Benji tapped his foot under the table as he looked over the menu. Joel was late to breakfast. The New York City hotel restaurant seemed too nice for his appearance. He adjusted his hat and turned around and looked at the door where Joel was finally coming through.

"I'm late, I'm sorry." Joel said sitting down at the table across from Benji. "It's just too early. We all ended up staying out late and celebrating your engagement...even though you didn't." He looked up from his menu at Benji. "Well, come to think of it, you probably did celebrate, but I don't want to hear about it."

Benji laughed slightly and leaned in closer to his twin. "We didn't do...well...that."

He tipped back in his chair a bit and looked at Benji quizzically. "Trouble in paradise?"

"No. It's just that, well, she's pregnant." Benji smiled a little and Joel's jaw dropped open.

"Luxx is pregnant?"

He nodded and smiled a little more, his lips thinning and his piercings sticking out a little more. "No, one of my thousand mistresses, Joel. Who else would it be? Of course it's Luxx. God."

"No shit?"

"No shit." He paused and took a sip of water. "She told me last night in the club after I purposed. That's why I was holding her for so long, that's why we left so quickly, and that's why she was crying."

"What are you guys going to do about it?"

"We're keeping it. There's no other option as far as I'm concerned. I'm ready to be a dad. I mean, we were going to have kids someday."

Joel took a deep breath a nodded. "As long as you're happy, Benji, I'm happy for you. I'm happy for you both." The brothers stood up and hugged.

"Thanks, man. That means a lot. I just hope Mom reacts as well as you."

"Oh, God, I forgot all about Mom!" Joel smacked his forehead lightly. "Benji, she's not going to be happy at all about the marriage or the baby, you know that."

"I know."

"Does Luxx?"

Benji nodded slowly. "We were talking about it on the cab ride back to the hotel last night. She knows how Mom feels about her. I feel horrible. I don't know how this is all going to work out if my fiancée and my mother can't even get along."

"Don't worry, Benj, it'll all be okay, I mean, Mom will come around. She won't disown you or anything, I'm sure of that. You're her little boy." Joel reached across the table and gently slapped Benji on the face while he laughed a little.

"I wish I could get the point across to her, she's dead set on the fact that Luxx is out for my money or fame or whatever, but Luxx isn't out for that. She loves me; I wish Mom could just figure that out, and that I love her, too."

"I think she's just having trouble dealing with the fact that we're all grown up and that, you know, she's not the number one woman in our lives, your life especially."

Benji nodded. He had kissed Luxx's sleeping eyes before he left for breakfast that morning. She tossed and little and moaned an incoherent version of his name before he whispered goodbye and kissed her again. He didn't want to leave the room that morning, and the pull she had on him every time he looked over his shoulder and saw her sleeping figure made it nearly impossible to walk out the door.

"Mom's going to know I had sex." Benji rubbed his eyes trying to get the image of Luxx's body out of his head because it made him want to get up and run back up to the room.

Joel laughed and slapped the table. "I think she already knew."

"How?"

"I don't know, it's kind of a given, isn't it?"

"No."

"Oh, come on, Benji. She knew." Joel smiled devilishly and shook his head at his twin. "That's hilarious."

"I told Luxx the same thing last night and she just started to laugh, much like you, you bastard."

"Luxx was right to laugh."

"Yes, she was. You're not."

Joel dropped his jaw in mock shock. "I'm offended." He said jokingly as the waitress walked over and asked for their orders. They ordered and then resumed talk of last night's events and what was expected within the next nine months. "Do you know if it's a girl or a boy yet?"

"We won't know for awhile."

"I thought you said that Luxx was on the pill?" Joel asked, still a little in shock about the fact he was going to be an uncle.

"She was, but she was also on some medication for an ear infection that sort of cancelled it out. I mean, it's not that we were exactly careless, we did use protection...we just didn't realize that it wasn't working."

"So, when are you going to tell Mom?"

Benji shrugged and smiled a little, "Once the baby is born."

"Seriously, man."

"I don't know. It scares me a little."

Joel nodded, agreeing with his brother. He knew that their mom wasn't going to take it very well at all. Joel was sitting at the table the night that Luxx was first introduced to the family, and he could feel the tension between his mom and Luxx. "Have you met her family yet?"

"I met her sister about a month ago and I've talked to her brother on the phone a few times. She's not very close with her dad and she hasn't seen her mom since she was four."

"Since she was four? Why?"

"Her mom left home when she was four, Luxx doesn't remember why and she doesn't really want to ask her dad. It's a touchy subject for her," Benji explained. He knew so much about how Luxx felt about her family situation, mainly because his own dad had walked out on his family when he was in high school.

"I guess you two have more in common than I thought."

"Tell that to Mom."

"She'll understand everything sooner or later, Benj."

"How about before nine months is up?"

["is there nothing we can do/for this tension/yeah, this pulling/is this beyond our control?/what's the difference/(why can't you understand?)" Tokyo Rose: "Third Semester"]