December 15, 2000 Tampa, Florida

“Did you mean what you said?” Tina asked as she walked into the room, a basket of laundry heavy in her hands.

“About what?” Nick’s reply was a mere mumble and he never took his eyes off the television screen in front of him. He had been completely engrossed in shooting Nazis on his Xbox for the better part of the afternoon while she did housework.

“About taking time off, taking a break from the group,” she clarified, dropping the basket down next to him on the couch.

He shrugged and she knew he was probably going to back out of it somehow, “Yeah, sure, I guess, but I imagine our definitions of ‘break’ probably differ.”

Tina scoffed slightly and started yanking clean shirts from the basket to fold, “So tell me about your definition.”

He took a deep breath, letting it out slowly without taking his eyes from the screen, “Like... two or three weeks or something.”

“You’re not serious?” she asked, wide eyed, “That’s less time than you’re normally off for vacation. Fuck, that’s less time than you’re off right now and this is just a gap between legs of the tour! That’s not a break!”

Finally, she heard the sound of virtual gunfire stop. The game was paused and Nick tossed the controller onto the couch beside him before motioning her closer, “Come sit for a second so we can talk without your mother leaning over my shoulder for once.”

Without argument she followed his lead, sitting down on the edge of the coffee table between his knees, “What do you want to talk about?” she asked, figuring she knew what the answer would likely be.

He leaned his elbows on the tops of his thighs, hunching forward slightly while running his hand over the day old stubble on his cheek, “Can I say something without you getting mad?”

“Yes,” she affirmed, “You can always be honest with me.”

“Okay,” she watched the top of his blonde head as he nodded then looked up into her eyes, “If... ugh, how do I say this,” he let out a rush of air, “If having another baby means I’m going to have to give up any portion of my career then I don’t want another baby. I’m too young to retire just so that you can keep me around for a few years. I don’t have anything to fall back on, and the chances of me being able to restart things five years down the road... well, let’s just say it doesn’t look good for me. I am on a really great wave right now and I need to ride it until the end. I can’t cut out early.”

“It’s not that I don’t understand what you’re saying, or respect that you’re trying to achieve your dream,” she started, staring down at her hands which were planted firmly in her lap, “It’s just that this isn’t a choice. I’m not asking you if you want to have another baby. I’m telling you that we’re having another baby.”

He reached out and grabbed her hands and she wondered if it was his way of showing support, or his way of making sure she didn’t hurt him after what he was about to say, “It’s not too late you know. I looked it up on the internet. In Florida you have until the 20th week to get an abortion.”

She tried to yank her hands away but his grip was too tight so she relented, letting him continue to hold them, “I’m not getting an abortion,” she told him firmly.

“Since when are you pro-life, I thought you were all about women having the right to choose? At least that’s what I remember from all your political tirades.”

“I do believe that women have the right to choose!” Tina exclaimed, looking at him wide-eyed, “My choice is that I cannot justify having an abortion. I wasn’t raped, I’m not a teenager, I’m not alone, I’m not poor, I’m not starting a new career, or a new relationship, and I have a support system that will help me with the details. There is no reason I can’t have this baby.”

From the huff of his breath she could tell he wasn’t impressed with the answer, “What if you were alone and poor, then?”

She blinked, almost unsure that she had heard him correctly, “Are you threatening me?”

He was silent for a moment, then suddenly dropped her hands and threw himself back against the couch in a slump, “No! I don’t know why I said that.”

Moving from the coffee table and onto the couch, she straddled his waist, looking down at his frustrated expression as he ran his hands over his hair, “Look,” she started, forcing his chin up so he could look her in the face, “The fact of the matter is that we’re having a baby whether it’s convenient for us or not. If you want to ride your wave then do it. I don’t want to take anything away from you. But... that being said... you need to learn that you can’t have it all. You can’t complain about not getting to experience things with Parker, and then say you don’t want him out on the road with you. You have to decide what you want. Lots of musicians have kids and their kids don’t hate them when they’re older. The difference is that they work hard for it. You have to stop expecting everything to fall into your lap. If you want to see Parker you need to come home and be with him on his turf. He won’t remember all these great places you’re flying him out to until he’s older. He just wants to be with you.”

His expression was hard and she recognized it as the look he got when he was trying to talk himself out of crying, for that would go against the bro-code, “This isn’t the way I envisioned my life going.”

“You think this is what I planned for myself? We’re in this together, and the most we can do is try and look at the bright side of things.”

“What exactly is the bright side?” he asked with a perfectly arched eyebrow raised in her direction.

“What if we had met years earlier?” she asked rhetorically, “What if we had been sixteen when we had Parker? Your career would have been over before it even started. Instead of sitting on this beautiful leather sectional in your ridiculously large games room we’d be sitting, instead, on a ratty old couch in some rundown apartment not worrying about how much you’d be home for the new baby but whether we’d be able to afford a home for the new baby. The bright side of all of this is that you’re doing what you love, and because of that you’re able to support the family that maybe you never thought you’d have, but ended up with none the less.”

He was silent for an uncomfortably long amount of time, just staring. She was about to give up on wondering what was running through his head when he finally spoke, “Except that can’t be.”

“What do you mean?” she asked haughtily.

“We couldn’t have had Parker when we were sixteen, in fact, we never would have met. Your bright side theory doesn’t work. You’re from Ohio, and I’m from Florida, those facts alone pretty much secure the fact that we wouldn’t have met, we wouldn’t have fucked, and we wouldn’t have a kid. I’m not some high school student that got shitfaced and ended up in bed with the girl who sat behind me in English class. I didn’t go to high school because I was making a name for myself in my field. You only met me because you happened to be on the same beach that night and I was looking to get laid. It wasn’t destiny.”

And like that, all of her girlish dreams of fate and kismet were stomped on, “You’re an asshole,” she told him and he didn’t seem to disagree.

“One of the many reasons why we shouldn’t be having more children,” he pointed out but it did nothing to make her feel any better. It only made her question whether he was right.

“Aren’t you afraid,” she queried, “That one day you won’t have any of this and you’ll end up all alone because you spent so much time being hateful and treating everyone like shit?”

He considered it for a moment then shrugged, “Nope,” he answered in typical Nick fashion, then with a resounding slap to the back of her thigh he reached for his controller and motioned her out of the way of his view, “Because no matter what happens between us I know two things for certain. I’ll always have two things to keep me company - money, and Parker.”