One More Night

“Look, Bree I get it. I can’t even imagine how terrifying this all must be, but you should tell him,” Anna sighed, following Bree from the kitchen to the living room. As soon as the words had came out of her friend’s mouth Bree had started denying it. She couldn’t tell Marc, she couldn’t screw up whatever he had going in New York because she was too stupid to remind him to use a condom one time. He knew she was on the pill as well – they’d cleared that whole situation up the second time they’d slept together, wanting to be honest about it – so he’d probably thought they were safe. She couldn’t just call him up, out of the blue and announce she was pregnant.

“I’m not telling him Anna. I don’t want him involved,” it was a lie. Such a painful, awful lie, but Bree had to say it. She’d love nothing more than to have been with Marc, maybe even settled down and had a family, but she wasn’t going to do it to him like this. Not when she’d always wonder if he was there because he felt obliged to or because he loved her. Her parents had been lucky; they’d really, truly been in love when they’d got pregnant with her brother, but even then it wasn’t enough to keep her mother from leaving. Bree had seen first hand what happened in those situations, and it’s the kid who suffers. She wasn’t about to do that to her child, and maybe somewhere down the line she could tell Marc, maybe even introduce him to the kid, but she wasn’t going to force him to be part of it.

“Bree…”

“I don’t. Want him. Involved,” Bree drew out the sentence, and Anna finally nodded.

“Have you talked to your brother about all of this yet?” she asked quietly, and Bree shook her head. The process of working up the nerve to tell your big brother you were pregnant was a long, and excruciatingly difficult one.

“I’m working on it. I just don’t know how to say it… what if he’s disappointed in me?” she whispered, and Anna pulled Bree into a tight hug, feeling the walls of ice she’d built around herself since hearing the news melt away. Bree wasn’t the same girl she’d been during the summer, and Anna had felt terrible for not having noticed the changes at first. Bree was always happy, but Anna should have guessed there was more to it during the summer months – she’d been on top of the world all of the time, and it pained Anna that the man who’d made her so happy now had her so torn apart.

If she knew who this man was, then maybe she could contact him in Bree’s place. She knew Bree had a right to make this decision, but she didn’t feel like she could take away the father’s right to decide whether he wanted to be involved or not. He needed to know, and if Bree didn’t want him involved then it was a court settlement over custody, if the guy even wanted to be involved. If not it would be like she’d never told him.

“It’s okay Bree; you know he loves you no matter what, he won’t be disappointed. Shocked as hell, but not disappointed,” Anna cooed, and Bree sniffled before straightening up. She was positive that her belly was starting to show considerably; just the way her pants were fitting lately was different, and at four and a half months it was to be expected. People around Thunder Bay knew she was pregnant, and she hadn’t kept it a secret from people at work or other mutual friends – it would have been impossible to do so anyway once she’d started to show. But her family still didn’t know.

“I’m… I’m going to call him. Right now, before I can wimp out,” Bree decided, and Anna smiled, hugging her once more before retreating to the kitchen of the small house she and Mike shared to give Bree some space. It took nearly ten minutes of staring at her phone to dial Vik’s number, and when he answered she burst into tears.

“Bree? Bree, are you okay? Is something wrong? Where are you? Are you hurt?” suddenly his usual rapid-fire questions were coming at her, making her laugh. She’d been so caught up in the whirlwind that was her life that she’d forgot the rest of the world was normal.

“No, I’m not hurt,” she decided that was safest, and heard Vik’s long exhale of breath. He was probably relieved, for the moment.

“Shit kid, you scared the hell out of me!” he scolded her, before realizing that she had no smart-ass comeback for him. “Something’s wrong… Bree?”

“Vik I’m so sorry,” she was starting to cry again, and she hated it.

“What? Bree, you’re really scaring me…”

“I’m pregnant,” she whispered, and heard dead silence on the other end. The pause in conversation lasted almost a full minute, Bree hiccupping and sniffling, waiting for her brother to say something.

“You’re…”

“Pregnant,” she confirmed, more silence ensuing.

“Is he there?”

The question caught her off guard a little.

“Are you dating him?”

Bree let out a long breath. This would be the hard part, and she’d known it.

