It Was Us

by Cruise, Anna

  Annika shrugged and shook her head, swinging her long brown hair from her shoulder to her back. “Haven't been by in a while. Dad suggested I visit.”

  Annika lived full-time in her sorority house at SDSU. Even though she was only twenty minutes from home, we were lucky if we saw her once a month. Which was jut fine by me. When Mom had been going through chemo and radiation, she'd managed to come by more frequently. But even then, she'd kept a healthy distance. West assumed the worst, that she was just being her bitchy self, but even I knew better. It was her coping mechanism, putting that distance between her and Mom. I'd seen her on her visits, could see she was hanging on by a thread. Staying away had been for self-preservation, not because she hadn't cared.

  “And you just decide to get Rubio's?” I asked. “Of all the fast food places you could possibly pick?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Jesus, Abby, what's with the third degree? Are you PMSing or something? Mom wanted fish tacos. I wasn't gonna go to Taco Bell and hope they'd added it to their menu.”

  I felt my cheeks flush and instantly felt like a bitch. Unfortunately, it was a feeling I'd gotten used to over the last few weeks. “Oh. Sorry,” I mumbled.

  She smoothed the skirt of her floral sundress. “You should be,” she sniffed. She stared at me. “What are you guys talking about, anyway?”

  “Nothing.”

  She smirked. “Oh, please. I heard you. You said West doesn't want something.”

  “No,” I said. “I didn't.” I played with the wrapped taco in front of me, fingering the paper.

  Her gaze hardened. “Why aren't you eating?”

  “I am.”

  Annika and I were not close the way some twins might be, but it didn't mean she didn't know when something was up. She looked at the two tacos on the table and then back at me. “No, you're not. Are you still sick?”

  I shook my head. “No.” I unwrapped the taco and picked up the warm corn tortilla stuffed with fried fish and cabbage. “I'm fine.”

  I brought it to my lips but that was as far as I got. Because the taste wasn't nearly as good as the smell had been. Actually, the smell had morphed from a heavenly aroma to something that was now making my stomach heave in protest. I felt the color drain from my face as I dropped the taco.

  “Abby?” West's voice sounded alarmed.

  “I...I gotta go.” I bolted from the table and hurried from the patio to the restroom door. I yanked the door open and just made it to the toilet, a fountain of lukewarm diet Coke splashing into the porcelain bowl.

  I leaned my head against the toilet seat, oblivious to how disgusting it was. My stomach gurgled and I squeezed my eyes shut and took a couple of deep breaths, trying to stem the nausea. I'd had plenty of queasy moments over the last couple of weeks but this was the first time I'd actually gotten sick. After a couple of minutes, the nausea subsided and I forced myself to stand on shaky legs. I flushed the toilet and splashed water on my face and dried myself off with a handful of paper towels. I studied my reflection in the mirror mounted over the small sink. Surprisingly, I didn't look nearly as bad as I felt. I adjusted my ponytail and pulled the door open and headed back to the table.

  West was still in his chair, staring out at the traffic on Mission Bay Drive.

  “Hey,” I said.

  He turned around. “Hey. You okay?”

  I nodded. “Where's Annika?”

  “She left.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “About me. About getting sick.”

  “Oh. I told her you were still feeling sick from the flu.” He picked up his drink and shook it, then took a sip.

  “Did she say anything?”

  “She just said 'oh,'” he said.

  “That's it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And she didn't say anything else?”

  He shook his head. “Nope.”

  I wanted to take a deep breath, to breathe a sigh of relief. But I couldn't. Because I knew my sister.

  She could put two and two together pretty quickly, especially when it came to me.

  And I knew, without a doubt, that she had figured out just what was wrong with me.

  SIXTEEN

  WEST

  Griffin was at the apartment when we walked in. Abby had wanted to leave the restaurant and go home but I'd insisted she come back to the apartment with me. Because we weren't done talking.

  My roommate stood in the kitchen, hovering over a pot of something cooking on the stove. He glanced up when he saw us and a smile spread across his face.

