like I was trying to tell my parents I was having a baby when I wasn’t married yet.

“Mika, are you okay? You don’t look so well.”

“Yes, Alex. I’m okay. I’m just trying to figure out what the best way to tell you is. I don’t want any of you to hate me or treat me differently after I tell you.”

“We’re not going to do that, Mika. You know us better than that.”

It was Rian who spoke up. He already knew what I would be telling them and he could really only speak for himself. He did have the added benefit of knowing the guys better than I did and could judge their reactions better than I ever could.

It didn’t help to alleviate my fears though. I still felt nervous that their reactions would be of the negative sort and that I’d be on the next flight back home. I didn’t want to raise this baby by myself.

All four of the guys were still looking at me. The anxiousness I saw in their faces was making my words stick in the back of my throat. I wouldn’t be able to get the words to come out right. I needed them to stop looking at me.

Just then, my phone started ringing. At first, it seemed like a blessing from heaven, but then I saw the caller id.

Home calling

Shit. I knew they only called when they saw or heard something bad. If I didn’t answer, they’d keep calling back and it would be worse for me when I did finally answer.

“Hello.”

“Mika, it’s your mother.”

“I know. Caller id, remember?”

“Right. Well, I bet you’re probably wondering why I’m calling.”

“Yes, you never call just to chat. There’s always something you need me to do or something you need to yell at me for.”

“I do not yell.”

I snorted. I couldn’t help it.

“Mika, that was uncalled for. You wonder why your father doesn’t love you, well, maybe if you’d stop being so ungrateful and full of hate for everyone, he would.”

“When my father left, I wasn’t full of hate for anyone. I was a poster child. It’s him leaving that made me this way. Perhaps you hadn’t noticed, but it wasn’t until he came back that I got an attitude.”

“I did not call you to start a fight, Mika.”

“Then why did you call Mother?”

“Something was brought to my attention.”

“Such as…”

“Your father was on the internet the other night.”

“Oh, here we go,” I interrupted her. “You need me to deny a rumor my father read online. This is just perfect.”

“Yes, that’s why I’m calling. You see, he read on a blog site that Alex Gaskarth, you know who he is, the lead singer of All Time Low, was getting married. Now, at first I was like, so what, some musician that I don’t like is getting married.”

“Will you get to the point of this? So, he read on a blog site that he was getting married. Big deal. It happens to every celebrity at some point in their career.”

“That’s what I told him, but then he said that the site reported he was getting married to a girl named Mika, whom he met in California.”

“Okay, does it give a last name?”

“No, the site didn’t give a last name. Even though, I was suspicious at this point, I said to your father, just because Mika moved to California, doesn’t mean that the site is talking about her. There could be a thousand girls named Mika who live in California. There is no need to jump to conclusions that our daughter would get engaged and not tell us, especially to a musician, none-the-less. But, then he had me come over to the computer and lo-and-behold, there was a picture of you and him walking down the street with your hands intertwined. Do you know what this looks like Mika?”

“I know exactly what it looks like Mother. I’m getting married. A lot of people do it.”

“No, do you know what it looks like to us? We had someone down the street congratulate us the other day about you getting married. And we didn’t know about it. We told them you weren’t getting married. That’s when they told us about the blog they saw it on. We were humiliated. Our own daughter wouldn’t tell us something as big as the fact that she was engaged. Were you even going to invite us to the wedding? Or were you just going to show up one day with a ring on your finger and nonchalantly tell us, oh hey, Mom and Dad, I got married.”

“I was going to invite you. Nothing has been planned yet, so I didn’t want to tell you in case it didn’t work out. I hate getting the ‘I told you so’ lecture from you.”

“Well, now, here’s the dilemma, you see, we were hoping the rumors wouldn’t be true and that would be the end of the phone call. But, you’ve given us no choice, Mika.”

My mother paused and I took this time to look up at the guys. They were giving me looks of sympathy. They knew I didn’t like talking to my mother and that this conversation was not going very well at all.

“You have two choices, either call off the engagement and come home where you belong and we’ll forget this entire thing happened. We can go back to being a happy family. Conner will come home and we can start looking at colleges that will take you for next fall. It will be like this past year will never have happened.”

“What’s the other choice? I don’t really like the sound of the first one.”

“Mika, that really is your only choice. Your father and I aren’t going to let you get married to this washed up musician. It’s unheard of. Do you know how many failed marriages celebrities have every year? Too many to count. Come home before you get your heart broken.”

I had forgotten at this point that I had an audience to my conversation. My mother was getting on my last nerve and I was starting to get angry.

“You know Mother, this is exactly why I hadn’t told you and that man that I was getting married. You can’t even be happy for me. You’re only looking out for your reputations. I’m not going to call off the engagement. Not for you. I don’t want to raise this baby by myself and that is what would happen. I won’t sacrifice my happiness and wellbeing for you to look better in the community. And if I did call of the engagement, wouldn’t that make you look worse, knowing that I’m pregnant? I’d be a single, teenage mother instead of a pregnant woman who would be getting married to the man who fathered her child. Think about that Mother.”

“You ruined your life, Mika, the day you started being friends with that Tanner boy. He changed you and not for the better. What’s worse is, he helped convince you to not go to college and pursue skateboarding and then helped you get sponsored and going professional with it. If you don’t come home now you can forget about getting any help from us with raising this baby.”

“I don’t need your help raising this baby. Tanner was there for me Mother, unlike you. You sat in bed crying all the time because my father left us. And why does it matter if I went pro? It gave me a lot of opportunities that college wouldn’t have. You can forget about me coming home Mother. I don’t want to see you or father and have you degrade me even more.”

“You don’t know how big of a mistake you just made.”

“Oh, I think I do Mother and it wasn’t a mistake. I’ll be sure to send you a Christmas card.”

My mother made a very unladylike sort of noise and then the line went dead.

I looked up at everyone after I put my phone away. Their faces were filled with shocked expressions, except for one. Alex was beaming.

He ran over to me, exclaiming, “I’m going to be a father?”

“Yes, Alex, I’m pregnant. I didn’t want you to find out that way, but I was too nervous to tell you. You were all looking at me so expectantly. And when my mother called, it just kind of slipped out. To be honest, I forgot you were all still in the room.”

I felt so exposed sitting in the middle of the room, their gazes still focused on my face. I needed to get out of there, but for how long I didn’t know. Without saying a word, I stood up and walked out of the room, not knowing where I was going or how long it would take for me to come back.