Early Sunsets over Monroeville

Frank is there on the last day but so is Katelyn. “Hi Gee! I hear you’ll be done today!”
“Yup, I could be finished now it’s only finishing touches,” I smile and then see Katelyn behind him holding her stomach like there’s actually a kid there. I have such a temptation to shout something at her, but I couldn’t do that to Frank.
“Wait, before you start I want to show you this shirt I got,” he grins and jogs into his bedroom. Katelyn sits down on the couch and picks up a book. She lifts it just enough when she’s opening it for me to see that it’s fifty shades of grey. Ew, it is the bestselling book in America solely because it’s porn. It’s fucking badly written and disgusting and people just feel classier reading porn than watching it again, but still. It’s terrible. I wonder if she realises how much everything she does pisses me off.
Frank re-appears holding two shirts. One that says, “I’m a rad dad” and another reading “Punk rock fatherhood”. Oh god Frank.
“Katelyn hates them,” he grins and his wife sends him a cheeky smile before returning to her gross porn book. “But I think they’ll suit me very well. And when the baby’s born I’m never taking them off. I want to be that dad.”
I laugh unconvincingly. “What is it?” he frowns.
“Nothing they’re just so lame,” I smile genuinely, because they are.
“Yea true. Now hop to, my wife isn’t paying you to stand around looking pretty.” I flash of anger crosses Katelyn’s face behind him but she quickly gets it back under control.
“Awh really?” I grin, “I knew my beauty would never earn me squat!”
It only takes two hours to completely finish the mural. It looks really boring. I guess that’s good in the way someone as boring as Katelyn will love it. Pity there’ll never be a fucking baby. I begin to pull up newspapers and scrunch them up.
“Um,” I walk out of the room. Katelyn looks up from the book and Frank lifts his head from his laptop. “Um, it’s done.”
“Finished,” Katelyn says.
“Fuck off,” I mumble. Frank jumps straight up and Katelyn smiles. They follow me back into the room.
“Oh,” Katelyn clasps her hands together like she’s going to pray with joy. “Oh well done, Gerard. You are capable of very pretty art.”
“Thanks Mrs Iero,” I mumble.
“The baby’s going to love it!” Frank grins, “Fucking great, Gee.”

I cash the check on my way home. I wonder when she’ll tell him. I wonder if she’ll tell him. Maybe she’ll kill him so that he never knows. Well probably not. It’s rather extreme and I’m pretty sure “Thou Shalt Not Kill” is one of the rules you never break, like “No Skateboarding outside the Hospital” and “Do Not Dropkick A Child”.
I have three texts from Mikey when I get home, Are you finished yet?, Did she tell him?, I’m coming over now.
Sure enough three minutes after I walk in my own door, Mikey walks in. “Did she tell him?”
“Hi brother, how’re you?” I scoff before flopping face first onto the couch. “I hate her, man. I haven’t hated anyone this much since Natalie Jonas.” Natalie Jonas being the pretty, popular girl who decided that I was the worst thing since the holocaust and literally made middle school and high school hell. I saw her once since High School and she was working retail, needless to say I never returned to that shop, only fantasised about setting it ablaze.
“Shit.” Mikey sits down beside my legs and pats the back of my knee. “Have you considered telling Frank yourself?”
“No, it’s better for everyone if she says it.”
“Will she say it?”
“Well she doesn’t really have a choice does she? She could just put on a lot of weight but that would never work after five months. Nine months later Frank’s going to notice that she hasn’t pulled a human out of her yet.”
“You should be a poet.”
“Thanks.”
“Well she could just try like get the baby put in her. You know that weird way that doctors can do now, make a surrogate parent. Like Phoebe in friends had her brother’s triplets.”
“Oh yea. But the baby is supposed to be like two and a half maybe three months by now. She’s going to have to say something, Mikey. And honestly, the longer she leaves it the more fucking angry Frank’s going to be.”