  “Dude.” He nodded his head toward the pot. “Cookin' up some mean Hormel chili. You guys want some?”

  Abby wrinkled her nose and took a step away from the kitchen, back into the hallway. “No,” I said. I wondered if the smell was getting to her.

  Griffin's eyes widened. “Oh. Right, right. Sorry.” He looked at me. “You, man?”

  I shook my head. “Nah, I'm good.”

  I put my hand on the small of Abby's back but she shirked away. Once we were in my room, she turned to look at me, her expression furious.

  “You told him?”

  “No.”

  “Bullshit.”

  I sat down on the edge of my bed. “I didn't say anything to him,” I said.

  “He knows.” She shook her head. “I could tell by the way he looked at me. What he said.”

  “I didn't tell him,” I repeated. “Tana did.”

  Abby stared at me, her expression incredulous. “What?”

  I kicked off my flips. “She told him. A couple of days ago.”

  Abby's face was pale. She wrapped her arms around herself. “What...what did he say?”

  I shrugged. “He asked how you were feeling. I told him you were doing okay.”

  “Did he want to know what I was going to do?”

  “We,” I corrected. “And no. He didn't.”

  Griffin wasn't that kind of friend. He knew when to stick his nose in and when to take a step back. I'd come home late from a game and he'd been in the living room, watching a baseball game. I'd given him shit about coming to watch me play instead of parking himself in front of the television and we'd both laughed. I'd gone into the kitchen to grab a beer and sat down on the opposite end of the couch, watching the scores tick by on the bottom of the screen.

  “You alright?” he'd asked.

  I nodded.

  “Tana told me about Abby.”

  I flicked my gaze in his direction. He was still staring at the screen.

  “She doing alright?”

  “Yep,” I said.

  He nodded. “Good.”

  And that had been the end of it. He'd waited for me to offer more, to see if I wanted to have a conversation. I didn't and he'd dropped it.

  Abby sat down on the bed next to me. “I don't want anyone to know,” she said.

  I reached for her hand. “I know.”

  “So now more people know. Griffin. Definitely my sister.” She sighed and closed her eyes. “Why is this so hard?”

  “Because it is,” I said. “Because it's huge.” She groaned and I squeezed her hand. “But just because it's huge doesn't mean it's insurmountable. You know? We're gonna figure it out.” I didn't add the obvious: because we had to.

  She didn't say anything. I watched her, her eyes still closed, her mouth drawn tight. As much as I wanted to fix things for her, to just make a decision and take the weight off of her shoulders, I knew I couldn't. It wouldn't solve anything—at least not in the right way—if we didn't make the decision together.

  “We need to finish our conversation,” I said gently.

  Her eyelids fluttered open.

  “From the restaurant,” I said. “About the baby.”

  She winced.

  “Sorry,” I said, squeezing her hand again. “Do you not want me to call it that?”

  Abby shook her head. “No. Yes. I don't know.”

  I shifted on the bed
so I was closer to her. She didn't snuggle into me but she didn't move away, either.

  “Alright,” I said. I curved my arm around her. “We'll use neutral terms. Let's finish what we started. Before your sister barged in.”

  “Okay.”

  “You were telling me about the options.”

  She nodded and reached up to touch her hair. Her ponytail had loosened and she fingered a brown lock, twisting it around her finger. “I know.”

  I swallowed back a sigh. She wasn't making this easy. “We started talking about an abortion.”

  She bit her bottom lip and said nothing.

  “Is that what you want?” I asked her. I rubbed her shoulder, my fingers kneading her skin. Her muscles were rigid.

  “I don't know,” she whispered. “I don't know what I want.”

  “Abby—”

  But she cut me off. “I don't know what I want,” she repeated, her eyes finding mine as she spoke. “But I think that might be the best decision. All things considered.”

