HUGE STEPS

by Stephanie Brother

  “Cody, who?” There’s a small smile that lights up just enough of her face. “Really, though, I’m okay. Just taking it one day at a time.”

  Pushing my hair out of my face, I smile right back at her. “That-a-girl.”

  There’s a moment of awkward silence between us before she breaks it by asking me, “When was the last time you cut your hair?”

  “Uh, I don’t really know. Maybe a couple of months ago?”

  Abi just snorts, shaking her head at me. “Have you taken a look at the mirror lately? You totally need a haircut. Before you know it, not even I am going to be able to tell the difference between you and Jamie.”

  Call me crazy, but something about that idea it doesn’t really sit well with me.

  “Why don’t you come inside my apartment? I can give you a haircut. I used to cut my dad’s hair all the time before he started going to his favorite barbershop down the street from the house. What do you say?”

  I blink, not really sure of what to make of Abi’s offer, but I’m not going to turn down a chance to spend time with her. No way in hell. “Sure. I mean as long as it’s not imposing on you or anything…”

  I start to get out, watching her closely, wishing I was privy to what’s going through her mind. Abi rarely, if ever, just invites us over to hang out, much less do anything for us. And it’s not that she’s not sweet and caring enough to, it’s just that she’s always kind of kept herself distanced from me and Jamie. At least until now, anyway.

  “Well, are you coming?” she asks with a smile.

  I follow her back to her apartment, the conversation with Jamie nagging at the back of my mind. This is just a haircut, I tell myself. A haircut just means a haircut, nothing more.

  “Okay, so where do you want to do this?” I ask, pretending not to care that Abi blushes furiously at my choice of words.”

  “Um, stay right here for a minute, I'm just going to bring in a chair from the dining room…” she says, leaving me for a moment to drag in a chair. “Here you go.”

  She moves for me to sit down and out of nowhere produces a towel to wrap around my shoulders. The moment her fingers graze against the back of my neck I jump. This is going to involve a lot of restraint on my end, I can just feel it.

  “Do you usually get your hair wet before you cut it?”

  I shake my head. “The guy just cuts it, no hair washing or anything like that.”

  “All right. Just relax, I promise I won’t hurt you,” she says, amusement coloring her tone. The sound of scissors snipping away catches me off guard, and I’m wondering if Abi really knows how to cut hair. I mean, her dad’s hair is always pretty well done, but then again, she did mention something about a barbershop so…I imagine it looking terrible and uneven. How would I explain that to Jamie?

  I take a deep breath and say a little internal prayer that Abi has enough scissor skills to make a good job of this. Only time will tell, I guess.

  Instead of worrying about my hair, I focus on how close Abi’s standing to me. Close enough that I can smell the sweet strawberry shampoo she uses, and feel the warmth of her body when she presses her belly against my shoulder.

  Everything about her feels so soft.

  And I’m close to getting hard as a result.

  Abi steadily snips away at my hair, bits and pieces of it falling away into my lap and on the floor around me. I don’t know whether she realizes or not but she starts to hum quietly to herself, something I didn’t know she does. It’s so damn adorable, that I wish I could comment on it, and maybe ask her what she’s humming. But that would probably just make her stop, so I stay quiet and listen with a smile.

  I don’t expect the way she runs her fingers along my hair, trying to make sure there are no strays left behind, but she’s dragging her nails slightly over my scalp, sending insane tingles up and down my spine, until I’m wishing I could take her up on washing my hair. In the shower. Naked. Together.

  “You know, I had no idea how thick your hair was,” she muses, her voice still softer from the humming. “It’s a wonder you don’t have to get it cut every few weeks.”

  Another scalp tingle runs through me and I fight every urge to shiver under her touch. “I’ve never really noticed.”

  Abi brings a comb out of nowhere and pulls it through my hair, the humming finishing off with a cheerful, “Voila!”

  She hands me a small mirror to check out her handiwork and I turn it this way and that, looking out how evenly she kept everything. Not too much off the sides, and enough off the top that I don’t look like some ‘90s boy band singer.

