One Night...

Chapter 5

"Shane, I'm here!" Andrew called out as he walked through the front door of the enormous mansion in Calabasas where his boss lived with his fiancée Ryland. Andrew spent more time at the house than he cared to really think about, as Shane insisted on eating, sleeping, and working at the house, rarely leaving unless he absolutely had to. The guys had planned to meet up at noon to work on an outline for a new project they were starting about plastic surgery in the media, but it was 11 when Andrew arrived.

It was the day after Andrew had met with Scarlett at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, and he had spent the past 24 hours processing the news in true introverted style, alone in his room, with Drake blasting at full volume as he downed coffee and got lost in his thoughts. He was sure he'd gone through all the stages of grief since the time Scarlett had told him about the baby the previous day, and while he was nowhere near adjusted to the idea, he had at least moved on from shell-shocked to freaked out, which was, as far as the red-head was concerned, a huge improvement. There were generally two people whom Andrew turned to when he needed advice: his mom and Shane. There was still no way in hell he could drop a bomb like this on his mom. There were too many unanswered questions about where he stood with Scarlett and the baby to risk rocking her world like that. But he had to get his thoughts out, and Shane was the only person who could possibly calm Andrew and talk him through the wild range of emotions he was experiencing.

"I wasn't expecting you so early!" Shane called out to Andrew from his spot in the editing room where the two often spent countless hours together working on projects. Shane was sat in his usual spot on the couch, laptop out, Diet Root Beer in hand, clad in the new black Shane Dawson merch robe which had been recently released on their Killer Merch site. "I'm so mad at you!" he shrieked, and Andrew gave him a weird look. "Why?" Andrew asked incredulously, as he hadn't talked to Shane at all since the morning before he'd left for the coffee with Scarlett.

"You didn't even have the courtesy to update me on your coffee with blonde dream girl," Shane said with a dramatic huff, and Andrew's heart immediately sunk. Of course, Shane had known all about the one-night stand with Scarlett, and the hilarious red-head was thrilled that Andrew was sowing some wild oats after everything he'd been through with Gabbie. Andrew thought back to the day after he'd hooked up with Scarlett, and as he relayed the story to Shane back at the house, he was annoyed with himself that he hadn't even gotten her number or anything. Despite how drunk they both were and how dumb it was to sleep together, he thought Scarlett was beautiful and smart, and he couldn't help but feel himself taken with her as he saw her sleeping soundly in his bed that morning, her long eyelashes fluttering, her perfect skin glowing. It was so awkward, though, that neither of them really said much to each other, and he felt too uncomfortable to ask for her number or to see if he could see her again, and he had regretted it the whole week until she texted him randomly.

He'd told Shane about the text and the coffee, almost in shock that she'd somehow found him, but also cautious because her message had been so cryptic. Looking back on it now, though, of course, it was all clear to him. He felt dumb in retrospect, daydreaming about how pretty she was on the way to the coffee as she was thinking about this monumental thing in their lives. He shook his head, thinking about how much had changed in literally the last day, and he sat on the couch next to his boss, sighing ruefully.

"Well, then I'm interested to hear how you're going to react when I tell you what the coffee was about," he told Shane wryly, and Shane shot him a confused expression. "Let me guess, you were hoping she'd want to, like, elope or something, but really, she just left her earrings at your house?" Shane teased, and Andrew groaned. "Honestly, Shane, this is a bad time for jokes," he told his friend, and Shane's eyes softened. Andrew took a deep breath and unloaded the entire story on Shane, the baby, Scarlett's face, his reaction, her crying, the entire awful thing, as Shane looked at his best friend with his mouth hanging open. When he finished, Shane sat in stunned silence, his usually quick-witted friend unable to come up with a single thing to say, and Andrew put his head in his hands, groaning a little.