The Hook-Up (Part Two)

Chapter 265

"I need a break...." Bruno told his band five hours into one of their first run throughs of the upcoming tour. "Go ahead and go get something to eat, y'all. Like maybe like two hours..."

"Are you sure, Bruno?" Phil asked.

"Yeah. Why don't we just break for the rest of the night? It's already 8...." Phred said.

"No. There's still more that we need to do, but I just...I can't do it right now." he said leaning against a set of boxes that held insoktruments.

"We can do that, then." John told them.

"Yeah. That's okay." Jamero answered watching Bruno not care what any of them were thinking.

He walked out to the back of the small studio they were renting to prepare for the tour reaching for his cigarettes. He taped his feet looking out toward the traffic not sure about what exactly he was thinking about. It might not be 2011 but I'm not ready for another kid. He thought to himself. How is it even mine? We weren't together that many times..Through his thoughts he worked out a story in his head that would explain the child not being his. I was gone for a long time. She and Wes had to have hooked up after that. She and I are so much alike. She had to have hooked up with someone else. He reached for his phone to text her knowing that she would be home.

Are you sure it's mine?

Without even letting the phone send he heard his phone ring. "What the fuck are you even talking about? Bruno! Come on!" she yelled at him.

"I mean..." he said softly feeling the anxiety of the future again. "I wasn't here..."

"Bruno. I hardly have time to sleep, when the hell would you think I would have found time to fuck someone else?" she asked him.

"I don't know..." he answered her. "I don't know. But it has to be it...."

"What are you talking about? Bruno....I know my body. I know when it was." she told him. "Just like I know when it was for the twins."

"You don't even know yet!" he almost yelled at her. "What if you're not! What if it's one of those phantom pregnancy things. Like Tahiti got one of those once. Josh was going crazy..."

"I'm going to find out for sure tomorrow, Bruno." she told him still frustrated with him. "Just calm down. Go for a run or something. Go hit something. God."

"I don't need to." he told her. "I don't need it."

"I'm not your mother. I'm not going to tell you what to do." she told him. "You can calm down or you can get angry and pissed about the situation. But whatever the hell happens is going to happen." she told him. "But whatever you decide I'm going to hang up the phone and go take care of my children." she said to him ending the call.

"Lauren?" he asked her. "Laur?" he finally heard the phone disconnected. "Oh god." he said throwing the phone toward the grass in the distance. "What the fuck." This is fucking bullshit. She's right. But....

"Bruno?" he heard a familiar voice coming up behind him.

He turned around to see his sister Tiara standing behind him. "Yeah?" he answered.

"Mom called and told me you needed someone to talk to." she said walking over to the grass to get his phone.

"Did you lose rock paper scissors?" he asked her.

"Yeah." she answered. "No one really wants to talk to you now." she said to her brother in a straight forward tone.

"I didn't even think Mom would talk to me yesterday when I called her. Everything I do just makes everything worse."

"Well, you kind of have been a fuck up lately." she agreed with him. "But we all fuck shit up every once in a while." she shrugged.

"I just don't know what to do to fix it. There's no amount of glue that can put it all back together again. This isn't Humpty Dumpty..."

"I know, Bruno. And I wouldn't tell you to think of something that would be worse or to remind you of everything that happened when we were younger. But, Bruno, you can stop it from getting there. You gotta step up. You just gotta do it."

"But I don't know what to do." he told his sister.

"When have you ever?" she answered him.

"I don't know..." he laughed at his sister.

"It's true. When was the last time you actually thought something through with the two of you? You need to start thinking, Bruno. You gotta think about it before you do it. Isn't that what the therapist you see said to you? You talked about it during Easter."

"Yeah. He does say that. He says to think about how the things I do are going to effect her." he answered reaching for his phone. "I have to tell her I'm sorry." he stood up from his sister walking further toward the street trying to find the words to say to her before her voicemail picked up. "Lauren..." he paused. "I wasn't thinking. I wasn't thinking about you, or the babies or how any of anything, of any of this, everything, would affect you. If you want me to come with you to the doctor I will. This will be our baby. I love you." he hung up the phone turning to smile at his sister. "Thank you for playing rock." he said to his sister helping her stand up to give her a hug leading her into the studio with the rest of the people waiting to see what he was doing.