HUGE STEPS

by Stephanie Brother

  There's no one there when I arrive, so I stroll up to it and run my hand along the rounded curve of the railing, taking in the green scenery of the park. It's actually a beautiful day. They picked a good time to do, well, whatever they're going to do.

  I barely have a chance to react to the sound of the footsteps moving quickly across the old wooden floor of the gazebo when warm hands close over my eyes, someone's breath in my ear. "I'm so glad you made it."

  Whirling around, confused, I nearly knock him right over. He reels back and rubs at his jaw, irritation flashing across his face before he smooths it over.

  "Hey, babe."

  23

  Jamie

  "You could try being a little more inconspicuous, you know."

  Tearing my gaze away from the window, waiting for Abby to get home, I throw a look over my shoulder at Jared. "Oh, shut the hell up. We've both been itching to go over and show her everything, and you know it. Don't try and pretend."

  The living room is jam-packed with our huge haul of baby stuff from earlier today. A crib being the centerpiece of it all. Everything else is stuffed all around it, shoved into big white bags.

  While we had the day off though, Abi worked, and any moment now, she'd be coming home. It's probably stupid, but I'm stoked to see her reaction to all the things we got. Even if we did go just a tiny bit overboard.

  Jared accidentally knocks one of the towers of diapers over as he skirts by it, cursing under his breath.

  Okay, that may be an understatement, after all...

  I look back out the window just in time to see Abi's little car pull into her space. "She's home, man."

  "Okay," he calls from somewhere down the hall. "At least give her some time to relax before you go barging in over there."

  I raise both of my middle fingers and direct them at my brother, even though he can't exactly see them through the walls.

  Pulling open the blinds, I watch as Abi stops short at her door, picking what looks like some kind of container—a basket, maybe? off the ground. I'm pretty sure there's a smile that spreads across her face as she looks through the basket of stuff, but it’s a little hard to tell from all the way over here.

  If I didn't know any better, I'd guess that Jared put together the basket, but he’s been too busy to do anything without me knowing.

  "Hey. Hey!" I call out to him, refusing to look away from the window, even when Abi steps inside.

  "What?" Jared asks over the sound of running water. "Who died, bro?"

  I'm still staring out the window when a minute later, Abi steps back outside and gathers up what looks like a bunch of roses from this angle, sticking them carefully into a tall blue vase.

  She pulls her door shut behind her and with the mystery basket in tow, Abi walks down the path that leads to the main sidewalk.

  "Well? Look! Where do you think she's going with that?" I ask him as he comes to see what's up. "It's a basket. And not just any basket...it came with a shit ton of flowers too. Please tell me you had that all delivered to her and just forgot to mention it to me."

  Jared pushes his way to get a better view, his eyes narrowing as Abi walks out of sight. "No gift basket from us, no."

  Something cold and scaly curls up inside my gut. If it wasn’t us, then maybe.

  “That motherfucker’s trying to win her back,” I tell Jared.

  Jared meets my eyes. The blood is slowly draining from his face, too. I don't need to hear him say it, to know he's thinking the same as me. " But...Abi doesn't want any part of him. Why would she be strolling off with that basket."

  “Is she going to meet him?” I ask even though I know Jared has no more idea about what the hell is going on than I do.

  Jared shrugs. “I don't know, but I think we need to find out. At the very least we can keep the asshole from trying to pull anything with her."

  “You think we should follow her?”

  “Don’t you?” he asks. “She’s carrying our baby, dude. We gotta look out for her.”

  “I don’t think she’d see it that way.”

  Jared shrugs again, already heading towards the door. “Then we better make sure she doesn’t see us.”

  It doesn't take us very long to catch up with her, realizing that she’s heading to Richmond Park, and by the time she edges around the bike path, we're close enough to hold back a little. It feels stupid, us having to hide like this, but I don't want her thinking we're being possessive jerks or something. Hell...maybe we are.

