Chapter 4: Nice Guys Dream A Little Dream

Adam

Somewhere around 4am, I have my calm, logical speech memorized. I know exactly what I am going to say to Mac, exactly how I am going to say it. I have even predicted and allowed for Mac's responses.

I'll start with something casual, like—

"Good morning, Sweetheart. Last night was amazing. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did."

Then I'll pause, while she responds, probably in her usual skittish morning-after way. She will probably say something like. "Yeah, it was good. Scratched the itch. Please tell me you ordered coffee already." Or she might really be freaked. She might pretend she doesn't remember asking me to stay, and go full-on hostile, with something like, "What are you still doing here, Preacher?"

Either way, I'll make nice, and I'll be direct and clear. I'll say, "There's something I need to tell you, Mac. Last night right at the moment I was coming inside you, I felt the condom break. But it's nothing to worry about, because I noticed you have emergency contraception in your travel stuff when I was looking for the condom. Smart thinking, to keep that on hand. I grabbed your morning-after pill out of your bag a little while ago, when I got up to take a piss. You can just take the pill and we are covered and it's all good. No need to stress." I already have the little box that says Plan B and a glass of water on the nightstand.

She'll swallow it right away and we won't even talk about it again.

Easy-peasy.

It's the only thing to do. To ignore the situation would be crazy. I've looked at the goddamn calendar sixteen times. According to the fertility science I Googled, we couldn't have picked a better day in Mac's cycle to make a baby.

And we definitely can't do that. Make a baby, I mean. There's no way.

That would be all kinds of bad.

There's no way Mac and I could be parents.

Well, it's not exactly that we couldn't be. A lot of people much less able to manage the situation become parents. But we are definitely not in a place for that.

And it's not that I don't love her either.  Because I do.

I didn't really love her that first night I met her and took her to bed. I just wanted her in the worst way, and she wanted me the same. I know that. But somewhere in the year after that it happened.

Somewhere in all those thousands of practice hours we spent together. When I appreciated how talented and dedicated she was and how she was working so hard to craft our songs—working as hard at it as Trace—harder than me or Leed or Bodie probably.

Somewhere in between those nights in Mac's dark dorm room where we would lie awake talking about the performance and the band and life and our dreams and fears. Somewhere after we would fall asleep exhausted from being both performers and roadies, without having sex and before we woke in the gray dawn, rested and reaching for each other, our hormones racing. Somewhere in the way we enjoyed each other so much that banging each other became the only way either one of us really ever wanted to meet the day—somewhere in there, it happened.

I woke up one morning not just wanting her, but loving her.

But I never told her, because by then I knew her too well.

Mac doesn't believe in love.

She believes in physical needs. She believes a good uninvested fuckbuddy is a billion times better than an unrealistic lover.

Over the years, when things are going good, she always gives me the same lines. She tells me how happy she is with our "arrangement"—because we are friends and excellent fuck-buddies and it's so much better, being with me than actually falling in love with someone and having completely unrealistic expectations that it would last.

I tell her I feel the same.

But I never tell her that the way we both feel—that it's love.

I'm afraid if I did,  she'd freak the fuck out and dump me forever.

She doesn't believe in love, she says.

Which is bullshit, because she loves her brother.

Obviously the way she loves Leed is not quite the same as the way I would want her to love me, but the fact that she does love him so fiercely blows her argument that she doesn't believe in love out of the water with me.

I was raised to believe that love is love. It all comes from the same place...a loving consciousness. Call it god or just your own divine nature or whatever you want. It doesn't matter if it's love for a brother, a lover, a child, a friend--it's all a choice we make to gift another human being with our time, our energy, our dedication.

So I see how much she loves Leed and I know, she has a loving spirit and a fierce heart.

She's just never had a good example of a loving romantic relationship. She didn't grow up like I did. She's...child-like, when it comes to her perceptions about love, because she's stuck on all the bad things that happened to her when she was a kid—her parents divorcing, losing her mom, dealing with a string of stepmothers, losing them over and over.

So what that means is...I get a totally different MacKenna when things get rough between us, or when I push her too much. I get the scared, hurt little spitfire. She talks tough. She lashes out. She says means things to push me away or try my temper. She runs. She hides.

