Chasing Starlight

Chapter 6

A New Life, A New Start, Old Baggage

Three Months Later

"Mom, it's okay, I'll be fine," Aria said, for the millionth time. She moved the phone to the other ear as she quickly checked her purse for the essentials – lip balm, ear phones, plane ticket. "My friends are driving me to the airport. I already said bye to dad last night, and Mike's leaving for lacrosse practice in an hour or two. Everything's under control."

"I feel terrible being here while you're all the way there," Ella said, sounding flustered on the other end of the conversation. "I mean, what kind of mom stays in Vienna for a year and isn't even around to say goodbye to her daughter in person, when she's going off to college?"

"Mom, it's okay. I'm so glad you're in Vienna. You and Zack really need this," Aria told her, hoisting her bag onto her shoulder. She was secretly glad her mother wasn't around, mostly because she was trying to cover up the slight bulge that was beginning to form on her belly since the pregnancy. She wasn't showing too much at all, honestly, the bulge just looked like she'd spent her entire summer gorging on chips and soda in front of the TV. But she wasn't ready to take any chances, and had switched to wearing shirts that were picked out from the men's apparel section.

"Okay. Call me when you reach. I love you. College is going to be wonderful," Ella said. Aria heard her voice break slightly at the other end and was suddenly overwhelmed with a lot of feelings.

"Thanks, mom. I love you too. I'll see you guys at Christmas break." Or not, Aria thought. There was no way the baby was going to be due before Christmas, but hopefully by then she would have found the right time to tell Ezra, so they could tell their parents together. Hopefully, by then, this huge ball of worry weighing down on her would have lifted.

Aria hung up, took one last look at her room, pulled her suitcases out and shut the door behind her. She looked into the living room, where her friends were sitting. They seemed to be deeply engrossed in conversation, their heads put together, their words inaudible.

"Guys," Aria said. The three of them looked up immediately. Aria didn't miss the looks of guilt that they tried to mask behind bright smiles and immediately knew that they must have been talking about her and the decision she'd made regarding the baby. A decision, she knew, that none of them approved of.

"Do you guys want to leave? If we leave now, we'll have plenty of buffer time to reach the airport," Aria said.

"Um, sure!" Spencer said, jumping to her feet and striding towards her. "Let me help you with that."

"Wow, those are a lot of suitcases," Emily remarked as she wheeled a suitcase down the Montgomery foyer towards the front door. "I don't remember you having these many cases even when you returned from your year in Iceland."

"Ha, ha," Aria joked. "Funny. Of course I need these many clothes, I'm going to need clothes for the next six months. I'm not going to wear the same pair of Levi's for the rest of the semester."

"Did you bring your stock of maternity wear, too?" Hanna asked sardonically. "Considering that, you know, in a couple of months you won't even fit into those extra-large yoga pants of yours?"

"Shh!" Aria said furiously. "Don't bring that up…here."

"Your dad is in Cupertino, Aria, and Mike's at football practice," said Hanna, annoyed. "Okay, wait, stop right here." She stopped wheeling the suitcase down the corridor, planted her hands on her hips and turned to face Aria. "We've got to straighten this out before you go. I don't even know how you're so damn calm, almost as if this is nothing more than just a crimp in your plan! You're acting like, I don't know, someone gave you magenta pumps instead of red, and you think you can pass off magenta as if it were red, although I'd be so furious if someone switched magenta and red, because they're so not interchangeable–"

"What's your point, Hanna?" Aria asked, unable to keep the frosty tone out of her voice.

"My point is that you're pregnant, Jamie Lynn Spears!" Hanna said hotly. "And your boyfriend, the father of this baby, still doesn't have a clue! You're going off to college in New York. You can hide that little baby bump of yours for the next couple of weeks beneath hideously poofy shirts and men's clothes, but sooner or later, you're going to be bloating up like a hot air balloon, and there'll be nothing you can do to hide it! You haven't seen Ezra in a month, and you still aren't showing so he doesn't know, but in a couple of months when he decides to do some spontaneous Ezra thing, like flying all the way to New York to surprise you with chocolates and flowers, he's going to see you with your belly entering the room before the rest of you! What are you going to tell him then, huh? Are you going to pretend like you've stuffed a turkey up your shirt for safekeeping?"

"Hanna," Spencer said quietly, as Aria stared at Hanna in disbelief. "Drop it. It's Aria's life, okay? This is her decision."

"I don't care whose decision it is!" Hanna exclaimed. "I'm just trying to protect her from doing something stupid! She can't spring this on him the day before that baby bursts out of her. Agreed, he's got a job in Philly now and this will probably be a crimp in his plan but it's better than jetting off to a new place all alone and being a pregnant teen in a dorm room!"

"I think Hanna's right, Aria," Emily said. "It's only going to be a matter of time. It's just going to get a lot harder from now, swollen ankles, sore back, painful neck. We completely respect your decision to keep this baby, but trying to get through this alone and trying to cope up with college as well is a classic case of biting off more than you can chew. Maybe you should have held college off for a year, had this baby, told Ezra, and then thought about going off to college–"

"What difference is that going to make?" Spencer interjected, unable to keep out of the conversation. "She'll be waist-deep in taking care of that kid, trying to live off Ezra's single salary, unable to find a good enough job to save up for that kid's needs because she's just a high school grad with no other experience–"

"Oh, you think that kid's going to pop out after she's graduated from college and has a posh job on Park Avenue, Spencer?" Hanna snapped. "This kid is going to come out irrespective of whether she goes to college or not. All I'm saying is, I know it's going to be hard, but at least she's not going to be alone if she at least tells him. Mr Fitz isn't the kind of guy who's going to flake because of this."

