Page 39 of Accidental Baby For My Brother’s Best Friend

“Can it be my song?”

Locke is quiet for a long moment and I’m drifting off to sleep despite how bad I feel, so later, I’m not sure if I dreamed his answer.

“I think it already is.”

* * *

I wake to my alarm going off, one I’d neglected to turn off after I decided not to go to the concert. It’s cold in my room and I’m still feeling too sick to question why I’m disappointed that I’m alone.

I get up and wash my face and send a barrage of texts to Locke to make sure he remembers each detail of the show. Infuriatingly, he only sends back a thumbs up emoji, but honestly, I know that he knows what to do. Locke has been in the music business since I was still jailbait, and Jackson was right. My brother’s not so good at the financial part of music. Locke can handle it, and I’m not too worried as I settle back into bed, nibbling on saltine crackers I found in my purse. I’m angry with myself for eating pork since it doesn’t always agree with me, but this seems like overkill. I feel pale and clammy and everything aches.

It’s a strange feeling, not quite like when I had food poisoning in high school from some gas station sushi, but close enough. Something feels off, unstable in a way, and it leads me to text Axel, who was the only other one of us who ordered the link sausages. I text that I’m sick and ask if the sausages are disagreeing with him, too. He quickly texts back that he’s healthy as a horse and I frown down at my phone but shrug, turning on the television.

An hour later, Axel sends me the weirdest text I’ve ever gotten from a man in my life.

Gemma, is your period late?

I nearly choke on my saltine crackers and I’m about to ask what the fuck he’s talking about when it slowly dawns on me. I’ve taken birth control religiously since I was thirteen because of awful period cramps that kept me out of gym class, and on some months, out of school for two days. I haven’t been sexually active until this tour, so maybe I’ve skipped a day here and there, but surely….

It’s been so busy that I haven’t been great about keeping track, so I frantically open my tracker app to see the little liquid drop of red and have to scroll back over a month to see it.

Two weeks. I’m nearly two weeks late.

I don’t respond to Axel, and eventually, he texts me again while I’m staring blankly at the television, which has some kind of QVC channel playing, but I can’t be bothered to pick up my phone.

Two weeks late.

What the hell am I going to do now?

---