Beg Me to Stay

"So, uh, where are you staying tonight?" Mike inquired, managing to break the silence that had settled between us as we headed towards the club to meet up with the others.

"With Kat, probably," I answered, shrugging nonchalantly as I matched his strides step for step. "Why?"

I watched his shoulders rise from the corner of my eye. "I was just thinking that maybe we could catch up on some lost time, you know."

"Isn't that how we got in this situation in the first place?" I teased.

"Kind of," He replied with a smirk and a shrug of his shoulders. "But I promise that won't happen this time. No touching or anything, just talking."

"What a shame," I responded just as we reached our destination and he opened the door for me. "We sure had fun all those nights together, Mr. Fuentes."

"You're such a tease." He murmured, slapping me on the backside as I passed him with a cheeky grin.

I giggled, slapping him on the chest as he followed me into the building. "I'm just kidding. I'll stay with you, if you want me to."

He nodded his head. "Good."

"Well, look who decided to grace us with their presence." Vic announced when we arrived at their table, grinning rather cheekily.

"Did the two of you use protection?" Jaime questioned loudly with a smirk.

Poor Kat; Jaime's question made her choke on whatever alcohol she was drinking, which in turn made everyone but Mike and I give her questioning glances.

Mike and I just kind of looked anywhere but at them as they fussed over her, wondering just how they would take the news if we told them right now.

"You okay, Kit Kat? You're turning kind of red." Tony mumbled, curiously.

"You're not pregnant, are you?" Vic mumbled, suspiciously. "The last thing we need is multiple Jaime's running around."

'What about multiple Mikey's running around?' That was the question that was on the tip of my tongue, begging to be set free by the sound of my voice. I kept it in, though, realizing it might be a bit too humorous for such a serious situation.

"Actually, I'm glad we're on this topic, Victor, because I have an announcement - " Mikey bumped me with his shoulder. " - er, I mean Mikey and I do - we both have an announcement to make." I took a deep breath, finding the patterns of my shoes to be far more interesting than my surroundings. "We, uh, -- well . . . we're expecting."

There was a silence among our group that never existed before; a silence that screamed astonishment. A silence that started to slowly eat away at my confidence and make me wanna be anywhere but where I was.

Mike stepped up at that point, grabbing hold of my hand and giving it a gentle squeeze. "She's pregnant, you guys. We slept together, and she's pregnant."

You could cut the awkward tension with a knife it was so unbearable. I couldn't tell what they were thinking or how their minds were working, but the quietness of it all was killing me. And then, my nerves began to work on overtime when the thought of their rejection crept into my mind.

It didn't matter that they liked me before; it only mattered that I was pregnant now. Being pregnant meant that I would try to take him out of their world; that I would try to civilize him. All in all, I would try and get Mike to quit the band.

What they didn't know was that I didn't want Mikey to quit the band, not at all. I actually wanted him to stay in it, because I wanted to see him happy; even if it meant that he wasn't in the picture.

Before I could even think of something to say or do to make them acknowledge the situation at hand, I felt that all too familiar sensation that came along with being pregnant and I was off to the ladies room with my hand covering my mouth. I could hear footsteps following behind me but didn't dare stop to take a look at them. Instead, I ran with all my might and forced my way into a stall, landing on my knees to pray to the porcelain god himself.

I felt someone pull my hair away from my face and rub my back as I choked out all I could from my esophagus with hot tears running down my face. I was angry, upset, hurt, and most of all, I was pregnant with barely a stomach to show for it. I was angry at myself for thinking Mike's band members would be okay with me being pregnant, hurt because they weren't, and upset for even being in this situation in the first place.

I had known the Fuentes family for years now, just as I had the Perry and Preciado families, but that doesn't mean we were necessarily friends. The Fuentes boys were older than me -- Mike being at least 4 years my senior while Vic was closer to six -- so I didn't really bother with them too much, other than the occasional time or two that my mother had their parents over for dinner and the boys tagged along. Needless to say, my mother loved their parents, but she wasn't so fond of Mike as she was Vic, as Mike had a multitude of tattoos and it was no secret that he was into alcohol and illegal substances. Vic was the goody two shoes in my mother's eyes, seemingly innocent and always respectful. Too bad Vic was just as troublesome as his younger brother sometimes . . .