  In the reflection I see a hopeful look on her face, weighing heavier on me than I thought it would. I can see it in her eyes—she’s looking for some sort of validation here.

  “Very nice,” I say casually, genuinely impressed with her skills. “Now what do I owe you?” I hand her the mirror back and sit up straight, smoothing out the top of my hair.

  “I’d say that installing a new garbage disposal seems like a pretty fair trade.”

  “Oh, does it need to be replaced? I wouldn’t mind handling that for you, especially since you turned me back into a decent-looking person once again,” I smile, eyeing the kitchen sink. “Do you need me to go ahead and do it? I’d have to order the kit, of course, but as soon as—”

  The funny look on her face stops me abruptly. “I mean, Jamie already did it.”

  Now I’m the one confused. “He did?” I frown.

  Abi shifts her feet, uncomfortably. “Jamie came by earlier with a new one and replaced it for me. You didn’t know?”

  I’m pretty sure my eye twitches well past normalcy, but I don’t seem to care. Jamie’s been over here. And while doing something like replacing a disposal seems pretty innocuous, I know my twin well enough to know his real intentions. Sure, he probably thought he was just being helpful, but that’s how Jamie’s brain works. Where some guy would give his girl flowers and candy, Jamie unclogs pipes and fixes creaky doors.

  “I didn’t know,” I finally reply, not quite meeting her eyes. I have a feeling that if I do, she’ll be able to read me loud and clear. “But it’s fine, Abi.”

  Pure relief washes over her features.

  “So…when did he replace it for you? Was it today?”

  “Yep,” she says, a broom appearing in her hand. “He said he took off early so he could come install it for me. It was really kind of him, I mean I didn’t ask for it and he just showed up with the box for it. Turns out it really needed to be taken out.”

  Intrigued, I nod. “He just came in and fixed it, then left?”

  She hesitates for a moment, the sweeping frozen until she starts back up again. “Well, not quite. He came in and then instead of doing it all by himself, he taught me about plumbing.”

  “I get it,” I interrupt, not seeing the point in wasting time wondering what else they may have been working on in here. As amusing as it is to me, Jamie up to something. There was no way this was just about a waste disposal. Which certainly changes things with us in her apartment right now.

  She takes a step back as I stand up, looking somewhat sheepish, but something changes in her eyes. “Hey, did you want me to maybe wash your hair for you? I see a whole bunch of little bits of hair around your neck and all.”

  “Sure,” I say, wondering what Abi’s game is. I walk over to the sink.

  “Okay, let me just grab the shampoo from my bathroom…”

  The moment I smell the delicious scent of strawberries my knees nearly buckle. It’s the scent I most closely associate with her, and once her hands are running through my hair to wet it, I feel myself getting way too excited about a simple shampooing. It doesn’t help that I’m slammed up against the damn kitchen cabinets.

  She’s humming again, her voice even sweeter this time around. “Keep your eyes closed,” she whispers next to my ear, and my cock thickens.

  I do as I’m told, but it only makes it easier to think about what she’s doing and how
she’s probably leaning far over, her tank-top pulled away from her chest. If I was facing in that direction, I’d get a nice view of her pretty tits.

  Just like that, it’s over too quickly, and Abi quickly runs the towel over my head, drying off my hair.

  My brain has been put on temporary hiatus when she pushes my shoulder to lean back, and I find myself staring up at her gorgeous face, my eyes unable to stop from trailing down to her chest and stomach, where splotches of wet water stains cling to her.

  I stand up slowly, my eyes moving back up to her lips, seeing the way they’re slightly parted. She’s only inches away, and the gap seems to be closing by the second.

  I’m kissing Abi again, and this time it’s just me and her in the empty, private space of her apartment. My hands are gathered up in her hair, and I’m backing her up against the counter, her hands tangled up in my shirt, pulling me even closer.

