Chapter Eight
The next morning...
"You need to go fix this Tony thing before shit hits the fan, Rae," Anthony says, looking up from my phone, "if this thing keeps ringing it'll wake up those of us who will complain about a hangover."
"I know I need to fix this, but I need to talk to Vic, and he's the only one in this fucking situation who isn't calling me," I say, whisper-yelling at Anthony, running a hand through my hair and biting on my lip.
"Rae, I know you want his opinion on how to fix this, but you have to remember that Vic didn't do this stuff. He wasn't the one who left, had a kid, got rid of that kid, then let a drunk Brendan tell the father of that child all the shit," Anthony says, barely looking up at me, reaching for his water. "You just need to talk to Tony. You fucked him several times over a course of four years, so worse case scenario just fuck him again and get his mind off of Jordan."
I rolled my eyes, shooting a death glare at Anthony, "you're an asshole sometimes, you know?"
He throws his hands up, shrugging his shoulders, "you woke me up at eight in the morning on our day off, I feel as though I have enough reason to be blunt as hell with you. I mean, you did kinda screw up by dragging your feet in telling him. You lured yourself into a false sense of security. That's all on you, and you need to just face it."
"I hate when you're right," I mutter, sitting up, grabbing my phone, and pushing myself into the standing position. "I'm going to their bus to see if I can find him."
I walk out of the lounge, towards the door, stopping and grabbing my laptop so that I can have more pictures and videos in case Tony asks to see some. I bite my lip and debate taking a detour and finding Vic before I talk to Tony. I throw that idea to the back of my mind, Anthony is right, I need to just face Tony and get this over with.
As I walk towards the area that Pierce's bus is usually parked, my mind starts to wander and I start to worry if Tony will try to take Jordan from Amy and Jon. He couldn't, could he? He wasn't there to sign the birth certificate, I said that the father was unknown. I didn't tell anyone other than my group of friends and family who the father was. I signed away all of my parental rights, and the only way I would ever have them back is if something happened to her parents.
I push that out of my head, knowing that Tony wouldn't want to take her from them, she knows them too well. He wouldn't want to do that to anyone. I hope.
I walk up the steps to their bus, pressing in the code and stepping into the bus. Jaime is sitting at the table in the front and just barely manages to make eye contact with me. "I'm hungover and Tony's been bitching all morning, go make him shut up so that I can sleep," he mutters, laying his head back on the table.
"I'm here to try," I whisper, "is he in the lounge?" I ask, watching Jaime barely nod his head as he lets out a groan.
I bite my lip, walking towards the lounge door and grabbing the handle. I knock on it softly, and open the door slowly. "What do you want?" Tony mumbled, not looking up from the floor. "I told you guys that I didn't want to fucking talk."
"Tony," I mutter, my breath catching when he snaps his head up towards my voice, "I just want to talk, I want to explain some things."
"I think you made shit pretty clear last night. I have a fucking daughter that I didn't know existed."
He was angry. I had never seen him this mad in the four years that he and I were together. I understood, I knew why he was mad. It all made sense. "Look, you're mad. But this won't help anything. You being mad, you not taking a chance to ask questions and get to know what all I thought about when deciding to give her to Amy and Jon, this won't help anything. You need to at least look at her. You don't even know her fucking name," I say, my voice getting harsher and harsher with ever word until I'm scolding him like he was a child.
"What does it matter? She's never going to be my kid."
"She's your child. She's my child. Just because Amy and Jon have her doesn't change that. Amy and Jon have made it very clear that as soon as she's old enough to understand everything, she's going to know everything. Amy and I talked about that. She calls me her aunt right now, but as soon as I'm ready we're telling Jordan the truth."
"So why even give her to them?"
"They wanted to have a family for as long as they had been together. They had been trying for years, and I get pregnant when I wasn't ready or stable enough to take care of her."
He looks at me, his face a mixture of anger and sadness, "I just wish I would have at least known."
"I know, I know. I should have told you. But I didn't want to get drug back into that situation. You can ask Lily, I debated on going back to your house and telling you, but I didn't know if I could handle it. I didn't know if you wanted to have a kid. I just knew that you weren't the person that I wanted to be with," I pause, trying to find the right words, trying to figure out how to keep myself from being too emotional. "I didn't want the kid to grow up without a dad around."
"What makes you think I wouldn't have stepped the fuck up?" he asks, his voice evidently hurt by what I said.
I look at him, taking a deep breath, holding back tears, "I didn't know if you would, because of how you had been treating me at the time. You weren't home, you weren't around for me. I wasn't going to have my kid grow up the same way that I had."
I watch as realization crossed his face. I barely talked about my life, I'm not surprised that he forgot about it. He probably didn't remember that by dad left me and Amy and my mom. He probably didn't think about how much that fucked with me growing up, not having my father around. Amy was fine, she was too young to remember what it was like to have a father around. She only ever knew just having mom around.
I take a deep breath, knowing that he doesn't know what to say to me. "I don't expect you to be okay with how I handled everything, but I do hope that you can come into this situation and try to make the best of it. You can hate me, you can say that you never want to see me again, and you can pretty much say whatever the fuck you want about me. But I will not let you fuck with Jordan."
Tony looks at me, "I'm not going to do anything to ruin the life she has, and I couldn't even fathom pushing you out of my life again."
One week later...
"Do you think Vic would be willing to sing on a song with us?" Lily asks, glancing up from the notebook. "I also think this song could have a kickass music video. But I need a dude to sing this one part, and I really think it would be better to have guest vocals. We could play it here and see how the people react to Vic's singing in it."