That Friday I go shopping and no Frank. Obviously I can’t see him every time only I really want to see him now. I just really want to know. Bob’s given me the night off even though I didn’t ask for it. I think he sensed I needed it. You know some days you feel low and other days you feel so low you’re shocked at your ability to stand up. I’ve been gliding through them recently.
Mikey is gone over to vodka and coke girl’s house. He said he’d cancel it to cheer me but it was dinner with her parents. I don’t really mind, I had been planning to get very drunk and go to sleep on my kitchen floor. Just as I open a new bottle of vodka Frank rings, sounding as sullen as I feel. “Hi, Gee. Can you come over?”
“Um, yep, of course. Are you alright?” he hangs up. She’s told him. She must have told him.
I run outside and wave down a taxi. I wonder if Frank’s kicked her out. I wonder if he’d even do that. He sounded more upset than angry, really. Maybe he was angry and then she left him and that’s why he’s sad. Or maybe he’s sad that she’d lie to him like that. Maybe she got people to back her up, like her sister, saying that she only lied to save their wedding.
The cab takes a turn up the avenue halfway between our homes. Maybe Katelyn confronted him about us. It would not surprise me if she managed to manipulate him into feeling guilty. Lawyers can do that shit really well. Maybe she made some excuse to go out of town that would upset Frank. Like that her granduncle died and her sister bought to plane tickets to Monroeville, leaving Frank alone wondering why his in-laws don’t like him. She could stay there until the baby is supposedly born then, come home with an adopted baby. Actually that would be an incredibly stupid plan if that’s what she’s going to do.
Frank’s probably just really sad that she lied to him about something that big.
I pay the fair and jog up the steps into the building. I share the elevator with a middle-aged woman who gets off three floors before I do. The last three floors seem to take particularly long.
I knock on the door and adjust my shirt while I wait. Curiosity is burning a hole through my stomach. Or maybe it’s that dodgy taco I had for lunch.
“Hi Gee, come on in,” Frank answers the door. Katelyn is sitting on the couch looking shaken. Her sister has an arm around her and is staring at me, measuring my steps. Mikey is sitting on the far side of the couch.
“What’s going on?” I ask. This is not the scene I anticipated at all, no matter the scenario.
“Katelyn miscarried, Gerard,” Frank says softly.
What. “What?!” everyone looks completely shocked by the harshness in my voice. Well I was hardly going to sugar-coat my disgust. Such an easy way out how didn’t I think of it before?
“Gerard?” Frank mumbles.
I take a step toward the couch, glaring at Katelyn. “So this is what you told him? This is your story?”
Her cheeks flush in anger but quickly cool with that weird talents lawyers have where they can show literally nothing on their faces. “Gerard, what?” She sounds sweeter than normal. No one seems to pick up on it.
“You know what I’m saying, Mrs Iero. You know very well, as does your sister,” as I speak I realise how unbelievably badly this could and probably will end for me. Fuck.
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” she says innocently.
“I was going to say something but I wanted you to say it to him yourself. You can’t have kids. You were never carrying a child.”
Liza’s eyes narrow immediately. Mikey continues to look shocked from the couch and Frank stands between his wife and myself looking bewildered and hurt. “Gee what are you saying?”
“How dare you,” Katelyn gasps. “How could you say such things in this time of grief?”
“How can you grieve over something you never had,” I spit, “I know you were sad when you first found out and I know it was mainly because you know that you’d be caught.”
“Get out!” Katelyn screams, leaving all her lawyer calm behind. “Get out, get out, get out!”
“I’m going,” I glance at the hurt on Frank’s face, “I’m sorry… just… just check her doctor’s records or something… I’m not lying.”

Notes

Hi my dear killjoys,
So I spent my Saturday night drinking tea, writing gay fan fic, and listening to Beethoven while having eyeliner on one eye. My sister even asked why i don't go to party's like a normal teenager. Idk, normal teenagers have friends who throw parties i guess XD so yea, by the way well done to everyone who actually called what was going to happen, i didn't think it was that predictable xD um so yea final chapter coming tomorrow, thank you so much for reading and actually making it this far, let me know what you think and i hope the ending won't disappoint!