HUGE STEPS

by Stephanie Brother

  “I don’t know what you’re about to say, but I swear to God, Jared, if you even mention touching junk, I will come across this couch and punch you square in the goddamn jaw. I swear I will.”

  “That wasn’t what I was going to say.”

  “Thank fuck for that.” My brother picks up his phone and started replying to a message. He has a stupid smirk on his face. “It was good though, right? Like, really, really good.”

  I let out a low whistle. “You are not lying,” I agree. “I mean I have a few moments where it’s a little less detailed, and maybe a little bit hazier than I’d like, but it was really good.”

  Jamie quickly nods along in agreement, turning back toward me. “When you’ve wanted something for so long and you finally get it…I mean…damn.” He shakes his head.

  “Yeah…when she kissed me first, I didn’t know what to do.”

  Jamie snorts. “She only kissed you first because you were closest. She got hotter quicker when she kissed me.”

  “Yeah, because you practically pulled her off me…didn’t think you’d be so jealous, man.”

  “Jealous? Get outta here,” he laughs. “I thought she was too drunk to know what she was doing. I was trying not to let you damage our sibling relationship.”

  I punch Jamie’s leg. “Number one, she was kissing me, not the other way around and number two we are not siblings.”

  “You know what I mean, and it sure looked like you were kissing her back.”

  “Yeah well, you didn’t exactly push her away when she turned her attentions to you.”

  Jamie chuckles lowly. “What do you expect…I’m a man, not a monk.”

  “Look, we’re going around in circles here,” I say. It’s weird because we never really get jealous over the other girls we’ve shared.

  Jamie seems to understand at the same time that I do, that there’s just no point in any of the arguing. “The point is she had a good time, and that’s what matters,” he says, putting a cap on the obvious dick-measuring.

  The fact that Jamie is the one to stop it, though, still kind of stuns me. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. That’s all that should matter.”

  “But seriously, bro, we didn’t touch junk, did we?”

  I give him a hard shove. “Fuck off, Jamie.”

  He laughs hard and punches my arm. “Jared, did you just say fuck?”

  “It must be catching.” I shrug but smile back at my brother. For all our petty sibling bickering, I love my twin like nothing else.

  He hands me a beer and I grab the bottle opener from his other hand and pop it open, taking a swig.

  “All right. So we had sex with Abi, and it was really good. The best, but now we achieved the dream, it’s over and done with. Right? She’s made that clear.” It stings little to say it, but I have to know that were both on the same page. Neither one of us should be pursuing her. Especially since it doesn’t seem to be what she wants.

  “She’s told us how she feels about what happened and I guess we have to respect that. I don’t like it but what can I do.”

  I nod. As much as we would both jump at the opportunity to have more with Abi, it doesn’t look like either of us is going to get another chance.

  11

  Jamie

  “Ugh, does the bastard ever put shit away?” I mumble to myself, sifting through the junk and remaining parts Jared’s left in the mud room. He has a bad tendency of emptying out his work van here instead of tidying it up. I’ve been looking for his spare rotary tool for the last five minutes and still haven’t come across the damn thing yet.

  Underneath some more junk, I lean back when I unearth a brand-spanking new garbage disposal kit still sealed in the box. Damn, is this the one that we lost a couple of months ago? It had driven us both crazy looking for it, and we had to eventually turn around and order a replacement kit, prolonging our customer’s wait, which royally pissed me off, and didn’t exactly make them happy.

  “Well, what the hell am I going to do with you now?” I wonder aloud as if the thing is going to talk back to me or something. I groan. “I’m losing my mind now, I guess.”

  It hits me that while I was at Abi’s apartment last time, I grabbed some water and noticed that she didn’t seem to have a working garbage disposal. When I asked her about it, she mentioned that while there was supposed to be one connected to her sink’s plumbing, the apartment manager never got around to putting a new one in. “It would probably be a really cheap one anyway, so I never saw the point in bringing it back up. It’s not like I really need it.”