  I nodded. I wanted to respond, to reassure her that I was okay with that decision, but the words got locked up in my throat. I knew I wasn't ready to be a dad but right then, when she spoke those words, I saw a baby with Abby's eyes. With her smile. And it felt like the air had whooshed right out of my lungs.

  “West?” Her eyes were searching. “Is...is that okay?”

  I nodded again and cleared my throat. “Of course,” I said, hugging her to me. I kissed her hair, my lips moving to her forehead. “Of course it's okay.”

  “Is that what you want?” she whispered. Her face was pressed to my chest but, even through the fabric of my t-shirt, I could feel the wetness of her tears.

  I didn't answer, just pulled her tighter to me.

  Because I wasn't sure what the hell I wanted any more.

  SEVENTEEN

  ABBY

  My sister was waiting for me when I got home.

  In my bedroom.

  I'd breathed a sigh of relief when I walked through the front door, grateful that the living room was empty. My parents had already gone to bed and all I wanted to do was hole up in my own room, alone. I was drained, physically and emotionally, and I knew it wasn't just the stress of the situation. It was the situation itself contributing to my exhaustion.

  I opened the door to my bedroom and my shoulders sagged when I saw Annika sprawled out on my bed.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  She set down the magazine she was reading and smiled. “Well, that's not exactly the nicest way to greet your sister, now is it?”

  I set my purse down on my desk. “Nope.”

  She pushed herself into a sitting position. “I'm here to see you.”

  “Why?”

  She smiled. “Because I want to hear all about the baby.”

  I tried to keep my face expressionless. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

  Annika rolled her eyes. “Oh, please.” She crossed her legs and dropped her hands in her lap. “We're sisters, Abs. Twins. I know you better than you know yourself.”

  “Whatever.”

  “How far along are you?”

  I ignored her, kicking off my shoes and tossing them in my closet. I pulled off my t-shirt and launched it toward the hamper.

  “I'm guessing not far,” she said, eyeing my stomach and breasts. “Less than twelve weeks for sure.”

  I stripped out of my shorts. Maybe if I ignored her, she'd go away. Who was I kidding, I thought. I'd tried to do that with the pregnancy and instead, it was a few weeks later and all I'd accomplished was that I was more pregnant.

  “Talk to me.”

  I turned to look at her. “Since when I have ever talked to you?”

  She considered this. “Pretty much never. But I'm thinking now might be a good time to start.”

  I slipped a tank top over my head and stared at my sister for a minute. We'd never been close. I'd spent most of my life hating her, especially after the way she'd moved in on West. But she'd sort of redeemed herself last summer. She'd been the one to step in and call me on my bullshit, to set up the conversation between me and West. She'd managed to get him a meeting with the coach at USD, the meeting that had ultimately led to him being able to stay in San Diego and still play ball. She still wasn't my favorite person and I still harbored grudges but even I would admit that she was trying. Trying to be a better person.

  “I don't feel like talking.”

  She smiled again, this time bigger. “I knew it!” But she must have noticed the look on my face because her expression softened. “Hey. Look, it's no big deal.”

  “What?” I wasn't sure I'd heard her correctly. Because it was pretty much the biggest, most monumental thing that had ever happened to me.

  “You're pregnant,” she said, her tone casual. “It's no big deal. You can go down to Planned Parenthood tomorrow. Schedule an appointment and they'll take care of it. Just like that.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “You sound like you're speaking from experience.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe.”

  I tried to keep my mouth from dropping open. I pulled on a pair of silky pajama shorts and sat down on my bed. “Tell me.”

  She shook her head. “Nope. I'm not sharing unless you do.”

  I thought for a minute, then sighed. Keeping the details to myself was pointless. She'd already figured it out.

  “I'm seven weeks. Almost eight.”

  “Okay.”

  “Forgot to take a pill when I was sick,” I said. I stared across the room, seeing nothing, just focusing on the words I was saying. “Maybe two.”

  “Maybe?”

  “I took one late, I think,” I said. “Like the next morning? I don't know. Everything from that week is a blur.”

