Grumpalicious by Mia Faye

Chapter 33

GENEVIEVE

I worked on the song all night, fine-tuning it, but mostly keeping my mind off of life so that I didn’t get overwhelmed. I slept for a little while, woke up nauseous, and was missing Cayden when Peyton knocked on my front door.

“This place is sick!” she said, walking in with a flowered roller board and an electric blue cashmere peacoat. “Do you think he’ll let you keep it?”

“Hey, Peyton,” I laughed.

“Hey, girl. So, you got yourself knocked up. Good thing you are a thing because the internet is just blowing up with you right now. Do you have the Grammy or do they just give you a plastic temporary?”

“They gave me one to hold, but the real one is getting engraved. So, you hungry? Want breakfast? I’m starving and I know this great diner down the street. We can go for a bite and pretend I’m not pregnant.”

“Sure, denial works...let’s have pancakes.”

And so we did. We caught up on old times and ate the most delicious chocolate chip pancakes ever.

“So, are you finally going to tell me how you’re doing?” Peyton asked, digging in.

“I’m sad. I love Cayden.” Her eyebrows raised and I understood why. “He’s lovable. Trust me, there is more to him than just…”

“Good looks, money, a bad boy reputation?”

“Yes, there is seriously more to him than that, I promise. He wants the baby transferred to a surrogate, but I said no.”

“Gee, how romantic.” She pretended to cough.

“I know, but it wasn’t ‘this is over’ or ‘I’ll pay for your abortion,’ so I’ll give him some points for that.”

“Okay, a half a point then.” She was my best friend; she had earned the right to be skeptical.

“So…”

“So, I’m having this baby, whether he wants her or him or not. I can do this, I’m not scared.”

“You’re terrified, but you’re also brave.”

“So, that’s how I’m feeling, you now have all the dirt.” I flashed her a big smile.

“And Cash?”

“Cash will do what he does. If he leaves, which at the moment he hasn’t said he wants to leave, but if he does, I’ll eat the store out of ice cream. I’ll balloon up as big as a house, while also pregnant, sing sad songs that will either elevate or sink my career and move on.”

“Well, good, I’m glad you’ve got that all planned out. I guess I’ll go home,” she laughed.

“How long can you stay?”

“As long as you need me. I know you’re busy though…”

“I wrote a new song and I’m going tomorrow to ask a gospel choir to work with me. I’m not all that religious, but I know you’ve got your Southern Baptist roots… any way I can convince you to come along and help me woo them?”

“While it’s been a minute since I’ve been inside of a church, you bet. I’ll help you get them on board. What I can do very well is convince people to do things and loving my best friend and her music is some easy convincing...trust me.”

“Thank you.”

We slept together in the same bed and in the morning we hit the Grace Street Southern Baptist Church who had worked on a few other artist’s albums. I had to admit it was the one and only time I was using my Taylor connection because she had worked with them in the past. I sang parts of the finished song to her, she loved it and had called ahead to get us an appointment. It went so much more easily than I thought it would. We were in rehearsals by noon and by five o’clock the following day we had laid down a power ballad with a gospel chorus. I hated putting Cayden off, but I was able to call in my ‘I’ve got to grab this while I can’ card and he let me off the hook. No more ‘talking’ for a few more days, which was actually good for us.

The song came out beautifully and I had never been so proud of anything I’d ever written.

“You are a genius,” Taylor said when she heard the song. “So, what are you going to do? I think you should launch it, since...well...” I had told her I was pregnant.

“I agree. I’m going to put it up on Instagram and Twitter tonight...wish me luck.”

“Oh girl, you don’t need it, but I’ll put a word out to the stars just in case.”

“Thanks.”

And so I did. With Peyton by my side, I took the audio from the recording we did in the church with the choir and the video that Peyton spliced together with images she’d been filming all day on her iPhone. She was a true artist, so she got some of the most amazing shots. While I was working on the song and recording it, Peyton had made a sketch of a mother and her child with two father’s faces looking on, one over the shoulder of the mother and one from afar. The image was both beautiful and haunting. It clearly showed a mom with two fathers, one in spirit and one distant and forgotten. The image was just as uplifting and heartbreaking as the song, so we filmed the image as well and I credited Peyton. She animated it using software on her computer, proving that she was the true genius of the bunch. The picture showed a father in heaven, a mother, and her baby, cuddling, loving, and a father across the street looking on and walking away.

At midnight, almost forty-eight hours from the moment I told Cayden he was going to be a father again, I dropped the song FATHER, on Instagram and Twitter with the hashtags #Dadinheaven #Iwillalwaysloveyou #Cashnchange #GrandpaRoss and pressed publish. Dad in Heaven was easy, I will always love you was for Cayden, Cash n change was Cash and his children, and Grandpa Ross was going to piss the man off and I couldn’t have been happier.

Exactly one hour later the song had blown up.

“One hundred and fifty thousand,” Peyton announced. “Where’s your good stuff? We are celebrating.”

“I have some Veuve in the fridge from a thing a few weeks ago. Crack it, girl, and drink as much you want. I can’t but you, be my guest.”

“Right, um...okay. Because like, when do I get to drink Veuve?” She shrugged her shoulders and laughed.