  Maybe it’s time to put this box to use, after all. No harm in keeping relations friendly, I think. What I mean is that I’m craving a fix of Abi. Even if all I get is a look at her and a little easy chatter it’ll be enough to keep me happy.

  And no one’s going to miss this part now!

  --

  It takes some doing, but I manage to finish up at my last client’s home and immediately hop into my truck and throw it into drive, heading home, or to Abi’s, I should say.

  When I’m there I turn off the ignition and sit for a minute. I think about how fucking happy I was when she pressed her lips against mine. She has no idea how much I’ve wanted her all these years. Seeing her with Cody about killed me, but I wasn’t in any position to fight for her. I just had to sit back and watch her put all her hopes and dreams into someone who didn’t deserve to breathe the same air as her, let alone put a ring on her finger.

  I know I shouldn’t be here right now. I did the ‘breaking the ice’ visit already. Things are as cool between us as it’s possible for them to be under the circumstances. I’m not going to make anything better but popping over again so soon, but I can’t help myself. I just want to see her. I feel better when I’m in her presence; calmer…less angry. I can’t bear to see her unhappy. As soppy as it sounds, I just want to put my arms around her and shelter her from all the shit that life has to throw in her direction.

  I know that dropping by to fit this waste disposal is stupid, but I don’t care. As I get out of the truck, I look up at her window, hoping that she’s home. I shoulder the box and carry it across the street to her apartment complex, careful watch where I’m going, before ringing her doorbell.

  The door opens and Abi’s there wearing a pleased expression on her face, along with a rather low-cut tank-top and gray yoga pants. Bless whoever brought those into style.

  “Hey! I was actually just about to text you to thank you for fixing my sink…I wasn’t sure if I told you that or not.” Abi pauses, finally taking in the box. “What’s that?” she asks, eyeing it warily.

  “Oh, uh, I wanted to stop by and see if you would like me to hook this up for you.” I point to the side of the box. “It’s a garbage disposal for your kitchen sink.”

  Abi moves aside to let me in. “Well, I mean, okay. It’s really not a big deal. I don’t ever put anything down the drain…okay, you’re really doing this.” She hurries to follow me into her small kitchen.

  Dropping down to one knee, I pull the cabinets open. “Yeah, it won’t be too hard to replace this piece of shit you got in here already. Promise,” I reply, ripping the top of the box off. “Besides, that asshole landlord of yours should’ve already had this done, right?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, it was supposed to be done months ago,” she says, holding her herself together for some reason. “And this isn’t really in my wheelhouse.”

  “Exactly. Would you mind handing me that green bag over there?”

  Not paying attention, I nearly jump out of my damn skin when Abi’s fingers graze across mine when she hands me my tool bag. I clear my throat quickly and pull the cleaning supplies out from underneath the cabinet. That’s when another genius idea hits me. Obviously, Abi isn’t comfortable trying to do this herself…so what if I taught her?

  12

  Abigail

  I’m still kind of confused as to why Jamie’s over here, replacing a garbage disposal that I only briefly brought up befo
re, but I guess I can’t really say no. And why would I? It’s true, the apartment manager had plenty of chances to take this darn thing out just so I could have replaced, but he never did, and it was just another thing to add to the growing list of things frustrate me about my apartment. I suppose I should be grateful that I have my space.

  “I can actually show you how to do this if you want me to.”

  It takes me a moment to recognize that Jamie’s talking to me, still kind of lost in my own thoughts. “I’m sorry, what was that?”

  Jamie sits up from his spot on the floor, giving me a funny look. “I mean if you don’t want me to, it’s okay. I have no problem handling it on my own, obviously. I just thought maybe you’d like to see how it’s done. In case you ever need to fix anything with the disposal, yourself.”

