No Chance by Lisa Suzanne

CHAPTER 7: BRETT

“The lab called,” Karl says.

We take the stage in thirty minutes.

We’re in the green room as we do our typical pre-show prep. Tommy’s singing scales and drinking tepid honey water, the only time you’ll ever catch him doing any of that shit. Dustin is listening to something through his noise cancelling headphones to get amped for the show. Tyler’s looking at a notebook at a big table with his fiancée, Danielle, who’s holding tightly to their kid’s hand. The kid looks like she’s about to make a break for it as she tries to peel her mother’s grip from around her tiny hand.

And then there’s me.

Staring off into space as I sit on a couch in the middle of the room by myself.

They’ve all asked me thirty different times if I’m okay, and my answer is usually along the lines of yeah, fine or fuck off or some other grunting sound.

But the truth is...no. I’m not fine.

I may never be fine again.

I instructed Karl to tell me as soon as he knew anything, and maybe that was a mistake. Regardless of what the results say, though, Phoenix isn’t getting my all tonight.

How can it when I have so much weighing on my mind?

That kid...I was too scared to touch him. Too terrified to hold him. What if I felt something inside? What if I wanted him? On the flipside, what if I didn’t? What kind of horrible human being wouldn’t want that?

It’s too much to try to answer that question.

So instead of dealing with it, I numbed it.

Karl took the test to some lab in Phoenix while I got high.

It’s not the first time I’ve played high, and I can’t pretend like it’ll be the last. It’s not like I’m doing any hard shit, not tonight anyway, and I smoked just enough weed to take the edge off.

It’s already starting to fade, which is probably a good thing.

I need to stand up, to move around, to do some stretches. To drink some water and maybe take a quick shower to help sober myself back up.

But Karl holds my fate.

He knows the answer to the burning question.

Danielle leaves with the notebook and the kid, and I watch as the door clicks shut behind them. The click echoes in my mind, one of the last hollow sounds I’ll hear before this news potentially changes everything.

I stand from my spot on the couch, and suddenly the room is quiet. I think for a second that maybe it just mutes for me as I await my fate, but then I feel the presence of the others in the room as they come to a stop behind me. Whatever happens, these people are my family. “And?” I ask.

He presses his lips together and raises both brows. “He’s yours.”

I blow out a breath.

Of course he’s mine.

Now the question remains. What the fuck am I supposed to do about it?

Tyler claps my shoulder. “I’m here, man. Whatever you need.”

“I, uh...” I trail off. I...what? What now? What do I need? What do I do?

My stomach twists with knots. I feel like I might be sick as my head clouds over.

I fall back onto the couch.

Fuck.

I’m supposed to get on a stage in less than thirty minutes now.

I can’t be a father. I can’t. I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to do it. I don’t have time to learn how right now. Those words sound so goddamn selfish, and that’s because I am selfish. I’ve only had to worry about me for the last thirty years, and I had zero plans to change that. My first inclination was to put the kid up for adoption, but Hannah’s genuine fear when I mentioned that stopped me short.

So what now?

“What do I do with this?” My words fall into the silent room, and the people who usually seem to have all the answers are all quiet as I await some answer. “What the fuck do I do?” I say a little louder, trying to break up the quiet as my emotions start to get the best of me.

Tyler moves to sit on the couch beside me. “You step up, dude.” His voice is soft, like he’s talking to a wild child or rabid animal, and neither of those descriptions are too far off if I’m being honest.

“What if he doesn’t want to?” Tommy booms from across the room.

“I don’t think he has much choice.” Dustin’s tone resembles Tyler’s, and isn’t that just typical as fuck? Two against two. Tommy and Brett, the asshole single guys, against Dustin and Tyler, the stand-up fathers in love with their women.

Tommy’s focus is on me, while Dustin and Tyler are thinking of the kid.

My focus is on me, too...which just goes to prove my theory that I’m not fucking cut out for this.

Tyler clears his throat. “I missed out on almost two years with my kid. I was right where you are not so long ago, man. So I get it.” He claps me on the back. “You can’t just abandon him now that you know.”

Tommy snorts across the room, but he doesn’t say anything.

