Normal Life
Chapter 10
By: Bella
Tristen sat rocking Adah while the baby slept in her arms, nervously looking at the alarm clock next to her hotel room bed. She had been trying to get a hold of him for five hours, but hadn't been successful. She was very worried. She knew he had found out and wasn't happy. She just hoped he wasn't doing something stupid.
She looked down at the chubby cherub in her arms that was nestled as close as possible to her body and could feel each breath the child took. She watched her daughter as she slept, wondering how she had gotten so big. Just a few short years ago she would never have imagined that she'd be a wife and a mother so soon. And then it hit her. In all of the times that she had ever questioned whether she had made a mistake marrying Benji after knowing him for just hours, she never once thought about what her life would be like had she not. She always felt that even if she hadn't married Benji that first day that they actually had their first conversation, she knew that she would eventually decided to spend the rest of her life with him. Had they not married when they did, Adah would have never come. Sure, they may have had children together, but not the child she had today. She was sure she'd love any child that was a product of she and Benji, but the fact of the matter was that Adah was what had come and she couldn't imagine her life without her. She couldn't imagine her life without Benji. She couldn't imagine herself without her family.
A tear slipped down her cheek. She wondered if it was too late. She wondered if her family had grown so far apart that they were beyond repair. She wondered if she and Benji would ever find a way to make their marriage work with such demanding jobs. She wondered if Adah would ever know what it was like to have a mother and father who were there for her all of the time.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the door of her suite room opening slowly and a familiar person quietly walking in. He noticed that it was dark in the room and he could barely see her face. As he got closer, he noticed tears running down her cheeks. He didn't know what to do, what was appropriate at such a time, so he just did what came naturally. He immediately wiped her tears away and bent down and kissed Adah on her forehead. He then sat in the chair opposite her, a small table dividing them. They sat there in silence for what seemed like forever. Neither knew where to begin. He finally spoke in a shaky voice, trying with all of his might not to break down.
"My dad used to cheat on my mom," Benji began.
"Benj, I…" Tristen started to interrupt, but Benji wouldn't let her.
"No, just wait. Let me get this out. We all knew what he was doing, where he went when he would disappear for long periods of time. Even Mom, but she always took him back. I never understood her. I didn't understand how she could ever look at him again without seeing him with those other women, how she could let him treat us so badly and be so disrespectful. But now I think I understand a little more. She wanted us to have a father. No matter how much she wanted him to be someone else's husband, she wanted him to be our father. Even though as it turns out, he wasn't really a father at all, she put herself through hell trying to give us what we needed. And it would be one thing if Adah never happened and we were having troubles. It would be logical to settle this another way, but Adah did happen and I feel like I have a responsibility. I don't know what's been going while we've been away from each other, and if something has been going on I don't think I'm ready to hear about that yet, but I do know that it's ridiculous that we were ever separated in the first place. If we could be a family again, a real one, I know that I could make you happy. I could make you both happy. And no matter how hard he tries, no one could ever love you and Adah the way that I do, because we're connected now forever, whether you like it or not."
Another tear slipped down Tristen's cheek. She didn't know whether to be happy or mad. "Are you implying that I cheated on you?"
"I don't know. I guess I just mean that whatever has been happening the past few months, I think we can get through it. We have to get through it. For Adah," he said.
"How could you ever even think that I would want to be with anyone else?" she asked quietly, hurt.
He could tell that she was getting upset. "Were you?"
"No!" she exclaimed, standing up and walking over to the portable crib across the room and laying the baby inside of it. She went to the door and grabbed the handle. "I can't believe you would even think that."
"Wait, Tristen, I'm sorry. But shit, I think it's pretty damn nice of me to offer to just drop it and pretend like nothing ever happened!" he said, becoming frustrated. She opened the door and motioned for them to take the conversation into another room. When they came out of Tristen and Adah's room the other 5 people sharing the suite, realizing that they didn't want to be around for the conversation, immediately mumbled something about food and left as quickly as they could.
"But nothing did happen! Not a damn thing! I don't know what the fuck is going on, but I haven't done anything with anyone else! I'm insulted that you wouldn't believe me," she said angrily.
"Of course I believe you," he said, his voice softening. He walked over to the couch that she was sitting on with her head buried in her hands and sat down next to her. Taking her hands in his and looking into her eyes he said, "You're my wife and I love you. And I believe you."
"Then why do you keep acting like it's so nice of you to offer to 'take me back' as if I've done something wrong?" she cried. "I swear, there is no one else. The guy in the pictures is some bastard that I did an interview with. We did the fucking photo shoot for that article in that same park for crying out loud! Funny how everyone seemed to ignore that."
"I'm sorry, Trissy, I really am," he said, giving her a hug. "I was so scared. I thought I was losing you, even before this whole rumor thing. I miss being with you and Adah together."
"I miss being a family too. I don't need a lot, I just need us to be together. I don't care if we're on a bus, or in a hotel, or bouncing from state to state or country to country. I just don't want us to do it separately," she admitted. "I'm miserable, you're miserable, and pretty soon Adah is going to be old enough to sense what's going on and be miserable as well."
"That's why we canceled the rest of our tour," Benji said, causing Tristen to gasp in shock.
"But you guys are going to make up those dates, right?" she asked.
"Yes. But not until your tour is over. Not without my family with me," he said, squeezing her a little more.
"But what about after that? We have to come up with a way to make our jobs work together," she said with concern. "But not so much that we spend every day doing something either Good Charlotte or Pacifica related."
They both thought. "Let's make a promise that we'll never spend more than six months a year on the road," Tristen suggested. "I don't mind touring sometimes, but I don't want the only bed that Adah knows to be a portable one."
"Ok, agreed," Benji said, nodding. "And when we record, we record at the same time. But when we tour, we make absolutely sure that the tours don't conflict. If we can't be together, we can't tour."
"Ok, sounds good," Tristen said with a sigh of relief. "So… we're a family again? Permanently this time?"
"Always," he said, giving her a kiss. Both of them exhausted, they went back into the room in which Adah was asleep and went to bed early that night, in the same bed in each others arms for the first time in months.