We had fun watching the comments and reactions to the song. I mean you bring in a gospel choir and people are going to take notice. Perhaps Grandpa Ross was still asleep, but Cayden wasn’t. A message popped up on my phone ninety minutes after the song launched.

You launched a song AGAIN, without milking it for money...ugh! :)

I took a deep breath and just waited for what was going to happen next. Cayden had been in good spirits and that was the best I could have hoped for. A couple of minutes later, a notification popped up on my screen with a picture of Cayden and Alex on a court somewhere playing basketball.

“Hey, Peyton look at this,” I turned my phone around to show her. “That’s Alex, Cayden’s son.” The picture was amazing and the fact that he was playing with Alex was even more astonishing, but what was the best thing of all, he tagged his photo too.

#Lovebeingadad #GrandpaRoss #andbabymakes2

My heart skipped a beat and a warm tingle washed over me. Suddenly I missed Cayden and wanted nothing more than to be naked in his arms, loving him. He was coming around and more...he understood. Then, a second picture dropped. It was of me holding my Grammy. While I didn’t pay that much attention to my pictures as there seemed to be thousands of them on the internet those days, the photo of me was particularly beautiful, but the hashtag gave me pause.

#MarryMePrincessoftheSky

“Shit,” Peyton exclaimed. “This is big.”

By morning we broke the internet. I woke up to chaos. Everyone was talking about the song and all the bombs we had dropped the night before. My phone was ringing off the hook. Not many people had my personal number, but those who did were calling it. I figured one or perhaps a few of those morning calls were from Cayden, but I was wrong, there were no calls from him, even though he’d just hashtag asked me to marry him in front of millions of people online, he hadn’t called.

I wondered if he missed me as much as I was missing him. While I loved hanging out and catching up with Peyton, I found myself longing for Cayden. I needed Peyton’s crazy artistic point of view of the world, which was as refreshing as it was wise, but Cayden brought me a strange kind of peace. I hadn’t realized how many calls he either fielded himself or had Kevin handle until I was left to my own devices, literally and they were pinging, ringing, and dinging off the hook.

“So, you’re not going to answer any of them?” Peyton was astonished.

“I’d never get off the phone. They can leave messages until my voicemail fills up,” I laughed.

“You should have an assistant,” she said in an almost motherly manner.

“Until now I’ve been with Cayden, he handled it all.” Leaving him would be unbearable, I realized.

At that moment there was a knock at the door, and I was both thrilled and irritated.

“Genevieve, can you just give me a minute?” It was Cayden.

“I’m here.” Peyton stepped in beside me. “We can do this.”

I laughed. “He’s actually a good guy disguised as a douche bag, we’ll be fine.”

I opened the door and Cayden was standing there with flowers and a cooler tote bag.

“Hi,” he said standing there with a boyish kind of effervescence.

“Hi,” I answered not knowing what else to say.

“May I come in?” he asked handing me the gorgeous bouquet of red roses.

“Sure.” I took the flowers and stepped aside, letting him into the apartment.

“Hi, Peyton.” He nodded to Peyton as he picked up the cooler bag and walked over to the dining room table, near a picture window overlooking the city. “I brought us all breakfast if you don’t mind me joining you?” He looked at me with big soulful eyes.

“I don’t mind,” I said softly.

“I’ll follow Genevieve’s cue, but if you hurt her, I don’t mind going to jail for murdering you. I’d do anything for my girl, so be warned.”

Cayden let out a nervous laugh. “Yes ma’am, but I have no plans to hurt the woman I love, so you can stand down.”

Cayden then opened the cooler bag and brought out a plastic bowl of fresh fruit cut into cubes. “I cut these myself I’ll have you know.” I looked into the bowl and there were lots of badly cut fruit. There was also a box wrapped with a pale pink bow, a drink tray of paper coffee cups with dark black plastic lids, and another wrapped box, this one was long with another pale pink bow.

“Very nice work, Cayden,” I smiled at him like he was a child. “What did you bring?” Curiosity had gotten the better of me.

“Just a few things from my favorite bakery. Peyton, I hope you like cappuccinos, I wasn’t sure what your coffee order might be, but I know Genni, and I love the cappuccinos at Green Hill Cafe, they are amazing, bitter, sweet, frothy…”

“Sounds great.” Peyton’s shoulders relaxed a little and she looked less tense.

“Here you go.” He handed her a coffee then he gave one to me and opened the boxes, the large square one contained caramel-colored scones piled on one another and the long box was full of bright pastries in various shapes and sizes. “I thought we’d indulge a little. I have salted caramel scones, then some fruit tarts, chocolate croissants, cinnamon twists, apricot custard cronuts...all my favorites.” He was like a little boy with a box of toys he wanted to share.

“This all looks amazing.” I took a seat at the table and removed the lid off of the bowl of fresh fruit. “Thank you, Cayden.” I offered a big appreciative smile.

“Your song… Genni, your song.” He seemed to be stumbling over his words.

“Yes, the song…” I took a deep breath…

That song and all the hash-tagging craziness had just changed our lives forever. I was pretty sure neither Cayden nor I had any real idea about what was truly going to happen from that moment forward and for a second, we were both equally scared.