All Was Golden in the Sky

Clouds always looked so soft. Sometimes I wished they were as solid as they looked in Aladdin; I just wanted to grab one and snuggle up into it, breathing in the fresh scent of air as I flew through it. The clouds in Greece were beautiful. Brendon and I spent every day on the pebble beach by our hotel gazing up at them, reveling in the cool Mediterranean breeze against our skin and searching for sea glass on the shore.

At night, Brendon would spin me under the moonlight, wooing me over and over again with soft serenades and caresses. The sheets of our room felt as soft as I imagined the clouds to be, and every night that Brendon lay me down on them I felt like I was flying. His touch was my air, and his moans were my breath. I had never felt so happy, and Brendon’s smile told me he hadn’t, either. It was such a sweet escape from our world that I almost didn’t want to go home.

“Stop laughing at me,” I pouted at him when we got to the airport. He’d been making fun of the way I’d been waddling all day, the result of an intense wake-up call that left my legs still sore.

He chuckled and wrapped his arms around me once we’d made it past security and customs, waddling with me towards the baggage claim. “You’re beautiful,” he cooed, spluttering when a bit of my hair flew into his mouth.

“I’m tired,” I sighed back. His chest had quickly become my absolute favorite pillow over the last two weeks, and I buried my face in the cotton of his shirt while we waited for our bags. I was vaguely aware of Zack making his way over to us, but I was still in my la-la land; I didn’t want to acknowledge the reality that we were back in the states and about to be whisked back into the real world by the beloved body guard.

“Hello, Uries,” Zack chuckled. He made a face at me when I peeked up from Brendon’s shirt, like I was a shy child hiding from a peculiar acquaintance. “Did Brendon wear you out, Annie?”

“Hello, Zack,” I said, ignoring his implication and instead hiding my blush in Brendon’s chest. Both men laughed at me, and I felt Brendon’s hand pat the top of my head gently.

“It’s okay, baby girl. Be proud of your loving,” Brendon said. He wrapped his arm around my waist and I could just imagine his smirk when my body convulsed in a chill from his touch. It would take me weeks to desensitize my body to every little touch, but something told me he wouldn’t let that happen. The pinch he gave my hip only furthered that belief.

Zack just grinned at us before ducking to grab one of our bags from the belt before it could sneak past. “Glad to see two weeks alone didn’t make you two any less disgustingly adorable,” he said, giving us a pained expression and then shooting me a wink. I liked him. He was cool.

I perked up a lot by the time we were settled in the car. Zack had been gracious enough to drop us off at the airport before, and so he was even nicer to pick us up as well, and it felt comforting to be back in the backseat of Brendon’s car again. He stayed snuggled next to me, hand firmly clasped in mine, and smiled along as I regaled Zack with stories of our trips; I decided to leave out some of the more intimate stories, like the time Brendon and I bravely left all the windows open during a marathon of love making that lasted nearly an entire moon cycle—exaggeration? Maybe—but I think he suspected we’d gotten up to as much.

“Jesus, Annie, save some for the slideshow,” Zack laughed once we’d pulled up to the house. “It’s gonna suck having to hear all this again when you show me the pictures to go with it.”

I glared at the back of his head as I unbuckled. “You’ll listen again and you’ll like it,” I said.

He just sighed and shook his head. “Whatever, boss lady.”

We didn’t have much time to settle into the whole idea of married home life. Our honeymoon had been a welcome escape to some craziness, but even more insanity waited for us once we got home: Pete called asking if Panic! was interested in joining Fall Out Boy on their upcoming end-hiatus tour, which Brendon happily agreed to; the band finally released their first single of the new album, Miss Jackson, which kicked fucking ass; and the whole while Spencer steadily started being absent to recording sessions for the last few songs on the album.

“What do you mean, he hasn’t been coming to rehearsals?” I asked Brendon one night. He had come home exhausted with a worried smile on his face; with Spencer’s absence, he’d been recording the drum parts as well as vocals and guitar parts. If Dallon and Kenny hadn’t been so on top of their parts he would probably do their parts, too, the dedicated goof.

He just shrugged and scarfed down the food I had made for him. “I’m not sure. He just calls and says he can’t make it. Or he doesn’t call and then when I ask him what’s up he says he completely forgot.”

“How could he forget? You guys are recording literally every day.”

His eyes were dark when he looked at me. “I know,” he said. And we both knew that the darkness that had once overshadowed Spencer was threatening to reemerge. We just didn’t know how to stop it.

I was just as busy with Always, doing this and that to promote the brand at malls along the coast. It was flattering having so many girls come to the various meet and greets eager to meet me. They told me stories about how much of an inspiration I was and how they admired my eloquent middle-finger equivalent statements against the ideal body we had carved for ourselves. Only occasionally did anyone mention Brendon or ask me to relay a message to him; it seemed like they all really were just there for me, which was weird, but a welcome weird.

Lately, I’d been starting to feel sick. More than just a little bug sick, but less than an “I need to go to the hospital” ill. I was just woozy, really, and tired. It was probably just exhaustion from all the traveling with Brendon—to Vegas for the Miss Jackson video, back to LA for home, here there and everywhere for Always, and any other miscellaneous adventures.

