by J P Books
“You have me at a disadvantage,” I say. “I’ve never been able to turn down bacon, eggs and hash browns.”
Darren smiles at me and I’m reminded how gorgeous he is. Growing up, he was always a heartthrob, but he never dated. He was pretty much a prodigy. Good at everything. He got great grades, could play sports and the piano and was always the lead in every play.
And he’s always been good looking.
He lost his boyish charms but they’ve been replaced with a more mature type of handsome. Artists would want to sketch or sculpt him.
Samuel is also hot, but it’s a different kind of sexy. The kind of sexy that makes a girl fantasize about having him shimmy up her skirt and have his way with her against a wall somewhere.
He puts a plate full of the most incredibly smelly greasy breakfast in front of me, and I swoon dramatically. Partly to take my mind off of where it had been headed and partly to lighten the mood.
The guys seem light enough, but I’m still morbidly embarrassed.
“Aren’t you guys eating?” I ask when there are no other plates of food appearing.
“We ate already,” Darren says. “11 is a bit past breakfast time for us.”
“11!” I squeak in astonishment, fork halfway to my mouth.
I can hear Sam laughing as he comes back into the room with some orange juice for me. “You were dead to the world.”
I groan. “Oh my god, guys, I don’t remember anything from last night. Sam, I know we drank and danced, but what happened? How did I get here?”
As I eat, they tell me about the rest of the night, which isn’t as horrendous as I was expecting. I didn’t dance on any tables or anything, thank goodness.
I look around as I eat and start to feel better. We’re in a cabin. A quite nice little cabin. Is it Sam’s or Darren’s, I wonder.
I realize I know nothing about them as adults. I’ve been imagining them still as if they would have kept all their teenage behaviors into their new adult bodies, but obviously a lot has changed.
“So, tell me, what have you two been up to over the past few years?”
CHAPTER 5
Darren
Samuel gives me his let’s do this look and stands up and walks behind me, putting his arm around my shoulder and letting his hand rest in a slightly possessive way.
“Well, we’re both lumberjacks,” Sam starts. “And this is our cabin. Darren helped design it. In the summers, we both compete in the Timbersports championships.”
He’s point-forming our life into tiny little sentences punctuated at every opportunity with “we” and “our.” He’s so smooth, I imagine rolling my eyes.
Considering how her brain must feel covered in moss right now, Miranda catches on quickly. The understanding crossing her face is so obvious I have to restrain myself from laughing out loud. I can’t even imagine how much of a loop this must have thrown her on, and I know she’s already feeling embarrassed after last night. I don’t want to make it worse by laughing at her.
Sammy squeezes my shoulders and goes to sit down beside her.
“How long have you two been…” she gestures back and forth between us, not finishing the question.
“We just celebrated our 10th anniversary,” I answer, smiling gently at her, knowing how awkward this must be. “We got serious a few years after you left. It just kind of happened. Neither of us ever came out as gay, we just sort of realized we were in love with each other.”
Sammy smiles at me, and my heart gives a little jump. Sometimes I forget how much I love him because he’s such a constant part of my life. I should say it more often, he deserves to hear it.
“I still don’t think of myself as gay.” Sammy turns his grin on her, winking like a goofball. “Sure, we love each other and we’re even planning on having a family, but we both still appreciate a gorgeous woman when we see one.”
Miranda’s cheeks pink up, and I shake my head, laughing quietly at Samuel’s attempt at flirting. Apparently, he’s a little out of practice.
“What about you?” I turn the conversation back to Miranda, to give her a minute to catch up. “The last we heard you were on your way to becoming a fancy lawyer with a fancy lawyer fiancé. What brings you back to this hodunk town?”
She sighs dramatically and launches into a very fast, not so detailed bullet list of the past month of her life. It all sounds very dramatic and New York, if you ask me. And it makes me very happy that Sammy and I are on the same page about having kids.
It would break my heart to find out now, after so long, that he didn’t want kids. Thinking about that, I feel awful for Miranda. What a horrible situation for her. She doesn’t sound super heart-broken about her ex-fiancé, but I imagine she’s just putting on a brave face for our sake. Talking about a break up is never an easy or comfortable story.
Echoing my thoughts, Sammy gives her a side hug and tries to commiserate with her. “We’ve never cared a whole lot about getting married, but we’ve been talking about having a baby lately. It’s hard enough for a same-sex couple to have a baby in the first place, it would be horrible if suddenly one of us changed our minds. I’m so sorry for you.”
His easy admission of wanting a baby makes my heart squeeze, and I love him even more for his empathy. Sometimes he comes off a little too nonchalant and easy-breezy, but I know how big his heart is and I’m glad he doesn’t feel the need to hide it in front of Miranda.
“I’ll tell you what,” she says, obviously trying to lighten the mood. “I’ll have a baby for you if you let me keep one for myself too.”
Sam’s face lights up before the words even register in my brain. “That’s a brilliant idea!” he shouts.
She snorts, suddenly looking very uncomfortable. “Sure,” she says. “After last night I’d be overjoyed if you guys ever want to see me again, let alone trust me with your baby!”