  When she gasps against my lips it just drives me deeper into this forbidden territory, and I’m tasting her jaw, her neck, kissing back up to her ear, trailing my tongue back to her lips where I kiss her harder, more desperate this time. My mind is going a million miles an hour and I’m sure I’m going to lose this moment if I don’t run with it, if we don’t—

  With one hand, she pushes gently away from me, disentangling our bodies until we’re far enough away from each other that we can look at each other properly. “I’m sorry, Jared. I…I don’t know if this is such a good idea.”

  Rebuffed again and my mind teetering on the edge of some crazy precipice, I’m starting to really not like this feeling. I have to adjust myself by twisting to the side, hoping she doesn’t notice the strain against my pants that feels like it’s a new normal. “Okay, no problem. No pressure.”

  I see the lump rising in her throat as she sighs. “I don’t know what we’re doing,” she says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I…I kissed Jamie too when he was here…and now this…” she glances at the floor and my heart pounds. She kissed Jamie too?

  “We have to stop…all of us,” she says.

  14

  Jamie

  I don’t remember what it’s like not knowing how to cook. Ever since we were little, Mom made sure Jared and I knew the basics. By the time we were ten we knew how to cook chili, grilled cheese sandwiches, hot dogs, and even make a homemade pizza. I’ve always been proud of that, but looking down at the half-ass spaghetti and meatballs isn’t really giving me that vibe.

  Outside of the kitchen, I hear Jared come in, his boots hitting the floor a little heavier than normal. “Hey, in here. Hope spaghetti’s okay. The noodles are kind of overcooked and mushy, but I’m sure it’s all right…”

  Jared’s standing at the entryway to the kitchen, glaring. “You’re in a very charitable mood today.”

  Confused, I look back down at the pitiful noodles in the pot. “I always cook us dinner.”

  Jared smirks. “No, Jamie. I’m not talking about dinner. I thought we agreed not to go after Abigail?”

  “What?”

  “The waste disposal. You just happened to be passing with an expensive bit of hardware, I suppose.”

  “I found the one you lost before, and I knew Abi needed one. No big deal.”

  Jared steps further into the kitchen, leaning up against the refrigerator. “And feeling her up wasn’t part of the plan?”

  Forgetting about the noodles, I take a step closer too. “No, no. It wasn’t like that. All I did was just…wait, how do you know about that?”

  Now that I’m closer to my brother, something stands out like a sore thumb. Mom recently mentioned something about Jared needing a haircut, and funny enough, it seems his hair is magically shorter since I saw him this morning. For someone with a supposed eight or nine calls today, he sure had enough time to go to the barber. “Nice haircut,” I add. “Dude, you were just there, too, weren’t you?”

  Jared waves me away, but I’m not letting him off that easily, especially as he’s acting all pissy about me helping Abi. “No, you were. That’s how you know about the garbage disposal. So, you came home to chew me out, but you did the same fucking thing! Go figure, asshole! What else happened? Did she give you a nice trim? Maybe rub your shoulders a little bit? Maybe rub something else, too?”

  Jared grits his teeth at me but looks away, and that’s when I know I got him. “You know I’ll be honest. We kissed. It happened. We stopped though.”

  As if that’s any consolation. “Nice.”

  He’s back to the pissed off expression he walked in with. “So you’re telling me nothing like that happened when you went over there earlier?”

  “I didn’t say that. Abi, she…kissed me. But I broke it off because we already agreed.”

  The timer on the stove goes off, breaking us both of the tension between us. I flip off the dial for the sauce and turn back to my brother. “What a right fucking pair we are.”

  Jared pulls away from the refrigerator, shrugging. “I think we have to face the facts, Jamie. It’s clear we both feel something for her. And as much as she’s fighting it, she seems to like us too. The question is, what do we do about it?”

  I lean against the wall across from him and sigh, unsure of how to really answer him. “I don’t know, man. If it were easy, we wouldn’t be having a mother’s meeting about it.”

