DRAMA NOVEL ONLINE HUGE STEPS: Chapter 23
‘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, but 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.’