I have been without internet for the past few weeks. Sorry, but there was no avoiding it. However, I have a couple new chapters so PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE forgive me!

x

x

x

x

Caitlyn and Nate were finally getting along after their talk on Christmas. Caitlyn was much happier until around the end of January, about the same time that Shane and Mitchie decided to get married in Key West, when she started acting weird again.

She was short with everyone, not just Nate. She snapped at all of them for the tiniest things. At first, Mitchie and Peggy just wrote it off as PMS but they soon became worried about her because she was beginning to withdraw from the rest of the group. At first they were concerned that she wasn't doing well in her classes but it was soon spreading around that she was the most talent producer in the school.

It didn't make any sense at all to them until one evening when Peggy and Mitchie were sitting in their living room working on their latest pieces for Composition. Caitlyn opened the door to her room and poked her head out.

"Guys, can you come in here, please?" Peggy and Mitchie set their guitars down and went into Caitlyn's room. She never said "please" unless it was really important to her. On her bed was a home pregnancy test in a box.

"Caitlyn?" Mitchie asked incredulously.

Caitlyn picked up the test box and stared at it as she spoke. "I… I skipped a period. That never happens to me. Even when I'm stressed or sick or busy. That never happens. I… I think that I'm—"

"I thought you guys were careful?" Peggy asked, cutting her off. Caitlyn sat on her bed and they went to each side of her.

"We were—are. It was just this one time a couple weeks before the move. We had been fighting and the next thing I knew we were having sex against the sink in his bathroom. We were so caught up in the moment, we didn't use anything." They could hear her voice crack as she spoke.

"Aren't you on the pill?" Mitchie asked. She herself had gone on the pill months ago but she and Shane still used condoms just to be sure. They agreed that once they were married she would remain on the pill until after they graduated but they wouldn't use condoms anymore.

"Yeah, but I forgot to pick up my prescription the day before." She sniffled and stood up. "I'll, um, I'll be right back. I need to take this. I've been trying to get up the guts for the past week." She left the room and they heard the bathroom door close.

"Jesus," Peggy said, holding her head in her hands. "Nate's going to flip when he finds out."

"Do you think so?"

"Um, yeah! God, they just started getting along again. This is just going to fuck it all up. And Caitlyn isn't going to be able to take care of a baby!"

"I need to lie down. I can't process this." Peggy lay next to her and they stared at the posters of bands from the 1980s Caitlyn had tacked to her ceiling.

"Man, their hair was awful back then. No wonder there's a hole in the ozone layer." Mitchie stretched and yawned.

"What do you mean?"

"All that hairspray." Peggy couldn't help but giggle.

Caitlyn came back in holding the box in one hand and the test in the other. "I need to wait five minutes and then I should know." Peggy took the test from her and set in on the table by her bed. "What'd you do that for?"

"Staring at it isn't going to make time go faster."

Caitlyn sat nervously on the edge of the bed. "What am I going to tell Nate?"

"Let's wait until we know for sure before you decide that." The three girls sat in silence, each staring at the Felix the Cat clock on the wall until five minutes had passed.

"One of you guys check it, I'm too nervous," Caitlyn said as she got up and began to pace the room. Peggy picked up the box and compared it to the test.

"It's negative, Cait." They all breathed out a sigh of relief and collapsed against one another on the bed.

"Thank God for that," Caitlyn said, but Mitchie could have sworn that she heard a little bit of disappointment in her voice. "I don't know what I would have done if I were pregnant."

"Are you going to tell Nate?" Peggy asked.

"I… I don't know. I don't think so. It's just that things have been so great lately and I don't want to ruin it." Caitlyn stood and threw the test in the trash along with the box. "I want to put this behind me and act like it never happened." Mitchie sat in silence, listening to Caitlyn swear up and down that it was for the best but not believing it for a second. "I think I'm going to go to bed."

Peggy and Mitchie left Caitlyn's room. Neither knew what to say about what just happened. They each went to their own room. Mitchie sat cross-legged on her bed, staring off into space, just thinking. It didn't make sense that Caitlyn seemed to want the nonexistent baby. Maybe she had become so used to the idea before she knew for sure that she had begun to love the idea of a baby with Nate. She could understand Caitlyn wanting to have Nate's baby because she knew that she wanted to have Shane's. But she definitely knew that she wasn't ready to be a mom.

"You want to what?" Shane was dumbfounded. Mitchie stood in front of him as he reclined on his bed about an hour after she had left Caitlyn's room.

"I want to wait to have sex again until we're married." She placed her hands on her hips, daring him to question her.

He dared. "Um, why?"

"Let's just say that I've realized that I'm not ready for the repercussions that come from having sex and I want us to not have sex for a month and a half."

"What brought about this revelation?" He massaged his face, unable to even fathom going six weeks without being with Mitchie.

"Caitlyn thought she was pregnant."

"What!?" Shane bolted upright. "Caitlyn's pregnant?"

"Shh!" Mitchie glanced at the door. Nate had been in the living room when she came in. "No, she thought that she was but she isn't. Nate doesn't know though. I don't know if she plans on telling him."

"How can she not tell him?"

"I guess she figures that if she's not pregnant, she has no reason to tell him." Mitchie sat next to him and rested her head against his shoulder.

"So what does that have to do with us?"

"Shane, that fear and worry seems so unnecessary to me. It's only six weeks and then we can have as much sex as we want."

"Mitchie." He sat up and pulled her into his lap. "If this is what you want, then I'll do it. But I make no guarantee about how patient I'll be with you and the others until then."

Mitchie giggled and kissed his nose before she placed a line of kisses along his jaw line. "I never said that we could do other things…"

x

x

x

x

Evil Laugh Sorry, kids, but no smut until the wedding night! I might throw in some Jeggy or Naitlyn but no Smitchie until further notice.