  "Look, look," Jared hisses a minute later, tilting his chin toward the end of the path where it spirals up to the gazebo. Abi's standing there, alone, the basket swinging back in forth in her hand. We both jump back behind the covering of trees when she swivels in our direction.

  When I peek back around at her, she's looking across the park.

  And then I see him.

  Him and his idiotic fucking goofy grin, absolutely pleased with himself as he goes up the steps to the gazebo. I elbow Jared hard and we both watch on as Cody has the fucking nerve to put his hands on Abi's soft face, covering her eyes. The moment he leans in to whisper against her ear, I know I'm going to fucking lose it. Seeing him earlier at her apartment was nothing compared to this.

  The murderous thoughts that rummage through my head are all now firing forth in a straight line, all of them directed at him.

  Jared's pulling at my arm, whispering for me to stop being a prick, and pushing me to keep walking.

  I want to look back. I need to look back. But I can't do it--I just can't fucking do it. All the things we told her and all the things she said right back to us...it's like it was just a dream. I grit my teeth and walk faster, not even bothering to see if my brother is catching up or not. I just need to be as fucking far away from here as I can get, as fast as I can get there.

  The neighborhoods blur by. I don't even know when I started to run, but I'm panting by the time I get back to our place, leaning up against my truck for balance. I wish I could forget everything I just saw...

  "Jamie."

  I shake my head. I don't want to have this fucking conversation.

  "Jamie, c'mon, man. Let's just go inside."

  I shove away from the truck bed, storming inside our house until I've got nothing left to do but pace the kitchen floor. I know Jared's going to come in and try to make some sense of this shit, but it's impossible. The situation is totally fucked.

  "If this is what Abi wants then...well, we can't do anything about it. It's her choice," he says finally, waiting until my pacing slows.

  But... "Yeah, well, that's Abi's choice. But she's carrying my baby. Or your baby. Our baby. And no matter what she wants to do, we have every damn right to be a part of our kid's life."

  --

  The TV does nothing to distract me from everything that's happened. And Jared...well, he's just as dazed as I am. Slouching against the back of the couch, his eyes constantly darting between the car chase scene of the movie and the half-opened blinds.

  I've lost track of time, but it doesn't seem like it's been that long before Jared sits up, pushing the blinds back even more. Finally, he looks at me and nods.

  "She's back."

  I take a deep breath, not unlike Jared, and try to lay the cards out in front of us as if that's going to make it any easier..."We need to tell her we know. There's no point in beating around the damn bush with her. She wanted honesty. She's fucking getting it. But...are we sure we can have this conversation with her yet?"

  Jared drops his gaze. "Honestly? I don't really know."

  Ever since we came to terms with the fact that Abi was pregnant, it only seemed natural for us to do the stupid dad things like arguing over baby names, imagining the sports our kid would play, and what they'd look like. We've already planned out the next eighteen years in the short span of time, and here it is, being ripped right out from underneath us.

  This whole thing was supposed to be perfect. Yeah, it was going to be hard with our parents and all, bu
t we were going to make it work somehow.

  I grit my teeth, ready to rip the fucking band-aid off. The last thing I'm going to do is do nothing.

  "We don't have a choice. We need to tell her, and we need to tell her now."

  Jared nods slowly. "I guess we'll just leave everything here. For now."

  I don't dare look at the mountain of baby things we bought first thing this morning. It already hurts enough to breathe. "Yeah. For now."

  24

  Abigail

  My hand still stings after slapping the hell out of Cody's face the moment he tried to force me to kiss him back under the gazebo. He was mad. I guess I never said no to him before about anything. It felt so damn good. When he realized that I wasn’t going to accept his proposal and there was nothing he could say to make me change my mind, he got nasty.

  “You know I was seeing someone else while we were together,” he snarls. “That’s why I didn’t turn up to the engagement. I was with her.”