Anyways, Mike and I hardly ever got along, most likely the result of my mother always whispering in my ear, and when we did, it was awkward moments of staring elsewhere just to avoid the other. It wasn't until I reached high school that everything changed, that I changed. I was upset that my parents weren't talking, that I couldn't see my dad, and that I had a younger brother that I didn't know about. I was going through a rough patch at the time, a stage of my youth when I honestly despised myself. I shouldn't have, though. I was at the top of my class with a 5.0 average due to my surplus of AP classes, with friends of all kinds around nearly every corner, but there was something missing for me. I had become bored with my life, bored with who I had become. And it took one night of me sneaking out of the house to realize that.

Of course, Mike Fuentes was the one to catch me, standing outside smoking on one of his cancer sticks. We bickered for a minute or two before he ended up dragging me into his parents house, where him and Vic were having a get-together with some of their friends. From that night on, I was somewhat friends with Mike, though we bickered more often than not, even to this day ten years later.

I will forever be grateful to him for showing me that there was more to life than sitting at home studying or being on the honor roll committee. You needed friends, too; the honest to God true ones, not just acquaintances. Someone like Katarina, who I met through Jaime one evening in my sophomore year; that was a true friend.

I guess it was somewhat of a shock to the guys to find out that Mike and I slept together, as we were never exactly friends in the first place, but did they have to act so shocked? I mean, I wasn't exactly happy about this situation, either! But, it is what it is, and I plan to make the best of it despite the inconvenience of the situation.

"I shouldn't have come here, Mikey." I mumbled once I was done puking my guts up and the dry-heaving had subsided. I sat back from the toilet and turned to face him, feeling like a piece of shit and probably looking like one too.

"They're just shocked, Anita. They'll get over it, I promise." He assured me, helping to pull me up from the floor of the bathroom.

"They're afraid I'm going to take you away from the band, that I'm going to want you to quit and become a father or something like that. They're mad at me."

"If anything, they should be mad at me. This is as much my fault as it is yours, Anita. Just calm down and try to relax, and I'll take you back to the hotel, okay? I'm sorry things turned out this way."

"It's not your fault, Mike. I should have been on birth control or something or made sure you had a condom. I should've been smarter about everything, but look what I did instead! I've fucked everything up just because I wanted to have a little bit of fun!" Hot, angry tears began to race down my cheeks, succeeding in blurring my vision and making me look and feel worse than I did before.

"You haven't fucked everything up, Anita. You're just upset. We'll get through this, okay? We're gonna make this work, I promise you." He placed a kiss to my forehead, rubbing my back once he pulled away. "Now, I'm going to go out there and talk to them while you clean up, okay?"

A few minutes after he walked out of the bathroom, Kat walked in, holding my toothbrush, toothpaste, and a bottle of mouthwash in her hands. She handed them to me without a word and watched as I used them one by one.

She didn't say a word until I was spitting green mouthwash into the sink. "So, I see Mike took the news pretty well."

I shrugged, watching the green liquid mix with the clear of the water and go down the drain. "I don't think he's happy about it, but he says he'll help me out the best he can."

"That's great, Anita." She murmured, smiling back at me in the mirror. "I'm really sorry the guys reacted the way they did. If anyone, I thought it would be Mike reacting that way, not the others."

"They're just shocked, that's all." I mumbled, trying to convince not only myself but her too. "They'll get over it once I'm gone."

When we walked out of the bathroom, I didn't even bother to stop and say anything to the guys, I just walked right past them and headed straight for the door. I wasn't going to stay and wait for them at first, but I decided it might be a good idea, seeing as how it was late at night and I was a lonely pregnant woman, so I leaned back against the brick of the building and crossed my arms over my chest and waited.

Finally, Mike busted through the door, looking both ways multiple times before he turned to see me leaning against the building and breathed a sigh of relief. "I thought you left." He mumbled, once he was standing in front of me.

"I wanted to," I assured him. "But I realized it wasn't a good idea for someone in my condition to run off at this time of night, so I stayed."