Trust her with our baby, the words sink in. Did Miranda just offer to have a baby for us? She must have been joking, but Samuel has a habit of taking all comments very literally and is clearly already naming our future children.
I usually find myself tempering his enthusiasm and being the voice of reason, but I have to admit, visions of a pregnant Miranda are dancing through my head and making my heart race. It’s not just the idea of finally having the baby we’ve been dreaming about, but it’s the vision of Miranda as the mother. Just the hazy impression I get makes me think she’d be ridiculously sexy pregnant. It’s insane to be thinking this, given I haven’t seen the woman in almost half of my lifetime, but the idea instantly excites me.
She looks at me, obviously hoping I’ll jump in and diffuse the baby bomb that was just dropped. “I’ve heard worse ideas,” is all I can think of to say.
Her jaw drops and the room goes silent, none of us quite sure where to go with the conversation now. I realize Sammy and I need to have a very serious conversation before anything goes anywhere.
“As for seeing you again,” I continue, changing the subject fast. “I’m sort of hoping we can just pick up where we left off. With the gang back together again?”
“Yes!” Sam whoops with enthusiasm and grabs her into a bear hug. “The gang’s back together and we’re all going to have babies! I like it. See, I told you this was going to be a birthday to remember Darren!”
***
It’s been a week since we saw Miranda and we had plans to meet up with her again tomorrow for coffee. Sam and I have been talking about Miranda’s comment nonstop and we’ve been dying to bring it up with her again and see how serious she might be.
But at work today one of the junior loggers messed up and Sam ended up in the path of a falling tree. He managed to leap out of the way at the last minute, but he still got hit pretty hard.
I’m pacing the hospital corridor now, waiting to hear from the doctor. He was conscious and cracking jokes in the Emergency chopper, but it’d be just like Sam to go ahead and laugh his way to the grave.<
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I’m terrified that he’s got internal bleeding or his brain’s going to explode or something.
I called and left a message on Miranda’s phone. I know she’s at work today. I’m imagining the worst, of course. There’s no way we’re making it to coffee tomorrow.
I hate hospitals. I hate being here. I hate not knowing what’s going on.
I hate feeling helpless.
I keep pacing until I hear someone call my name.
I turn around and see Miranda running down the hallway towards me. She throws herself into my arms.
I cling to her like she’s my saving grace. Before I know it, I’m gulping air and trying not to sob like a baby.
She holds me in a bear hug for a long time. I finally collect myself and pull away from her, wiping my eyes.
“Is he going to be ok?” she whispers.
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “I’m still waiting to hear from the doctor. He said he was fine in the chopper, but you know Sam. He’d shrug it off if an ax was buried in his skull.”
She nods sadly and takes my hand, leading me towards the horrible, uncomfortable chairs.
I hate the hospital.
“What happened?” she asks. I explain the accident and tell her that the doctor’s doing x-rays, cat scans and other vital checks on him to see how bad the damage is. Oddly, talking her through it calms me down. I can feel my heart rate slow.
Maybe it’s just Miranda being here. When we were kids, she always made me feel safe and at home. She had the most welcoming family and it rubbed off on her. Samuel’s parents are over the top Christians and completely overbearing, and my parents are the opposite. Anything is acceptable at my house. There are no rules, no restrictions.
You’d think a teenage boy would like that, but I always felt like I had to be the parent. To be the responsible one.
That’s why Sam and I always ended up at Miranda’s house. Her family felt like a real family. They had rules, but they also had fun and love. Miranda ended up representing home to me and having her here now is a huge relief.
“Thank you for coming,” I say, more grateful than I can put into words.
She seems to understand though, and she squeezes my arm. “I got your message. I swear my heart jumped into my throat. It was like we were all 16 again and Sammy hit his head cliff jumping. Do you remember that? I thought he was going to die that day.”
My heart races at the memory. That was one of the worst days of my life. Apparently, Miranda’s too. Sam had been showing off, as usual, trying to prove he wasn’t scared.
I blamed myself then. My family had been going to the cliffs since I was a child. I knew what angle to jump. I knew where the rocks jutted out on the way down, and which direction to leap in order to avoid them.
I didn’t even think about how many years it had taken me to figure it all out and how many times I had seen my old man jump before I did. I didn’t realize Sam didn’t know. It was like it happened in slow motion. He jumped off the cliff, but he didn’t look down first. He didn’t see the safe path. He didn’t want to land on top of me, so he aimed more to the right. And he slammed into a smaller cliff on the way into the water.
Seconds went by before I got myself together enough to swim towards him. He hit the water and sank, completely unconscious.
I found him and dragged him to shore. Miranda was there waiting and some of the other kids had run to tell the adults. She knew CPR. By the time the ambulance arrived he was breathing, but still unconscious, and his head was bleeding terribly.
The paramedics who took him away told Miranda and me we had probably saved his life. But it would have never needed saving if it hadn’t been for me in the first place.
It feels so much like today. I can see the tree falling in slow motion, just the same way. And just like it took me too long to swim out to rescue him, today it took me too long to call out to warn him. He almost didn’t make it.
