by Sara Ney
But I’m not alone at all. I’m surrounded by people who love me, and shame on me for forgetting that.
I should have known it would be like this the second I stepped over Tripp’s threshold, my brothers always stepping in to protect me.
Nothing has changed over the years.
A tear stains my cheek and I wipe it away.
“Jesus, do not start to cry on us,” Tripp warns, but it’s too late.
I am crying big, wet tears.
Ugly ones too, I’m sure.
Mateo rises from the couch and walks to stand beside me, gently rubbing my back in the same slow circles he was using on the couch before.
Feels so good.
“She’s been doing this all week,” Tripp informs Buzz, the expert—at least in his mind—on everything I do since I’ve been living in his house.
“How would you know? You haven’t even been home in days,” I shoot back with a sniffle. He’s been out of town playing in whatever football game he played in, in whichever city.
“Can we get back to the part where José is banging my sister? I’m shook.” Buzz shoots a pointed glance at Mateo, glaring at him. “I trusted you, man.”
Luckily, Mateo doesn’t have to defend himself because Tripp continues playing peacemaker. “What is the big deal, Buzz? For god’s sake, what is the big deal? This could have been some asshole we know nothing about, some schmuck who’s only using her—but it’s someone we know, and Christ, can’t you just admit he’s a decent guy? It could be worse.” He looks over at me. “No offense, True.”
Um. None taken?
They argue about it as if Mateo and I aren’t standing in the same room, going round and round about Mateo being a teammate and bro code this and bro code that.
“Could you not!” I yell, interrupting. “Guys! Guys. None of this is helping—I don’t need to stand here and listen to this.” I put my hand on Mateo’s arm. “We’re…doing this together, whatever that looks like. We don’t know. But I’m not going to let you treat him like garbage because I slept with him.”
“Uh, are you forgetting the baby part?”
My hands go to my stomach and I rub. “Of course I haven’t forgotten.”
“Are you…” Buzz hesitates. “Excited?”
“Yes.”
Beside me, Mateo is nodding too. “Very. My family is going to flip.”
“So you haven’t told anyone either, eh?”
He glances at me. “I haven’t known that long, so I haven’t had the chance. I’m still kind of processing.”
Buzz with his non-filter looks at me. “What the fuck, True? Have you been lying to everyone?”
“Kind of. But I was scared, okay? I didn’t know what to do! That’s why I came here…I had to think.” I just needed a place to come and stay so I could think…
Mateo takes his hand off my back and puts it around my shoulders, pulling me in. Kisses the top of my head.
“Dude. This is so fucking weird,” Buzz blurts out. “It’s like I’m having a nightmare but I can’t wake up.”
“Don’t be so dramatic.”
All three of us tell him this at the same time and we laugh, because it’s funny, then we laugh some more because we all get a case of nerves at the same time.
Tears well in my eyes again, from emotions and tension and hormones, and before I know it I’m crying all over again.
Tripp, Buzz, and Mateo all look at me.
“Oh my god, this could be like Three Men and a Baby, that movie where the three guys find a baby and raise it in their swanky loft apartment in the city!” Buzz gasps on the tail end of his great idea.
“Did you seriously just say that out loud?” Mateo is shaking his head.
“How fun would that be?” Buzz is warming to his idea. “The media would eat that shit up.”
“Are you hearing yourself? You sound psychotic.”
“Okay, but you have to admit it’s a great idea.”
He does sound crazy.
I wave a hand in front of his face to remind him the mother of this child he’s talking about kidnapping and raising with his two buddies is sitting in front of him.
“Hello! I’m right here.”
I swear, Buzz can be such a tool sometimes with the worst freaking ideas. Where do the ideas even come from?
So dumb.
“I’m sorry but that movie is like, thirty years old—no one would have a clue what you were talking about. They’d have to google it.”
“Whatever. If you change your mind, let me know.”
“You are not using your niece or nephew as a publicity stunt.”
Buzz points a finger at Tripp. “No, he’s the one who does the publicity stunts.”
It’s true.
Back before Tripp was in a relationship with his girlfriend Chandler, they had a few public run-ins that made him look horrible in the news and on social media.
Chandler single-handedly flipped him on his ass, in the middle of the dance floor at Buzz and Hollis’s wedding, and the entire world saw it.
So what does he go and do? He stages a dinner date to make them look chummy, spinning the situation to look as if he planned the wedding blunder—making it seem as if Chandler actually liked him when in fact she thought he was an asshole.
Because he mostly is.
Anyway, the whole thing was a comedy of errors, and now months later they’re in love and dating when they both have the time.
“I’m a new person now—leave me alone.”
“So no to raising the baby just the three of us? Ugh, fine.”
No matter what, Buzz can always make me laugh with his shenanigans.
He means well, he just sometimes comes off harsh, and it’s on the tip of my tongue to ask about Hollis and the strange looks they were exchanging last time we had a family dinner, my sneaking suspicions nagging at the back of my brain.
Hollis is pregnant and he hasn’t said a word about it, so you have nothing to feel guilty about, True.
Nothing.
Twenty
True
Since Buzz found out about the baby, he has been over at Tripp’s house constantly—as if he has nothing better to do than drive me insane with his nonstop hovering.