  He thinks that telling me this now is going to hurt me but if anything it does the opposite. It cements what I already thought I knew; that Cody is worthless and nasty and I am so completely better off without him.

  He’s lucky I didn't sic Dad on him.

  I’m tempted to now.

  I was going to relax after working on my feet all day, but after dealing with Cody's skeevy moves, all I really want to do is to crawl into bed and pass out. Preferably with my boys. Just the thought of snuggling up between their broad chests calms me down, and it’s all I can do to keep from running over there.

  I check my hair in the mirror, tugging my fingers through it to try and remove at least some of the knots, and shove my keys into my pocket. I make it all the way across the street to where the truck's parked, and see Jared and Jamie slowly walking out of the house wearing completely unreadable expressions on their matching faces. They look really pissed at something.

  "Hey." I give them a little wave and plaster on a smile. Ugh, I can still smell Cody's copious amounts of heavy aftershave as if he's still right next to me, breathing in my ear. Hopefully, they won't catch a whiff.

  My smile disappears, though when they turn their grim expressions on me. I don't know what it is yet, but my skin prickles. "What's wrong?"

  Jamie's eyes narrow carefully at me as he’s very obviously working on what he wants to say, so as usual,

  Jared's the first to speak up. "If you wanted to get back together with Cody, you should have told us."

  I stare at him. "What? What are you talking about?"

  Jamie's thick biceps flex as he folds his arms across his chest. "We saw you two, Abigail," he says, my full name sounding utterly wrong coming from him. "We know he went by to see you this morning because we ran into him. The smug bastard went on about how things were going to work out between you. We thought he was full of shit and that you’d set him straight but then you plan some sort of meet up with him in the park."

  I know that there's a stronger point here to make, but I keep imagining Jamie and Jared secretly following me around without my knowledge. They...they wouldn't! Would they?

  "How do you know about that?" I can barely bring my voice above a whisper.

  “We saw you, Abi.”

  “You were in the park?” I ask.

  For a second Jared looks sheepish, and I know. They followed me and at least Jared has the decency to look embarrassed about it.

  “So you’re getting back with him?” Jamie says, his voice low and angry.

  I take a step back. “I can’t believe you two,” my voice shakes. “Had you done the responsible and respectable thing and just waited until I came to you, you’d know that I had no idea it was Cody I was meeting up with in the park, I thought it was you. But you think it’s okay to spy on me without even letting me know you’re there!” My stomach roils but I swallow it back. “You two must think I’m some naïve idiot if you think I’d ever take Cody back. Even if things hadn’t happened with the three of us, I’d never in a million years want to be with Cody again.” I level my gaze with them, not backing down as they both look away, embarrassed. Irritation prickles across my skin.

  Jamie reaches out to me, clasping his hand around my elbow, his eyes wide. “I’m sorry, Abi.” His eyes dart between me and his brother. “We…jumped to some conclusions.”

  Jared takes a few steps closer to us. “We’re the idiots. And you’re right, we shouldn’t have done something so immature. We just couldn’t stand the thought of him trying to manipulate you again.”

  “I can handle myself, Jared.” I take in a deep breath, suddenly unsure about everything. Relief is written across their faces, but I’m not ready to just make nice. I start pacing back and forth alongside the truck. It’s like I want to jump out of my own skin. “Cody never trusted me. He was always worried that I would cheat on him, or leave him for someone else. Maybe it’s because he knew he was a terrible boyfriend and he was doing those things himself, I don’t know. Funny how he turned out to be the one cheating…,” I say. “And then when I told him I was pregnant, he tried to get back down on his knees, literally begging me for me to take him back. I told him there was no way in hell I’d let him raise my child that wasn’t even his, to begin with, and he had the nerve to call me a slut. He’ll probably be wearing that nice handprint on his face for the next few days if I had to guess.”

  “That motherfucker. We knew he probably ran around on you, the way he carried on…” Jamie hisses.