  I lick my lips. “Oh. You want me to — to help you?” I can’t fake the surprise on my face. No one’s ever assumed that I could help with something like this in the first place, much less ask me to. Something sweet and fleeting brushes through my chest. “Sure. I mean I don’t know what in the world any of this is, or what I can do to help but… yeah, yeah I can do that.”

  Jamie’s smile is too wide for me to look at it anymore, so I bend down and watch as he pulls out some kind of tool…okay, just a screwdriver I guess, from his green bag.

  “Okay, so the first step here is to remove the old unit. We’re going to start by taking off the drain arm, and then the tube.” Loosening one of the screws in place, he sets down the screwdriver and leans in further, a total look of concentration on his face. The way he sort of sticks the tip of his tongue out to the side has me trying not to breathe too hard.

  “All right, so I’m going to need my slip-joint pliers, right there in the top of the bag,” he says, pointing to a yellow and red pair of pliers, I’m assuming.

  I hold them up. “These?”

  “Yep, those are the ones. So I’m going to take this and gently disconnect the drain arm from the main disposal unit, and then I’m going to take out the tube. See? Easy as pie.”

  With a few snips from his tools and a quick tug, the entire old garbage disposal is pulled out at our feet. The foul smell hits both of us at the same time, and Jamie and I both cover up our noses with the collars of our shirts.

  “Jesus! It’s a damn good thing I’m getting this out of here. Any longer sitting in there, and your kitchen would have smelled like this!”

  I lean further away from the smelly piece of junk. “And then you would have found me passed out somewhere on the floor. Ugh.”

  “Yeah,” he nods, “That’s definitely gonna need a trash bag.”

  I listen along and help Jamie every step of the way, paying attention to all the pieces and all the tools he’s using. It may not all stay in my brain forever, but that doesn’t matter. At least he’s taking the time to show me and to fix all of it too.

  His knee nudges up against mine more and more, until our entire legs and hips are pushed up against each other, and I’m trying so hard to keep it together. I don’t want to shy away from him, push him away like before, and I don’t want it to be obvious that this is such a turn on for me, so I have to play it cool. Besides, he didn’t come here to get me all hot and bothered. He came here to fix this stupid sink. Two totally different things. He’s just trying to be nice, that’s all.

  Nice and brotherly.

  I swallow, feeling guilty. I imagine our parent’s faces if they knew the things we’ve done. If they could hear my thoughts, they’d never speak to me again.

  When Jamie finally sits back to inspects our work, he smiles over at me. “Voila! All finished! See, that wasn’t hard, was it? You could probably handle something like this next time, right?” He says this with a smile as though he actually believes it and something cold slices through me just for split second. “What is it?” he asks me.

  “It’s nothing,” I quickly say, not wanting to drag Jamie down at my own dark thoughts as well.

  But this is Jamie we’re talking about, and he’s nothing if not relentless. “You know you can talk to me, Abi. About anything.”

  Warmth spreads through me, filling the cold void that my realization had caused. “It’s just that all of this maintenance stuff is something that I’m not used to, and it’s not just because I’m a woman or anything, it’s just that…well, Cody used to handle this sort of thing. And he never offered…”

  “To teach any of it to you?” he finishes for me, sitting back up again. “Big surprise there. I’m more surprised that his dumbass could handle changing a light bulb, much less anything more than that.”

  It always used to bother me when the twins talked about Cody like this, but now I could hardly care less. They were both absolutely right — Cody was a complete idiot, and the fact that I let him handle any of the house maintenance stuff makes me mad.

  When Jamie shifts to the side to get a look at me, I find myself feeling a little overexposed, even though I’m wearing plain around the house clothes. The twins have this crazy effect on me where the moment they look at me right my eyes, I know I can’t look anywhere else.

  “It’s not hard to learn, as you can see, and I’d be happy to teach you if you want. It doesn’t just have to be about foul-smelling garbage disposals, either,” he says, grinning as I make a face. “I think it’s a good thing to want to know how to handle anything that comes your way. I mean of course it’s not a substitute for hiring a professional, mind you, but it’s good to be able to manage your own pipes.”

