Remember the Time

Chapter 18

Mariah was fifteen minutes late for her meeting with Walter so she hurried into the recording studio. Walter was sitting over by the piano and Mariah stopped to catch her breath.

"Took you long enough." He said, folding his arms.

Mariah walked over to sit by him at the piano. "Sorry I'm late Michael and I were...nevermind. How have you been?"

"I've been good. Same old, same old. How have you been?" He asked.

Mariah giggled. "Well, I got married...so there's that."

"Yeah, I heard about that. It happened out of nowhere." Walter said.

Mariah nodded. "Well we got engaged in July, but we didn't want to tell anybody about it. You know Mike was still married to Lisa so there would've been a thing."

"So when you guys were saying you were dating, you were engaged?" He asked, befuddled.

Mariah nodded. "Yeah, I just left my ring at home. So we got married on the eighteenth of last month and we're going on our honeymoon in March."

"Where are you guys going?"

"We're still thinking about it. Either Aspen or camping." She said.

Walter laughed. "You? Camping?"

"What's so funny about that?" She asked.

"You wouldn't last ten minutes." He said, crossing his arms.

She mirrored him, folding her arms over her chest. "You don't know that."

"If you say so." Walter replied, cheesing grin fading into a slight smile. "How was Japan?"

"Well when we got to Tokyo, we had a nice wedding night, but we woke up the next morning and started going at it. So we weren't talking like the whole time we were there and then when we finally did make up, he sent me to Hawaii while he did his other shows in Fukuoka." She paused, rolling her eyes. "But when he got to Hawaii everything was fine."

"Why were you all fighting?" He inquired.

Mariah sighed. "He's really set on having a baby and he brought up the abortion. That really hurt me because I feel like if I can't have a baby, he'll probably divorce me."

Walter appeared sympathetic. "That's a lot of pressure."

"It is. He didn't say it, but I feel it. Every time we have sex, it's not like sex because he loves me-"

"It's because he wants something from you." Walter interjected.

She nodded. "Yeah. He even told me that if I couldn't get pregnant his friend would carry the baby for me."

"That's a little extreme. You just got married last month."

"He told me this before we got married. We've been 'trying' since we got engaged." She explained. "I'm counting down to when he starts trying to accuse me of using birth control."

"I bet you'd be barefoot and pregnant if you let him have his way." Walter said.

Mariah laughed. "Yeah, okay. I'd drop that baby and keep working."

"No you wouldn't. You'd see that baby and wouldn't wanna leave home."

She rolled her eyes. "Anyway...I have some new songs I want to work on."

January 26th, 1997

Tommy was sitting in his office waiting for Walter's call. He wondered how much the writer-producer could get out of Mariah during their writing session earlier that day.