It was getting to a point where I couldn’t really blame it on jetlag, but the spotting I saw in my panties every month made me rule out the obvious assumption for all the nausea and whatnot.

It was a crazy three months, to say the least.

I was cooking dinner one night when I heard Brendon get home. They were wrapping up recording and set to finish by the end of the week. In an attempt to alleviate some of his stress, I had fixed him one of his favorite meals, surprisingly without burning any of it, and lit candles with comforting scents around the dining room.

“Smells good, babe,” Brendon sighed when he walked in. He pressed a quick kiss to my cheek before shaking his head and then caressing my cheeks to pull me in for a more lingering kiss. “Mmm, tastes good, too,” he smirked.

“You’re such a perv,” I laughed.

“I’m your perv, baby girl,” he yawned. His eyes widened when I groaned and clutched at my stomach, and he held out a hand to steady me. “You okay?”

I shrugged and winced. “Yeah, I’m fine. I just keep getting these bad cramps today.”

He scrunched up his nose. “Lady Woes?” Like the entire idea of periods was revolting, which I guess to him it kind of was, but it wasn’t anything I could help.

“Probably soon.” I moved away to start dishing out the food onto plates. “Why don’t you go put your stuff away and then we’ll eat?” He nodded and pressed another kiss to my head before squeezing past towards the music room to drop off his guitar and notebook.

His humming echoed in my ears when my hand froze over the plates, and I calculated the math in my head. It should be soon, yeah, but when had the last time been? And that time hadn’t really been much, just one day of spotting. Did that really constitute as a period? Somehow I didn’t think so. The pain in my abdomen shot through me again, almost a blinding pain, and I dropped the spoon to clutch at my stomach. The spoon clattered against the ground, and I heard Brendon call, “Annie? You all good?”

It was like that feeling on a rollercoaster when you plummet over a hill; my entire stomach dropped and felt empty, tugging at the exact moment the pain shattered to a breaking point. I looked down in terror at the droplets of blood that were steadily becoming a puddle forming around my feet, and I could feel it steadily running down my legs. “Brendon!” I screamed, grabbing onto the counter to steady myself.

He sprinted into the room, face pale and eyes wide when he saw me hunched over. “Take me to the hospital,” I said.

--

They said it was actually a common thing. That it happened a lot during first trimesters. But that didn’t make the entire thing any less heartbreaking or make me feel any less like a failure.

How had I not been able to tell I was pregnant? I wanted to blame the distractions of our schedules, but it was my body. I should have been able to tell. I should have done more to make sure I was in top shape and that it—I couldn’t call it a baby—was okay. But it didn’t really matter now.

I cried for hours, sobbed until my arms were too weak to even hold myself up and until my throat was hoarse from silent screams. Brendon lay in the hospital bed next to me, cradling me in his arms and stroking my hair rhythmically every time my hysterics kicked in again. He whispered comforting words and shushed me when I tried damning myself to an eternity of misery.

“It’s not your fault, baby,” he whispered, pressing his lips softly against all the splotches on my cheeks. “It’ll be okay.”

“No it won’t,” I sobbed. My words were muffled by the cotton of his shirt, but I couldn’t pull away. His scent was the only thing keeping me from spilling over the edge.

He tried chuckling and brushed some of my hair out of my face. “Of course it will, Annie. We’re still here. It’ll be okay.”

He kept repeating that to me, even after the doctor came back in to talk to us, even after the doctor told us that the tests suggested I might be an inhospitable environment for an embryo—that the chances of us ever having a child, while not completely impossible, were still slim, at least naturally.

“We wasted a lot of condoms then,” I said. And then I cried even more.

I couldn’t be moved to go home, and so we shacked up in my hospital room that night to leave in the morning. Brendon had already called Dallon and told him he wouldn’t be in the studio the next day and to do whatever they could without him. I was glad he didn’t explain to him why.

“I don’t want to tell anybody,” I whispered into his chest later. It was a tight squeeze on the bed with the two of us, but the bars on the side of the bed saved us from toppling off. There was no way I wasn’t going to be close to Brendon that night, nor he me.

His fingers were heaven against my back, and they gently kneaded out some of the tension as he held me close. “We don’t have to,” he whispered back. “If anyone asks, I just felt like spending time with my beautiful wife.”

My eyes hurt from all the tears over the past six hours, but that didn’t stop more from streaming down at his words. “I really wanted to have a baby with you,” I cried, stroking his cheek with the back of my fingers. He smiled sadly and tugged me closer.

“It’s not impossible yet, Annie. We’ll find a way to make it happen. You can’t get out of having my demon babies that easily.” He bit his lip before pressing them softly against mine, and then rested his forehead against mine so he could stare into my eyes. “We just gotta take care of you first. Then we’ll worry about all of that later. We’re young—we got plenty of time, honey.”

“I love you so much,” I whispered.

“I love you more,” he argued, kissing me again. His kiss was better than oxygen, and I could feel it slowly filling me with life. It couldn’t make up for the life I’d lost, but it felt like a promise that tonight would be the last time I experienced any pain or heartbreak like that. We’d figure it out.

Somehow.