“I don’t even know what she did with him tonight,” I muse, staring at nothing across the room as the words spill out. “She had to work. She was just going to bring him with her because she couldn’t afford someone to watch him. And I let her. I fucking let her. She lives in this tiny shithole apartment in a shitty neighborhood and I let her stay there with my kid.”

“Throw some money in their direction and move on,” Tommy says.

“He can’t just move on.” Tyler stands and takes a step toward Tommy. “That’s his kid.”

They didn’t used to fight like this, but lately they’ve been butting heads a lot. And it’s only now, in the midst of coming off a high and learning this news, that I realize why they’ve been at odds. I see it on Tommy’s face. Tommy’s worst fears are manifested in everything Tyler has now—all things he didn’t have as little as a year ago. A kid out there he knew nothing about. A woman he’s set to wed. A family and a future.

They’re my fears, too, but Tommy’s not the one facing those monsters right now. I am.

“I can’t just throw money at it. The mother...Brie—uh, Hannah said her final wishes were for me to be part of the kid’s life,” I admit.

“She doesn’t get to decide that,” Tommy says.

“Doesn’t she?” Dustin asks. It’s rare for him to take a stand against Tommy, but now that he’s got Tyler to back him up, he does it more often. “Seems to me there were two people involved in the creation of that kid.”

I hate what all this shit is doing to us. We never fought like this when it was just the four of us. Even when Dustin and Amanda first got together, she was the only chick and it wasn’t a big deal. But now we’re expanding and any time an outsider makes their way into our sacred inner circle, we’re vulnerable to the growing pains. I think about the time those pains will turn into cracks that are irreparable.

“But the mother didn’t bother contacting him,” Tommy counters.

Didn’t she? Maybe she did, and maybe she couldn’t get through. We’re a tight-knit group. We’re celebrities. She would hardly be the first one to toss a paternity claim in my direction, hardly be the first to try to get in touch with me but couldn’t.

Dustin’s voice rises. “You don’t know that!”

“Stop!” I yell. I hang my head, and then I press my palms to my temples and push as I try to soften the edges of a headache that’s creeping in. I’m a fucking drummer. I can’t afford to have a headache right before I take the stage. “Just stop.” I glance at the clock as the rest of my high wanes. “We’ve got fifteen minutes until we need to entertain a crowd of twenty thousand fans and the last thing we need is infighting.”

I move toward the restroom because I need a minute alone to figure out what the fuck to do without the voices of these three idiots clouding my judgment. It’s clouded enough on its own already.

I gulp down some water and then splash some on my face. I stare at myself in the mirror. I have a kid. Brett Fucking Pitzer has a damn kid. I shake my head and blow out a breath before I open the door.

Ten minutes until we need to take the stage.

Twenty thousand fans waiting out there.

This is normally where I get a little dart of anxiety. That’s a lot of people watching my every move, and we may have done this a lot of times, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still feel the nerves every single one of those times.

Tonight that dart of anxiety is more like a wave washing over me. It’s the combination of normal pre-show jitters combined with the fact that I just found out I have a kid on top of fighting with my brothers in the band. It’s all too much.

Tommy’s in the corner running through his scales. Dustin’s got his headphones back on. They’re getting into the right headspace.

It’s Tyler who stands by the door waiting for me. “You okay, man?” he asks.

I shrug. “As okay as I can be. How’d you do it? How’d you just accept her?”

His mouth tips into a small smile. “Luna?”

I nod.

“I fell in love with that kid the moment I met her. Something inside of me shifted, and suddenly all I wanted was to light her face with a smile. None of the other shit mattered anymore.”

“What if it isn’t like that for me?” I ask, and I can’t hide the fear in my voice.

“You won’t know unless you give it a shot.”

I press my lips together and nod.

“You’ve got two choices, Brett,” he says. “You can throw money at it, like Tommy said, or you can get the two of them out of that situation. Invite the girl and the kid on tour. We’ve got plenty of space, we’ve got two mothers who would be willing to help. You’ve got Dustin and me to turn to with anything.”

I glance over at Tommy. “But I share a bus with Tommy,” I protest. “He’s not on board with this idea at all. And he fucks anything that moves and likes to walk around naked.”

Tyler chuckles. “Yeah. He does. But maybe it’ll be good for him, too.”

“Maybe,” I echo, but I’m not so sure about that.