"Lily," I start, cutting her off, making her stop her train of thought, "I cannot answer for Vic. I can maybe have his girlfriend give her opinion. But I cannot answer for Vic, nor do I want to make decisions for him. So, Lily, would you like me to call Ashley or Vic for you?"
"I guess you can just call Vic. Maybe you can sweet talk him into coming over and looking at it. It's kind of a love song, but it's also kind of screw off song, based on the video I have in mind," she pauses, reading through some lyrics, "Oh! We could even have like Jaime and Mike and Tony in the video with their girlfriends or something."
"I'll just call Vic and see if he's interested in even looking at the song," I say, walking away from the table. It's way too early to deal with her and her excitement.
I step out the door to the bus and walk down the steps before taking a seat against the bus. I pull my phone out of my pocket, scrolling through my contacts to the bottom, hitting dial next to Vic's name.
"Heya Rae, whatcha need?" Jaime's voice plays through the phone.
"Maybe Vic, since I called his phone," I say, letting a laugh play through my voice.
"Oh, yeah. One second, Vic!"
I hear the phone rustle, then Vic's voice, "hey Raegan. What's up?"
"Lily wants you to sing on a song with us. I told her that you would be the one who could make that call. So, she wanted me to call you and ask if you would please come read through this song with her."
Vic laughs a little before he agrees and hangs up the phone. I stand up, shoving my phone back into my pocket and walking back into the bus. I look at Lily, who hasn't yet moved form her spot, and is still scribbling notes into her notebook.
"Vic said he'll come look at your little song," I say, laughing at the excitement that lights up Lily's face.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, a new text message lighting up the screen.
Tony: If you have time I want to ask you something, my bus?
Me to Tony: Gimme like five.
"I'm heading to their bus, be nice to Vic when he gets here," I smile, walking down the steps to and heading towards Pierce's bus.
The last week has been difficult. Tony's over me not telling him about Jordan, but now he wants to know everything about her that he can possibly get out of me.
When's her birthday? April 7th, 2012. What time was she born? 5:13 in the morning, after seventeen hours of labor. What was her first word? Bubble. What color is her room? Yellow. What is her full name? Jordan Todd Weaks, T in Todd is for Tony. So many questions that he's been asking, curious about his child. The child that he hasn't asked to meet, only see pictures and videos.
I don't want to push her onto him. I don't want her to get hurt by meeting him. I knew that she was young enough to be okay, but I still worried. Tony knew I was protective of her, because I haven't let him be around during any of our Skype calls. I try to keep her safe as much as I am able to while miles away.
I walk up to Pierce's bus, typing in the code and stepping in. I immediately go towards the lounge, knowing that Tony is in there waiting on me.
"Hey, Tone," I mutter, sitting down next to him.
"I want to meet her, Raegan," he says, taking me completely off guard. "I mean, I know that it's not up to me, it's up to you and Amy and Jon. But I want to meet her. I know that it'll probably have to wait until after tour or something, cause Warped isn't a place for a baby, but I want to meet her. I want to meet Jordan."
~Flashback~
I was sitting on the floor of Tony's house, looking through apartment listings in the area. "Thank you for letting me use your laptop again, Tone. I'm sure Vanessa will be happy to have me off of her couch."
"Anything for you, Raegan. But I honestly don't think that Vanessa minds too much, she happens to be a big fan of the Raegan Klass show," he says, barely looking up from his phone.
I find a listing for a studio apartment about ten minutes from Tony's house. "What about this one?" I ask, turning the laptop towards him. I watch as his eyes read through the information, his features changing and dropping. I furrow my eyebrows, "What's wrong with this one?"
"The rent is really high for such a small place with hardly any security features," he says, his eyes returning to his phone.
"You know, you've had an issue with every single place that I've shown you. The first place was in a crappy part of town. The second place was too big for just me. The third was too sketchy since the roommate would have been a dude we didn't know. And now this one. I'm starting to think that you just want me to jump couches for the rest of my life," I mutter, no sign of amusement in my voice. "I need a place to actually live, a place to actually have my shit instead of the trunk of my car."
"I just don't want you to waste your money. You just got this job, you don't need to drop all of your savings on an overpriced security deposit," he pauses, looking at me, "plus, I don't see why you don't just move in here. I have plenty of rooms available."
I go to tell him that he's being absurd, that six months is way too short of a time frame to talk about moving in, but he cuts me off, continuing his speech. "I know we've only been dating for less than a year, but you're here often enough. And you're always offering to house sit while I'm gone on tours. And look, you wouldn't even have to move into my bedroom if you didn't want to. You could pick one of the spare rooms to use."
"Tony," I say, pausing and trying to find the right words, "I don't want you tell me that I can move in with you when you don't want me to move in with you. I especially don't want you to tell me to move in with you because of my financial situation, because you know that I've always been able to figure that shit out."
"Raegan, listen to me. If I didn't want you to move in with me, I would not ask you to. I would just rather have you move in with me than watch you move in with some strangers, or into a shitty apartment that you won't be safe in."
I bite on my lip and look at him, running a hand through my hair, trying to figure out if he's being completely honest with me. "Tony, are you sure?"
He leans towards me, giving me a kiss that's full of passion, "of course I am."
I smile at him, "okay, then I'll move in here, and I don't really think I'll be needed to take over one of the guest rooms."