  Of course, this sets me off giggling like some stupid schoolgirl, bringing my hand up to my mouth trying to hide it. Jamie and his ridiculous dirty jokes, I swear.

  “You’re probably going to have to get some caulk, you’re gonna want that on tap so that it’s there whenever you’re ready for it,” he eyes me, leaning in closer with a huge grin on his face, making me laugh even harder. “It definitely wouldn’t hurt to grease the pipes yourself though, there are plenty of oil-based lubricants out there.”

  “Oh my God, Jamie, stop it,” I say, wheezing in between the belly laughs. It would be hard to find anyone who makes me laugh as hard as he does, and in a moment of losing my inhibitions, the cute smile he’s giving me sends a thrill down my spine. His eyes soften, and he has me absolutely hooked. There’s no way I could look anywhere else but directly back at him.

  So I close my eyes, but instead of trying to avoid his stare, I only lean in further and bridge the gap between us, feeling my lips on his, already drowning in him, helpless.

  His lips are hot below mine, and I feel myself rising up on my knees, my hands tangling around in his hair and just about to —

  “Sorry. I have another job I need to get to,” he says gently against my mouth, effectively pulling away and leaving me feeling way too many things all at once.

  I try and recover, quickly shaking my head. “No, I mean, of course you do. I’m sorry… I just…” I let my voice trail off. Now that Jamie is the one pushing me away, I have to respect it. I can’t just play with him and Jared’s emotions like this, and I looked down at the floor as Jamie pulls himself up to a stand.

  “All right, well there you go. Lesson one, changing a garbage disposal because your shit landlord sucks,” Jamie says weakly, clearly trying to return things back to normal. “Just let me know if you have any more things that come up, anything else needs to be fixed… Yeah. I’ll talk to you later, Abi.”

  I don’t bother waiting for a hug or anything else, for that matter, because I know I’d be waiting forever. When Jamie finally leaves the apartment, I lean against my kitchen counter, my head my hands.

  How have I messed things up so badly between me and my stepbrothers? Just planting a kiss on one of them isn’t fair to either of them, but it’s like I can’t help myself anymore. Being around them does crazy things to my brain, drunk or not.

  It’s like the both of them are two sides of the same coin, and I want to pocket that coin, keep it, never letting anyone else h
ave it but me. It’s unfair to all three of us, but I’m starting to realize slowly that fairness doesn’t matter as much to me these days.

  13

  Jared

  “Thanks, Jared. I appreciate it. I’m not as bendy as I used to be when I was your age,” Mr. McCallum laughs, handing me the signed receipt. “Getting old is for the birds.”

  I clap him on the back. “Nah. Nothing wrong with vintage,” I reply. “Anyway, with any luck, the icemaker won’t cause you any more problems.”

  I slide into the work at hand, going over the paperwork from my last job, making sure I didn’t miss anything. With my thoughts so cluttered by everything that’s been happening lately, I’m worried I will. But no, everything seems to check out, so I throw the van into drive and head home, ready to relax after another long day.

  As I turn onto our street I immediately notice Abi’s standing on her tiptoes, trying to push a large trash bag into the apartment’s dumpster by the curb. That’s all it takes for me to pull alongside her, rolling down my window. It’s not as if I can avoid her anyway. “Hey there.”

  Abi lets out a little shriek as the top of the dumpster closes shut loudly, and turns back to me, giving me a little wave. “Hey. Did you just get home from work?”

  I nod. “Yeah. Eight jobs today, can you believe it? Luckily most of them were really small things that only took like half an hour if that. What are you up to?”

  Abi shields her eyes from the sun and leans into the van. “It’s my day off, so I’ve just been kind of hanging around the house. I was thinking about what I wanted for dinner, but I still don’t know.”

  “How are you holding up? I mean… I haven’t really checked in with you about Cody and all…you haven’t had any more trouble from friends have you?”