And again, I feel like it’s my fault. He shouldn’t even be a logger. He belongs inside with lots of people. Or maybe as a coach. He’d make a great coach.
“If he makes it through this, I’m going to tell him to become a coach,” I say out loud. Miranda hadn’t been privy to my inner monologue, but she smiles.
“He’ll make a great coach,” she says, and I appreciate her positive use of the future tense. “I used to love to watch him play football. He looked so cute in his uniform. And he was always such a great team player. He carried our team every year, but he never took credit for it.”
I smile, remembering that uniform. “If he knew you thought he looked cute in his uniform, I bet he never would have taken it off.”
“What do you mean?”
“He had the biggest crush on you in high school, but he was always way too nervous to do anything about it. He followed you around like a puppy dog though, didn’t you know?”
“No!” she says, the surprise on her face too skeptical to be faked. “I had no clue. We were all such good friends.” Her voice trails off and I can tell she’s thinking about something.
“What?”
“Were you…back then, were you and he…?”
I chuckle. “No. No, we didn’t realize how we felt about each other until a few years after high school. We didn’t date anyone, let alone each other. We missed you. No one ever measured up to you.” I smile at her, teasing but also honest.
“Not that I’m blaming you for choosing a life bigger than this back-country town, but when you left, life was different. For a while, we grew apart, but then we got closer than ever. Eventually, we realized we weren’t just friends. We’re soulmates. I think you’re our soulmate too.”
She leans her head on my shoulder and hugs my arm to her. After a few seconds, I feel warm wetness under her cheek, and I realize she’s crying.
I pet her head, and we sit quietly together, comfortable in the silence like only best friends can be.
A doctor interrupts our bonding by clearing his throat and we both jump up, desperate for news.
“How is he?” we both ask at the same time.
The doctor looks back and forth between us, probably trying to figure out who to direct the details at. In the end, he talks to us both, glancing back and forth between us.
“He’s going to be just fine,” he says, and my heart threatens to jump out of my chest. He’s going to be sore, and he’s got a few nasty bruises and scratches, but nothing a little rest and TLC can’t take care of. We can discharge him this afternoon, but he should take it easy for the next week or so.”
I turn to Miranda and bury my head in her hair, flooded with relief. She grips me tight and I let go of the fear that has had a death grip around my heart for the past few hours.
CHAPTER 6
Samuel
When I’m finally allowed visitors in my room, both Darren and Miranda come rushing in. I grin, happy to see them.
“Hi guys! Hi Miranda! Did Darren call you down here ‘cause he hates hospitals?” I throw a wink at him, remembering how cute it was when Miranda winked at me the other day.
“We were worried about you,” Darren says dryly at the same time as Miranda says, “You got hit by a tree!”
I laugh at them both. Such drama queens. “I’m fine. Doc says I can go home, but you have to give me lots of TLC. His prescription, not mine.”
Darren takes my hand and squeezes it. Miranda pats me carefully on the leg.
It’s almost worth getting hit by a tree to have these two hovering so closely.
The night after Miranda left our cabin, I admitted to Darren that I still had feelings for her. I don’t hide anything from him, ever. I didn’t know I still had feelings for her until we had spent the night together drinking and dancing, and especially after she had made that comment about having our baby.
Darren had said his feelings had come flooding back too. Miranda was just like that. Magnetic.
Every night since th
en, we had made love like we were teenagers again. Both of us imagining Miranda was there watching us. Sometimes I imagined her body between us.
Thinking about Miranda while having frantic, wild sex and then talking about babies led us to the question of how we’d want her to get pregnant. Obviously, we got carried away with our fantasies – we don’t even know how serious she was with her offer after all.
We’re both fans of the old-fashioned method, but Darren doesn’t think Miranda would be willing to get between us.
Of course, that had led me to ask if he’d be up for a threesome if the situation ever presented itself. And then the rest of the week was filled with conversations about where we would put what, and who the baby would look like.
I’ve always imagined a tiny little Darren. He would be the most gorgeous baby on earth. With Miranda’s genes in there too, I just can’t picture anything more amazing. I like the idea of having a little me running around too, but I’d just be so happy to be a dad. To watch Darren be a dad.
And now there’s an entirely new vision of watching Miranda being a mom.
As she stands there with her hand on my leg and concern for me in her eyes, my heart feels like it’s shattering into a million pieces, I’m so overwhelmed by my feelings. My desperate longing to make a family. My own family.
“Let’s go home then,” Darren says, and I have a sneaking suspicion he knows exactly where my mind has wandered to.
***
A few hours later and they’re helping me into my bed, where I’ve been ordered to stay for at least 3 days. I’m allowed to walk around the house but mostly bed rest.
The terminology the doctor used reminded me of movies about pregnant women being ordered to bed rest. Since we were supposed to be having coffee with Miranda tomorrow, I’m hoping she sticks around.
On the drive home, Darren kept telling me to be chill and not hammer her with questions. He warns me that she wasn’t serious, and I shouldn’t get my hopes up. We haven’t seen her in almost 15 years, she’s not going to have our baby.