The worst kind of mother hen.
Zero parts mother, all parts hen, he stands up and follows me any time I leave a room like a puppy dog tailing its owner.
Both he and Chewy follow when I get off the couch and head to the kitchen to refill my water glass, and I abruptly stop walking, causing him to smash into my back—the way we used to in the hallway in middle school as a joke on our friends or anyone behind us.
“Why’d you stop?”
“Why are you following me? I’m not going into labor in the kitchen—I’m not even twenty weeks yet. You have to get a life, man. Don’t you have things you should be doing?”
Like packing to move west for a month?
Practice?
Getting your house ready to be vacant for four weeks?
Everything and anything but standing over me?
Enough is enough.
“Give me some space—you’re suffocating me.”
“Hold up, did you say labor?” Buzz’s face is blank, his mouth turning down at the corners, a puzzled expression crossing his features. “You’re going into labor?”
I push out a sigh. “I said I wasn’t going into labor—are you paying attention?”
“Yes,” he mumbles then directs his pout in Mateo’s direction. “She’s mean when she’s hormonal.”
Since Mateo is a smarter man than my brother, he doesn’t reply.
But I do.
“I’m not being mean, Buzz. I’m fed up with your hovering—there’s a big difference.”
He scoffs. “Potato, po-tah-to.”
Buzz is infuriating.
In. Furiating.
I’m not in the mood for this.
When the door to the laundry room opens and Tripp comes walking through it, I sigh
with relief. He’s always a good buffer when I need brotherly Buzz to ease up on me.
“Hey, Mateo.” He nods toward my…non-boyfriend, setting his car keys on the counter and directing his gaze toward our brother. “Why are you here?”
Again.
“Can’t a guy come check on his preggo my eggo?”
Leggo my eggo. Ha ha, good pun, moron.
I wonder what he’s like at home with Hollis.
Horrible, I imagine.
I sigh. “Would you please tell him to stop checking in on me? I’m not a child. Mom hasn’t even been this bad.”
Mateo and I video-chatted with my parents to break the news since they’re not in town and have no idea when they’re coming back. I actually thought about flying to Florida to do it in person, but…
Modern technology saved me a trip.
Obviously, my mother cried and vowed to fly home the first chance they got, after Dad played golf with his buddies, of course—the main reason they’re down south in the first place.
It was their first opportunity to meet Mateo, and considering the circumstances, I’d say it went…great?
I think.
“Hey sweetie, how are you!” Mom has her reading glasses on so she can see the phone screen better, her face so close to the camera I have to tell her to move back. Or set it down somewhere and lean it against something.
“Where’s Dad?”
“He’s coming, nugget, don’t worry.”
A silence follows as she finally notices Mateo sitting next to me on Tripp’s couch.
“Who’s this now?”
Dad chooses that moment to plop down, too. “Hey—that’s José Espinoza.” He turns to Mom. “True, that’s José Espinoza.”
Out of respect, I don’t roll my eyes. “I know who it is, Dad.”
“Okay, but what’s he doing there?”
“We’re…friends.” Shoot, that sounded terrible. The last thing I want to do is downplay our connection right out of the gate. “We’re together, I mean. Together.”
“Dating?” Dad asks. “You’re dating a ballplayer?” He sits back in the kitchen barstool he’s occupying, crossing his arms and looking pleased as punch. “Well I’ll be damned. Who’d have thought.”
Me.
I would have thought because when have I ever not dated athletes or coaches or staffers?
“How nice!” Mom enthuses. “It’s good to meet you, José. I wish we were in town—we could have had dinner. I make the most amazing lasagna.”
“I’ll have to take you up on that offer soon, ma’am. Um. Mrs. Wallace.”
I don’t miss Mom nudging Dad with her elbow. “Did you hear that, Roger? He called me ma’am.”
“I heard him, Genevieve.”
“Where did the two of you meet?” She’s got her face in the camera again, trying to get a better look at us. The thing is, she can’t do that unless we move closer to our camera. Still doesn’t stop her.
“Officially? Buzz and Hollis’s wedding,” Mateo supplies. “True and I shared a dance and then I sweet-talked her into sharing a drink with me.”
That’s not all he sweet-talked me into, I want to add.
I can feel the sly grin forming on my face.
Pfft. Shared a dance…
Hilarious.
“You were too busy wrangling the Two Stooges,” I tease, referring to my brothers. No matter where they go, one of them causes a scene, and the wedding reception was no exception.
Mom forgets her manners and grunts. “Don’t remind me. The video of Tripp spread out on the ballroom floor pops up every so often on my Instagram discover feed.”
Um.
Okayyy…
“It was a wedding none of us will ever forget,” Mateo says. “For other reasons.”
I clear my throat, grateful for the segue. “Well, see, Mom and Dad…that’s what I called to tell you. Mateo and I…well.” I let out a long steady breath, Mateo’s hand going to my back the same way it did when we told my brother.
Gosh, why is it so hard breaking news like this!
It’s happy news!
News that should be done in person, not over the damn phone, and certainly not in a video chat!
