We took a break from touring in early August but that didn’t mean we had any real time off. Our first album was already at the top of the charts throughout most of Europe and management knew the train couldn’t stop. Before the first record even released in the UK and Canada we were already in Sweden working on the second. Then the award show circuit really got going for us and people started inviting us to festivals, all of which had to happen before we were back on tour in early November.

Six days at Christmas was all we were guaranteed in terms of days off between November of ‘96 and October ‘97. Sometimes I look back and wonder how we ever made it this far without completely burning out. It was usually five days on and one day off, if we were lucky, and that one day was always filled with travel or press.

It wasn’t exactly ideal conditions for trying to execute a secret marriage when there was a time limit on when it could happen. By Christmas Marki would be ready to pop, there was no way I would be able to put off making an honest woman (teenage girl) out of her in order to satisfy our parents and society, who weren’t even going to know about it in the first place. My dad had been on tour with me through the rest of the summer, maybe to make sure I didn’t get any other girls pregnant or maybe because my mother couldn’t stand him, but it became his mission to find a time to get me back to the states even for a few hours so I could sign some paperwork and sign my freedom away.

Somehow he managed to pull it off and I was back in Tampa with less than 24-hours before I had to be on a plane to Tokyo. He luckily hadn’t needed to make any excuses to justify the stopover since management thought my Dad’s idea of a brief trip home to swap clothes as we moved from Europe to Asia and from summer to fall, was brilliant. I wanted to tell the other guys what was really going on every day, to beg them for sympathy or advice, but Kevin’s words about what my secret could do to the group’s future hung over my head, like a bright neon sign swinging dangerously from a broken wire.

There were no white dresses, tuxedos, flowers or tiered cakes at our wedding. Marki and I arrived separately at the office of a notary public not far from my house, someone my parents knew through the nursing home. At that point she was visibly pregnant and I couldn’t stop myself from staring at the bulge in her dress, blaming it for all of my problems from the situation we were currently in right down to the fact that I hadn’t had decent sleep in months. The ceremony, if you could even call it that, lasted all of ten minutes. We signed some things, our parents signed some other things saying we could sign the first things and before we blink it was over.

A short while later, back at the house, Marki and I were alone for the first time in what felt like forever. We were both sitting on opposite sides of the couch, she had her feet up on the coffee table and hands comfortably settled on top of her bump, which I hadn’t stopped looking at out of the corner of my eye. I thought in that moment it would be impossible to feel any more uncomfortable in a room with her, to feel any further away from her even though I was sitting next to her. I was wrong, but at the time I didn’t have anything to judge against.

“Are you going to talk to me?” she asked.

“Is it weird?”

“Is what weird?”

I motioned to her stomach, “That. Does it feel weird?”

She followed my gaze down then rubbed her hand over the fabric covering her stomach. “I dunno, I guess,” she said with a shrug. My expression must have hit the point of terrified that borders on comical because she laughed. “This isn’t Aliens, Nick. Nothing is going to come busting out of my stomach at any moment and try to kill you.”

“You don’t know that for sure,” I teased and for a split second the tension in the room decreased.

“It feels better now than it did at first. I felt lousy for a while there but now it feels pretty much normal. Except for the snakes.”

“Snakes?!” I screeched, my voice cracking embarrassingly as I jumped back away from her.

Marki laughed (at me, not with me) and reached over to grab my arm, pulling until she could press my hand against her belly. “That’s the only way I know how to describe it. Sometimes it’s like my stomach is full of snakes all wiggling and jumping around.”

I wasn’t sure what a bag of snakes felt like but I suddenly knew what a belly full of baby felt like and it scared the shit out of me. It was like whatever was in there was tapping out a medley against my palm and I had to use every ounce of willpower I had not to pull away lest Marki think it was her that I found disgusting.

“Do you know what kind of baby it is yet?”

“A human baby, I hope, but judging by how freaked out you are I’m starting to think you’ve been hiding something. Are you really an alien and this is all just an experiment?”

I rolled my eyes, “I know it’s a human baby. I meant like a boy one or a girl one.”

“Don’t you think I would tell you if I knew that?”

She had me there, though that wasn’t anything surprising since Marki was infinitely more intelligent than I was. Still is, I’m sure. The silence was about as comfortable as having a tooth pulled but we both continued to sit in it awkwardly until I felt like I had to escape.

“I’m going to get a soda. Do you want anything?”

“No,” she said, giving me a strange look. “I can’t have soda, all that caffeine and sugar isn’t good for the baby.”

I had perfected the overdramatic eye roll at that point and put it to good use in that moment. “I could get you water or something else.”

“My mother suggested you might be acting so distant because you’re worried that you’ll be a bad father,” she said, seemingly out of left field.

“That’s bullshit.”

“Is it?” she asked. “You don’t have a positive male role model in your life, your Dad is kind of mean. Every time we’ve talked on the phone lately, you’ve been really cold and I don’t understand why. So if it has anything to do with you worrying about what kind of father you’ll be, I just want you to know that you’re going to be a good one, you’re your own man.”

“Your Mommy tell you that, too?”

“Why are you being such a jerk?”

“Why are you trying to ruin my life?”

I hadn’t really meant for those words to come out. They were supposed to stay internalized along with all the other emotions I felt on a regular basis before I realized that bottling it up only led to moments like the one I was stuck in. Almost instantly I regretted opening my big, stupid mouth, as Marki’s eyes filled with tears and one by one they started slipping down her cheeks. She didn’t make any move to wipe them away and I wanted to do it for her, to apologize, but I knew it wouldn’t seem genuine, and it wasn’t.

“You don’t think this has affected me as much as you? I’m missing an entire year of high school, all the hobbies I had I now can’t do, my friends have forgotten all about me except for a few, you blame me for everything inconvenient in your life and worst of all I have to carry it all around on the front of my body like I’m wearing a big fucking sign that says hey everyone, look at this girl who couldn’t keep her legs closed, what a slut.”

Adult Nick would have apologized and felt like an absolute fool for even thinking for a moment that Marki wasn’t suffering as much, if not more, than me but Teenager Nick hadn’t figured out how to think past himself yet. I didn’t have a lot of compassion because in my mind that was a sign of weakness and my father had done a pretty good job of snapping my compassionate bone pretty early in my life.

“Maybe you should have thought about all these things back when I suggested you get an abortion.”

She had every right to be pissed but it wasn’t in her nature. I had always been the passionate one of the two of us. When I was hot-headed and quick to react irrationally she was the perfect balance of calm and reasonable and could usually diffuse my attitude with no issue. I chalked her apathetic reaction to pregnancy hormones because she just shrugged. It was unlike her to be so dismissive.

“It’s too late for that now, we can’t go back. I think maybe I should go. You clearly need to go back on tour. When you come back could you please bring Nick with you? Because this guy, whoever you are pretending to be, is kind of an asshole.”

“I am the same Nick!” I argued, pounding my fist against my chest for extra effect but she shook her head.

“I am the same Nick and you are the same Marcia,” I said, using her full name only because I knew she hated it. “Unfortunately, you and I, together, we aren’t going to ever be the same.”

What we had when we were kids, even what we had six months earlier, was gone, but I never imagined it would get as bad as it did.