  I hold up my hand so he shuts up. “That doesn’t excuse any of what you did, though, and I don’t think it’s smart to head into another relationship like that with someone—let alone two someones! I refuse to be thought of and treated that way again.”

  Jamie’s shaking his head, panic clear as crystal on his face, while Jared gets closer to me again, meeting my eyes. “Abi, please, it’s not like that at all. We trust you. It’s Cody we didn’t trust. We saw him and he said you were getting back together. We were worried that he was putting pressure on you and that you might feel like you owed him a second chance. You’re having our baby.” He says the last bit and looks around as though he’s worried who might be catching bits of our conversation. “Can you just…can you please come inside?” He gestures to the house behind him. “Let’s talk in private.”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t really have anything else to say.”

  “But we do,” Jamie says. “We’ve got plenty to tell you and show you.”

  The truth is that as much as I want to keep being mad about all this, I feel so damned tired all of the sudden. Too much is happening in my life right now and it’s overwhelming. “All right,” I sigh. I desperately want us to work things out but I wasn’t lying when I said I refuse to be treated like that.

  But the idea of talking more dies when I step inside their house that looks less like a bachelor pad and more like a baby-registry come to life.

  There are huge piles of bags all around their living room, filled to the brim with baby things, blankets, stuffed animals, clothes, even pacifiers from what I can see overflowing. Not to mention the two large boxes of the two smallest sized diapers. In the middle of the assortment of bags are huge boxes with pictures of a fancy stroller, a 3-in-1 changing table, and a gorgeous cherrywood-colored crib. All the kinds of things that a proud first-time dad would get, and then some.

  I blink once, twice, and again. My eyes well up almost instantly, and something flutters in my chest as I walk up to the nearest bag and pull out the softest fleece blanket with little yellow stars on it. It’s not hard to imagine a sweet little baby wrapped up in it, cuddling close against me and while the cautious part of me knows it might be a little soon to get everything prepared like this, I don’t even care.

  “You…you did all of this? Today?” Mm, the blanket even smells sweet and clean.

  Both of them nod solemnly, still waiting.

  As I peek into the rest of the bag, catching glimpses of more soft, fluffy blankets, it�
�s like my heart is knocking on my brain’s door, telling it to hurry the hell up and get with the program. That the boys mean it—they really do want this.

  And I’ve never felt such happiness and panic swell up inside me like this before.

  Spinning around on my feet, I face them, my heart racing at the words tumble out. “I don’t know what to say…I’m sorry. I understand why you might have gotten the wrong idea, and it makes sense that you were worried.” I hate how I keep tripping over every syllable, my throat dry while my eyes are wet. “And now I just…I never imagined that this could happen…and oh god, it feels like I’m way too close to losing all of it at any second. Like you’ll leave me too, and all of it will be gone, like so much else has gone in my life…”

  Suddenly, I miss my mom so much. I have a child growing inside me. The grandchild she will never hold and there is so much I wish I could ask her.

  Jamie and Jared are close in a flash, arms surrounding me, hands stroking my hair, wiping my tears away. They have me between them, and it’s just what I need. Jared softly cups my cheek and I lean into it, my eyes fluttering shut under his touch. Jamie's behind me, his chin on top of my head, listening too.

  "You're never, ever going to have to worry about losing us, okay? Jared’s eyes are fierce and I want so much to believe him. “We're gonna be with you for every single doctor's appointment, every single weird craving, every backrub you’ll need.”

  Jamie chuckles. "I'm definitely here for any special kind of cravings."

  Trust him to try and lower the tone. I'm just about to swat at him, sniffing but smiling and his silly humor when the sound of an engine roars along the road. It stops right outside the twins house and two doors slam shut almost immediately. All of us turn to the window just in time to see Natalie storming up to the house with my dad right behind her.

  25

  Jamie

  Mom is striding towards our front door with the same look on her face as the time that me and Jared set off firecrackers down the sink drain in the tiny apartment we used to live in.