“No… not anymore,”

“Did that asshole leave when you told him? Who is he? I’ll kick the living shit out of—”

“Vik!” she exclaimed, and he quieted down immediately. “He has no idea… we broke up before I found out.”

“Well then tell him! He can damn well take responsibility for it,” he insisted, but Bree shook her head, before feeling foolish when she remembered her brother couldn’t see the gesture.

“I don’t want him to know, Vik. He doesn’t live here for most of the year, and I’m not screwing up his world with this,” she explained, knowing full well Vik wouldn’t understand. He had a very black-and-white view of the world; and seeing their parents make it through the struggles they’d had to him meant everybody should try to do the same thing. Be together and work it out, and only as a last resort split up.

“But it’s okay for him to screw up yours? I don’t think so Bree. He needs to know, if anything so he can pay child support. If you don’t want him involved past that, fine – I’ll take it to court with you. I’ll find a job in Thunder Bay so we can both look after my nephew,” she had to laugh at Vik then; he was a schemer and a half.

“Who’re you to say it’s a boy?” she teased, and finally Vik laughed as well.

“Because I do. I’m serious though, Bree; if I had a kid I’d want to know,” his voice softened, becoming the big brother that only she and a select few actually knew. He was pretty rough and tumble around the rest of the world, but not around his baby sister. She was five years younger than him, and he’d always been around to look after her. Bree knew it probably killed him that he hadn’t been able to protect her from this.

“I’ll think about it,” she finally allowed, and after a long argument Vik agreed. They talked some more, Vik deciding he’d come down to Thunder Bay from Toronto to spend some time with her and help her get things organized, before the most dreaded question came up.

“Have you told dad?”

Her silence was all the answer that was needed. Bree bit her lip as she heard Vik cuss quietly to himself, probably pacing his apartment, before saying anything.

“You have to tell him; it has to be from you, Bree,”

“He’s going to hate me; all they ever did was tell us to never do this, and look what happened,” she felt the tears welling up again, feeling ridiculous. The hormones must already be getting to her for her to be bawling every time she turned around.

“He’ll never hate you Bree, it’s just that he wants better for us and our kids than they were able to give us as kids, you know? Dad never wanted us to struggle the way he and mom did when they had me,” Bree knew it ate away at her brother that her parents had struggled. They’d moved in with her father’s family for nearly a year so that they could both work to save up money and support themselves and an infant Vik; thankfully her Grandma had been a stay at home mom, and more than happy to babysit him all of the time.

“Yeah, but I just… I don’t want to disappoint him,” she admitted. Disappointing people was probably her biggest fear.

“You won’t, I promise,”

While Bree talked with her brother Anna was feeling like the worst possible person on planet earth. She’d finally coaxed some of the details out of Bree just days ago about this summer fling – she knew his name was Marc, he was twenty-six, just a year older than Bree, that his family was all here, he was tall, athletic and had ridiculously red hair. Bree had also told her that she’d never before met somebody who came as close to the definition of ‘perfect’ as he did; everything from his actions to his words, ideas, morals… it had been easy to see Bree had fallen hard for him.

But now Anna was trying to Google him with the little information she had. Bree had mentioned something about New York, but god only knew how many Marc’s – with a c, not a k – lived in New York city.

The only thing that was to her advantage, was that he was from Thunder Bay. After searching through Facebook – for the off-chance she was friends with a redheaded Marc or that one of her friends were, and then just searching “Marc, Thunder Bay” she had nothing. This had to be against the rules somehow, Anna was sure, but she needed to help Bree out, or at least know who this mystery guy was to try and understand where she was coming from.

Google was really her last choice – she hated it because it felt like she was truly digging into someone’s life. At least with Facebook it was something they’d put out for the world, not the internet dragging anything anybody had put up for someone else to see. But she still typed in the search she figured would be best.

‘Marc, Thunder Bay, Ontario’

And her eyes widened when up came the suggestion of the famous Marc Staal, in all his redheaded, polite, New York abiding glory. She hoped like hell this wasn’t Bree’s Marc, and for one simple reason that she saw after just selecting and browsing the first results page.

He was definitely, very married.