"Technically, she's not alone, she has us," Emily began.

"Okay, stop!" Aria cried and the three of them stopped talking and turned to look at her. Tears were glistening in her large eyes, threatening to spill over onto her cheeks. "As much as I appreciate your support, all of you, this is my life. This is my decision. This is my baby and it's my boyfriend who will get mad at me if I don't tell him about this soon. But it's still my choice and my future and no one else's opinion matters to me except mine. Do you understand?"

"You certainly made that clear enough," Hanna mumbled crossly.

"Yes, Hanna, I have, and I'm glad I did! And you want to know why I'm 'so damn calm' about this? Because I have to be. I was negligent. This was a mistake. But it's not a mistake that I'm going to cry over. It's something I have to deal with. As much as I want to kick myself for not being careful enough, and Ezra for not being as insistent as he always is with stuff like this, but I refuse to make this into something that I'm going to cry over every night for the rest of my life. Yes, I'm eighteen, I'm fucking terrified, I don't know what I'm going to do, and how I'm going to deal with this, and what I'm even going to say to anyone but I need to be strong. And the fear…it almost paralyzes me every day. I wake up every single day hoping it's a bad dream, hoping I'll wake up and it won't be real. I'm hoping that this kid will just disappear – however horrible it sounds to say it – but I can't break down now. And I won't. If I'm not going to tell Ezra about this immediately, it's because a part of me doesn't want to acknowledge it as well. It's going to change our dynamic more than anything, and I'm not going to clip his wings when he's just starting to fly. I know Ezra, he'll quit his job, he'll fly to New York, he'll insist we get an apartment together. Soon, he'll be hunting for a job again and we'll be living off a few grains of cereal and the milk in last month's carton and I'll be worried about how we're going to be able to pay bills and rent and everything. Maybe a part of me hopes that by the time I'm ready to tell him, he'll have some money saved up from his new job and Philly, so we won't be too broke when we're trying to build a future for this kid. So do you understand now why I'm trying to be 'so damn calm' all the time, Hanna?" Aria finished, swiping angrily at her tears as she glared at her friends.

The three of them moved spontaneously towards her to hug her, and Aria squeezed her eyes shut, feeling the hot tears spilling from behind her eyelids down her cheeks.

"We're sorry," Emily said, giving her a squeeze. "We're just worried about you, that's all. You're the only one who's moving so far away so soon and you're…well, you know, with this whole thing, and we just don't want you to feel like you're alone."

"You'll have us, you know that," Hanna whispered into her shoulders. "And I'm sorry if I, you know. Overstepped my boundaries and made you feel like shit. It's something that I end up doing a lot of times."

"Well, you're our feisty Hanna, aren't you?" Aria whispered back. "I'm going to miss you guys so much. Promise you'll still love me when I'm bloated and fat and complaining about my back and my ankles?"

"We'll love you no matter what, Aria," Spencer assured her. "We've been through a lot, remember? Right from Ali's murder to A to…"

"Please let's not talk about A!" Hanna said, shaking her head as if she was trying to get rid of the memory as a whole. "That's three years of my life tracking down a bully who was determined to make our lives hell."

"Okay, no talking about A," Spencer said with a grin. "But we've been through almost everything else, right? We're all here not just for you, Aria, but for all of us. We're a family."

Aria gave them a watery smile. "I love you guys. And, look at the time!" she exclaimed, glancing down at her watch. "We've got to go!"

After they'd said their tearful goodbyes at the entrance, Aria checked in her luggage, did the necessary formalities and sat back in her seat in the aircraft, her stomach knotting.

This was it. She was going to New York. To college. With a baby inside her. With her boyfriend in a different state. With a whole world in front of her.

Her phone buzzed and she quickly checked it before switching it off. It was a message from Ezra.

'Have a wonderful, safe flight, Aria. I love you so much and I'm so proud of you. New York is so lucky to have you there. I'll visit you soon. Take care. I love you so much.'

She quickly typed out a response, trying to suppress the guilt that always bubbled up inside her when she spoke to him.

She switched off her phone, watching the screen slowly dissolving into darkness, buckled her seat belt, and tried to concentrate on breathing deeply in and out of her nose.

This was it. She was finally going to college. But what would it be like? A new life, a new start? Or a life bogged down by the old baggage?

There was only one way to find out.

A/N: I haven't updated in about eight months, and I apologize for that! Sorry for the lack of Ezra/Ezria this chapter, but you'll be sure to see more of them in the next few :) Please note than I started this story before the whole Malcolm/Maggie story line on the show, so it won't be connected to that at all. Anyway, thank you so much for all the reviews and the tumblr messages and everything else that motivated me to continue with this story! Once again, a big thank you to all my lovely reviewers! I will definitely update soon. Do R&R and let me know what you think!