Two hours flew by after I’d collapsed against a random workout bench to cry. Eventually, I was out of tears but no further ahead in coming to any sort of conclusion about what to do with my predicament.

There was a clatter of noise behind me as the magnetic locks released with the swipe of a keycard and the gym door swung open. Not wanting to be caught, I quickly tried to rub away the evidence of tears with my shirt sleeve and grabbed the nearest weight. The fifty pound dumbbell I’d hastily chosen was more than twice what I could reasonably lift with one arm at that age so it just hung awkwardly off the side of the bench, but I was sure the stranger coming around the corner would write me off as an inexperienced idiot not an inexperienced idiot father-to-be.

“Nick?”

“Shit.”

Kevin was the last person I wanted to see. There was no way my cover would work because he would never believe I’d come down to the gym without a gun to my balls.

“Are you okay?” he asked with genuine concern in his voice. He was obviously coming down for a workout, dressed in grey shorts and a red tank top with a white hotel towel pulled around his neck. Not wanting to disturb him, I shook my head and tossed the weight to the floor with an obnoxiously loud thud. Before I could make my way to the door, he stopped me with a firm hand on my shoulder.

“You’ve been crying. What’s wrong?”

There were a million and one available excuses I could have told him. It would have been believable for me to say I was homesick or that I had something in my eye. In most situations, when I find myself feeling a bit lost, Kevin has always been there to offer some inspiring words of wisdom, a fishing story, or something his Dad taught him to help guide my way. That’s what I needed, someone older and wiser to tell me what to do, to tell me what the responsible and ‘adult’ thing to do would be. So, in spite of the fact that only me, Marki and the cashier knew what was happening, I found my lips suddenly loose.

“Kev, there’s...something I have to tell you.”

I sat back down on the edge of the weight bench and he followed suit, grabbing a spot just across from me. He said nothing but I knew he was waiting for me to continue.

“You know my girlfriend, Marki?”

Of course he knew her, I never shut up about her and my bandmates were the only people who knew that our relationship status was more than it seemed. Management thought we were just childhood friends and I wanted to keep it that way because I knew they’d keep her as far away from me as they could if they knew the truth.

“She okay?” he asked, his super-sized eyebrows nearly turning into one as a look of concern cropped up on his face. I could tell he was waiting for a breakup story.

I shook my head negatively and the tears I thought were gone found their way back, now spilling down my cheeks, dripping silently off the edge of my jaw.

“She’s pregnant.”

“Please tell me it’s not yours.”

This was not the all-knowing, wise owl response I had been expecting.

“Of course it’s mine! We’ve only ever been with each other.”

“Jesus Christ, Nick,” he muttered, running his hands through his hair quite anxiously. “Did no one ever teach you about safe sex?”

“Yes, but AJ--”

“Tell her to get rid of it. Yesterday.”

“I can’t!” I gasped, nearly choking on the air as it passed through my throat. “She won’t do that. She doesn’t believe in that and I don’t think I do either.”

“Of course she doesn’t,” he said and I swear you if you could have squeezed the words as they escaped his mouth they would have dripped sarcasm. “She knows you’re on your way to the top, why not see what she can get for it, right?”

“She’d never do that. We love each other!”

Kevin rolled his eyes, “You don’t know what love is, you’re a kid. I’ll tell you this right now, if you go through with this and it ends up in the public…it’ll ruin us, Nick. All of this will be over, we will never make it through this. No mother is going to want their teenage daughter lusting after a 16-year-old boy with a baby.”

“How can you be so sure?” I wondered, having been more concerned about the actual fatherhood portion of the issue and not what it would mean to the rest of the world.

“Nick,” Kevin’s voice was steady and serious and he locked eyes with me as if to further emphasize the importance of the words he was about to speak. “You can either do what society thinks you should do in this situation and go home and be a teenage Dad or you can forget about it, stay here and follow your dreams.

“In one reality you will likely grow up to work some minimum wage job, living paycheque to paycheque to support your kid and your woman. In the other you’ll be an amazing fucking singer and maybe even end up in music history, who knows. Either way, you can’t have both realities. You have to choose which one you want.”

Deep down I knew he was right. Europe was one thing, but we had our sights set on making our break into the US market. I wanted to be a star but I wouldn’t find the kind of stardom I wanted by being a teen father. I could practically feel every mother in the Bible Belt judging me already. More than that, I would be single-handedly responsible for bringing down the other guys. Call it a tad egotistical, but I didn’t think they’d be as successful without me.

I couldn’t handle the guilt that would come with taking this opportunity away from my friends, but I also knew that my problem at home wasn’t going to go away as easily as Kevin made it sound. My parents would never let me turn my back on Marki quite so simply, I knew. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to, I loved her, I just needed to make all of them understand that this was a matter of life or death for my blossoming career.

As chance would have it, no sooner had Kevin and I left the hotel gym and returned to our rooms when we were summoned by management to a meeting. We’d been booked for the end of May, as expected. Our record label was putting on a huge Memorial Day party and we had been requested to perform, to give us some exposure to American music industry big wigs. The party was in Orlando and we would get to spend the rest of the weekend at home before returning to Europe. Like the clouds had parted, I saw my opportunity to sit down with Marki and explain to her that being a father just wasn’t part of my destiny.