But—I want to know if the baby is a girl or a boy, and once I do that the entire thing is going to feel more real than it already does, and if I keep the secret from my folks any longer, I might burst from guilt and excitement.
“What’s wrong, dear?”
She can tell just by the look on my face that something is up. Not wrong, just…not right.
Is that the kind of mother I’m going to be? One who just…knows?
With freaky-deaky intuition like my mother has?
God I hope so.
“Sweetie, what is it? You can tell us.”
Mateo’s hand is still on my back.
Constant.
Reliable.
Steadfast.
The sexiest of traits among men.
“Mateo and I—that’s his name, by the way: Mateo José—have something to tell you.”
“You’re pregnant.” Mom says it matter-of-factly, nailing it on the first try, unlike my brother, who kept guessing and guessing and getting it wrong.
It throws me completely off.
“What?”
“Is that it? Am I right?” I can see her take Dad’s hand and squeeze it. Is she happy about this?
She certainly doesn’t look or sound devastated.
“Am I right?” she repeats again when I sit here not responding, my mouth falling open a little.
“Yes, ma’am,” Mateo responds for us. “True is pregnant.”
“OH!” Mom hops up out of her seat, practically knocking it over. “Oh, did you hear that, Roger! Did you hear that! I’m going to be a grandma.” She’s practically spinning around the kitchen of their rented Florida condo. “What name do I want the baby to call me? Glamma? GanGan?”
Or, you know—Grandma?
I had no idea my mother was so extra.
Wow, she is reeling, fluttering about their kitchen, muttering and crying. When she sits back down, she’s dabbing her eyes with the end of a flip-flop-covered, terrycloth hand towel.
This is going a million percent better than I predicted, way better than I hoped.
Mateo’s hand moves from my back to my leg, giving my thigh a rewarding squeeze. See? it’s saying. You survived. They’re happy.
Roger Wallace still hasn’t uttered a peep; then again, he hasn’t had the chance—not with Mom’s flitting around making all that noise.
She’s bawling now. “W-what did your parents say, dear?”
The question is directed at Mateo.
“We haven’t told my parents yet, ma’am—we wanted to tell you first. We’ll meet my folks in person this weekend, I hope. I’m trying to coordinate it. But…I have a few nieces and nephews already, so I don’t think it’ll be a big deal.”
I wonder if that’s true.
What mother wouldn’t be excited for their child’s first child?
I’m certain he’s downplaying it for Genevieve Wallace’s benefit, and for that, I am grateful.
There is more crying and Mom keeps hugging Dad, probably because she doesn’t have my shoulder to sob into. There is no way I’ll escape her emotional displays of affection.
I tell her we’re going to find out the sex of the baby.
Tell her the appointment is coming up and that I’ll tell her everything when she’s back in town, whenever that is.
Dad asks Mateo a few questions—mostly about baseball, of course—before we disconnect the call.
“When did you say you’re going to the doctor?”
“Huh?” I didn’t hear a word of what either of them said, lost in my own daydream.
“I asked when your next doctor’s appointment is.”
Good lord. “You absolutely do not need to know when my appointment is.”
Buzz looks at Mateo. “Are you going?”
“Uh. Y
es?” The duh is implied.
This incites my brother. “Why does he get to go and not me?”
Rudely, he points an index finger at Mateo accusingly, pointing as if he’s a trial attorney prosecuting a witness on the stand—a jury on television, more like—throwing around legal terms in a desperate attempt to win his argument.
“I object!”
“You can’t object.” I pat my mouth as if this is the most boring conversation in the world. “He’s the father.”
“You object to my objection?” he sputters. “On what grounds? Circumstantial evidence does not make him any more special than it makes me.”
My brother is insane.
After having sat and listened to my brother whine for the past half hour, Mateo speaks up from his spot on the sofa, where he was peacefully clicking through the channels. “Actually, that makes me way more special—super special, some might say—than it makes you.”
So there.
Buzz gasps. “How dare you.”
“Don’t you have a wife?” Tripp tosses out, bending to scratch Chewy behind the ears.
“Yeah—she told me I was acting like a lunatic and not to come home until I chilled out. I’m driving her batshit crazy. Her words, not mine.”
“That’s because you’re bored. Maybe we could go play catch,” Mateo offers kindly.
“Changing the subject isn’t going to change the subject, so…yeahhh.” My stubborn, bullheaded brother nods his head as if his decision is final. “I think I’m going to that appointment.”
“No you’re not,” Tripp tells him.
“You’re not the boss of me, last time I checked.” Buzz snorts so loudly I’m surprised he doesn’t choke.
“I am the elder Wallace.”
More snorting. “Dad is the elder Wallace.”
“Well you’re not going, case closed.”
“Give me one good reason why.”
They are seriously arguing amongst themselves as if Mateo and I are not here, posturing and peacocking to be the alpha male.
“One, you can’t go if I can’t go, and two, there is no number two.”
So there.
Matter settled.
Thank God.
“Hi. Hello,” Buzz continues in a way only he can. “No one is stopping you from going. I didn’t say you can’t go, I’m telling you I’m going. The more the merrier at these ultrasounds, am I right or am I right?”