  And it’s true. We’ve shared some wild ass chicks in the past, and there was always this unspoken agreement where we never really did much else with them past a one-night stand type deal. But this is Abi and not only do we have to think about her feelings in this situation, but there’s always the chance that this could cause a much bigger problem with our family. And there’s no way we want any part of that.

  “Did she kiss you?” I finally ask the question that’s been burning in my head that past few minutes finally bursting through.

  Jared shuffles his feet until they leave a small scuff mark on the linoleum. “I kissed her.”

  I don’t know whether to be angry with him or to gloat. “And you come in here to make me feel guilty.”

  “I don’t know how you stopped it. It was damn near impossible for me, and I’m the one who initiated things with her.”

  But that’s the thing with Abi. She makes you feel like that the only option is whatever gets you closest to her.

  15

  Abigail

  “Toast or eggs?” I look around at my empty apartment and solemnly swear to invest in a furry creature to talk to so that I don’t look like a crazy person mumbling to myself so much.

  I break out the egg carton, but for some reason, the idea of a tomato and mushroom omelet isn’t as appetizing as it used to be. I shove them back into the refrigerator, and instead, stick a couple of pieces of bread into the toaster, but even the toast smothered in the usual strawberry jam doesn’t really do it for me. I frown at the half-eaten food on my plate hating the prospect of wasting food it, but my stomach is starting to rebel at the idea of eating so early.

  Since I’m running a little behind this morning—I must have been super exhausted from yesterday’s morning’s shift—I don’t have time to make much else and scramble to put on my work clothes. Work. Just what I need to keep me from thinking about both Jared and Jamie’s lips on mine this week.

  “You look a little peaky. Are you okay?” Dandie says as I slip my apron over my head.

  “Yep. Everything’s good,” I answer, giving her a smile. Dandie is one of the sweetest people I’ve ever known, but she’s always worrying over the littlest things with me and Shay.

  Speaking of Shay… “Shay’s due in around 12:30, right?”

  Dandie nods, pushing her reading glasses back up her nose. “Yes, ma’am. You’re free to go after two.”

  --

  It takes some working, but I manage to clear out all the work orders from the night before, plus the two that came in while Dandie was running the cash register in the front. It’s been a nice distraction, but my stomach isn’t too hap
py with having to heave this way and that any time I have to bend over for something. Hopefully, I’m not catching the stomach flu.

  “Hallelujah, it’s raining food!” Shay sings at the top of her lungs, spinning around with a large brown paper bag in her hand as she comes in through the back door. “Lunch is on the house, my friend. I managed to sweet-talk the owner next door into throwing in a few free egg rolls.”

  I’m totally famished but after the way my stomach was acting earlier, I’m not really sure I’m ready to dive into lunch just yet. It’s from my absolute favorite sushi place so I’d be crazy to say no.

  Shay opens the bag of food and I swear I nearly keel right over.

  The smell. Oh god, the smell! My stomach lurches as the scent of fresh sushi and greasy fried egg rolls waft past my nose, completely overwhelming the sweeter, subtler scent of the shop. “Oh no,” I moan, grabbing my stomach. “I don’t think I should eat anything.”

  Shay gives me a funny look. “What? I thought you’d be starving by now. Did you order lunch earlier, or something?”

  I shake my head, the tension in my stomach fading off a bit.

  Seemingly not paying much attention, Shay sits the bag on the little wooden table in the middle of the room, cracking open one of the Styrofoam containers. “You finished up the last of the advance orders, right? I know there were like three or four of them when I got in yesterday,” she says, putting the food down and pulling the latest order ticket off the clipboard Dandie keeps hung up above the ribbons. “But no customers, so it wasn’t a big deal.”

  My stomach roils again, and I’m trying to decide if I need to make a run for the bathroom or not. “Well, we’ll see how it goes today,” I reply through the grimace that won’t wear off.

  “You okay, girl? You look like you’ve just smelled the world’s sweatiest ball-sack.”

  “Not. Helping. Shay.”

  Chuckling, she finishes depositing the money into our cash bag. “Sorry, couldn’t resist. But really though, you don’t look too good. Did you eat something off today?”