  She nodded. “Yeah. You were a wreck.”

  “How would you know?”

  My sister grinned. “I might've stopped by.”

  “You did?” I had no memory of that at all.

  “Yeah. But you were asleep. And Mom was at the office, I think. So I just peeked in on you and left.”

  I didn't know what to think of that. Maybe she'd come by for something else—laundry or food or something—and it just coincided with me being laid up in bed. Because Annika wasn't the nurturing type, had never cared when I'd gotten sick or hurt or anything.

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, so that's what happened.”

  “Okay.” She leaned back on her hands. “And so now you've gotta figure out what to do about it.”

  “Tell me about you.”

  She sat up, readjusted her legs. “It's happened twice. The first time was a couple years ago. Before I went on the Pill.” She looked at me. “Blake Martinez.”

  I raised my eyebrows. Blake Martinez was not a couple of years ago. She'd dated the senior when she was a freshman. “Seriously?”

  “Yep.” She took a deep breath and when she spoke, she tried to keep her voice light. “Took me forever to figure out what the hell to do. He denied it was his. Told me I was a slut and that there was no way to know for sure.” She forced a laugh. “The funniest thing? He was the first guy I'd ever slept with. I knew it was his.”

  “So...so you went to Planned Parenthood?”

  She nodded.

  “And they did it there?” I felt like I was back in middle school, trying to glean information about taboo topics I'd never in a million years ask my parents about. I wasn't stupid; I knew Planned Parenthood existed, knew they helped women get contraceptions and abortions. But the logistics of it? The hows? I had no clue.

  “Yes.” Annika played with a strand of hair, her eyes on the bedroom ceiling. “You go in for a consult first. Fill out paperwork and stuff, talk to one of the workers. A nurse, I think. They tell you what will happen during your appointment. And then you go in and do it.”

  “How long did it take?”

  “The first time?” My sister closed her eyes briefly. “A few hours. But I was pretty far along. It gets a littl
e more involved.”

  I folded my hands in my lap, rubbing my fingers along my knuckles. Annika and I didn't share things with each other. Not things like this.

  “How far?”

  “Almost twenty weeks.”

  I swallowed hard. Twenty weeks was five months. A client of my parents had gone into preterm labor and had their baby at 24 weeks. And he'd lived. My sister had been a month away from that.

  She stared at me, her eyes glittering. “Don't judge.”

  “I wasn't.”

  “Yeah, you were.” She raised her eyebrows, her mouth tight. “I was fourteen. Didn't have a fucking clue I was even pregnant until I was almost three months. And then I had to figure out what the hell to do.”

  I felt a twinge of guilt. For the millionth time, I wished we'd been closer, been better sisters to each other. Annika had set the terms of our relationship early on—she'd been the one who was always competing, who always tried to be better than me, who managed to succeed by knocking me down. But this? Knowing my sister had been alone with this kind of decision? I wouldn't wish that on anyone. Even her.

  “Did Mom and Dad know?”

  Her laugh was short. It sounded more like a bark. “Uh. No.”

  “So how did you get there? Who took you? How did you keep it from them?” And how did you keep it from me, I wanted to add. Because even though we weren't close, we still knew things, sensed stuff. It was the way I found myself in my current predicament, being drawn into a discussion about something I hadn't told my sister about.

  “I told Mom I was sick,” she said. She ran a hand through her hair, tugging gently at the ends. “Blake skipped school and took me.”

  “Oh.” I didn't know what else to say.

  She dropped her hands to her lap and tucked them between her legs. “We got there first thing in the morning. I was home before school got out.”

  I sat for a moment, trying to remember.

  “It was the day before the Winter dance,” she said, trying to help jog my memory. “I didn't go.”

  The floodgates opened and the memory rushed back in. I did remember. Annika stayed home with an upset stomach—we all thought she had the stomach flu and I'd been scared to death that I was going to come down with it before the dance. Which would have totally sucked because I had a date. My first real date.