It's not that I think she's immature, it's just that I'm ...older than my years in some ways. I grew up in a family and lifestyle that was more stable and spiritual and made me...sort of...reflective.

Sometimes I resent all this high level shit that goes on in my brain, and I just want to be young, dumb and rich. I try to hide all this shit in my head from the guys. I try to swagger like Trace, fuck like Leed and punch like Bodie. I want to figure out how they do what they do.

I want the fangirls without the guilt. I want to ride my motorcyle without a helmet. I want to party without worrying about the consequences to my liver, my reputation, or to other people. Sometimes I even want to cut Mac loose, and not feel...responsible for her.

But I can't. I keep doing this with her—over and over—because I see something in her she doesn't even see in herself. I keep loving her from a little ways away, and trying not to let her piss me off too much with her crazy fears.I keep hoping one day she'll decide to be as brave with me as she is in almost every other part of her life.

But this...this is not the situation to ask her to be brave.

She's definitely not ready for this. I am not ready for this. We definitely can't do something like this.

Except...maybe we already did?

Fuck, it's blowing my mind and scaring the shit out of me, what I read on the Internet. I was really only looking for information on the window of fertility, but fucking Google sucks you in, you know?

I read that sperm can reach an egg in about half an hour. And Mac, she is like dead in the center of her cycle, so she'd probably popped out an egg already—just hanging out there...waiting for the fucking condom to break. It's been three—no nearly four hours now, since the shit hit the fan...I mean...since my sperm hit her cervix.

There could be a little ball of cells with half my chromosomes and half hers already happily dividing away inside her, on its way to her uterus. A little spark of life intent on burrowing in there and growing into a fetus with a heartbeat in three weeks time.

Fuck, Adam, stop. Just fucking stop. That kind of thinking...it's not helpful in this situation.

Even if all that is the case, even if we conceived a...a...maybe-baby, it's not an actual baby yet. It's not even a pregnancy—not until it "takes." Her taking the morning after pill is no different than regular birth control pills or one of those IUD things.

Think, man. The very last thing you would have ever wanted when you were fucking her last night, was to knock her up. So why in the hell are you thinking about sparks and heartbeats now?

Just because a condom broke?

That's not fate. That's not love or some higher power rising to intervene between two people struggling to find their way to one another. That's not a good enough reason to bring a life into the world.

That's an unfortunate mishap that has to be corrected.

Right. So you know what to do, Adam. When Mac wakes up, just fucking take care of business. It's best for everybody.

I'm determined. I'm positive about what the right thing is. Then somewhere around five am, I fall asleep and dream a fucking nightmare of impossibility—of me and Mac on a piece of land that could only be in Tennessee. I'm riding a little girl on my shoulders and Mac is ahead of me in the field with a baby boy in her arms. Her expression—she looks open and free in the way I rarely ever see her, but has only happened when we are alone and things are really good.

I jerk awake, sweating.

Christ, where do dreams like that come from? I'm a fucking rock star—my fantasies should not play like a goddamn country music video.

But you know how it is, when you have a vivid dream. You can't shake that shit. It weighs on you, and you find yourself questioning reality. Was it really a dream? Or something more—a glimpse of things you aren't normally allowed to see? A vision from the divine? Or do you just see what you want to see—or what you don't want to see? Or maybe it's just a random firing—a clearing of the day's mental trash?

Or maybe dreams are gifts...the faith you need.

Fuck if I know.

For the first time in a long time, I have the desire to call up my dad, ask him what he thinks of dreams. I don't, though. I just lean against the headboard and watch Mac sleep.

By the time she wakes, two hour later, I'm a fucking mess. I open my mouth to deliver the Plan B speech. But the words that come out of my mouth...I think the me in my dream was saying them.

Author's Note:

Wow, Adam is a super deep guy, huh? Of course we knew this--there's always a little truth in a nickname, right? Preacher is really searching his soul during his sleepless night. How do you think Adam reconciles his traditional values with his liberal lifestyle? Is he seeking balance or just pretending to be something he's not, one way or the other?

So you may remember Mac's accounting in EPIC of the Maybe-Baby Morning After Fight she and Adam had. That's up next! I think it will be interesting to see what things Mac left out of her retelling to Tamara and Kat in the hottub, and how Adam's perception of the fight is different than Mac's. Should be good! Out soon!

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