by Gabrielle G.
“What do you want him to say? Either he accepts it, and he’s part of our life, or he doesn’t, and so be it.” He takes my hand and pulls me out of the car.
“Come on, your big brother isn’t going to kill you. He might punch me because there is proof I fucked you,” he puts his hand on my belly, “but he won’t be mad at you. You patched things up, didn’t you?”
I nod. We did, but we’ve barely spoken since.
I have no clue if Alane or any of the others told him anything, and I have no idea what his reaction is going to be.
Chris didn’t reach out since he left, and, knowing Aaron, that might be taken more like a betrayal than knocking me up.
When he went to Seattle, Aaron always kept in touch with his best friend.
Chris was the only one who didn’t freeze him out for leaving so quickly, but over the years, I don’t think they ever didn’t return each other’s calls.
I start walking toward the restaurant, Chris, next to me. He slips his hand in mine and stops me in my tracks.
“Hey, look at me.” I do.
He’s so handsome.
He kept his light beard with the little grey patches that make him even more distinguished than he was. They frame the lips that have been mine for a few days now.
He cut his hair though, and I’m not sad about it.
Even if I have nothing to grab onto anymore, I wasn’t crazy about his poodle look.
I just hope our kids will have the Gritt’s hair, well, not if it’s a girl, curly hair is beautiful on a woman.
He smiles at me, and it reaches his eyes.
It’s the happiest I have ever seen him. He dips in for a kiss and presses himself against me.
My whole world seems upside down when I’m in his arms.
I sigh against his lips. He does know how to calm me.
He backs away instantly.
“Don’t give me a hard-on before we talk to your brother, babe.”
“I didn’t do anything,” I beam at him.
“You exist,” he says before sucking on my lower lip.
“So corny.” I shove him.
He pretends to stumble and makes me laugh before coming back next to me and holding my hand firmly.
As we enter the restaurant, I know right away Aaron is in a sour mood. His staff looks like they’re trying to escape, and from the noise coming from the kitchen, a dragon has been released in there.
“Are you here to see Chef Gritt?” a young guy asks. It seems he’s about to puke.
“Yes, but don’t worry, kiddo, I’ve got it.” Chris smiles. “How long has he been in such a mood?”
“A couple of days,” the kid answers, wincing as we hear a noise of something breaking in the back. Chris and I look at each other. Two days ago is when Chris came back home. That can’t be a coincidence.
“He knows I’m back.” Chris grins.
Fucking with my brother genuinely amuses him.
He tugs on my hand, and we walk toward the kitchen, him beaming, and me trying to swallow my tongue.
“Let me talk to him.” Chris winks, as we push the two industrial doors.
Our entrance stops Aaron in whatever he was losing it about. He turns toward us, and his eyes zoom in on our holding hands. He pauses and looks at Chris, who’s still smiling but not saying a word.
Aaron’s gaze falls on me, and I instinctively reach for my belly.
Aaron raises an eyebrow.
I shrug.
The corner of his lips turns up, and he walks toward me.
He wraps me in his arms and pulls me into a hug.
“Congrats, Sis,” he whispers.
I fall apart in his arms, releasing the stress of having to tell him.
“Babe, don’t cry.” Chris rubs my back slightly. I let go of Aaron and go wipe my tears on Chris’ shirt.
“Snot,” my brother says, “I hope those are happy tears.” He smiles and slaps the back of his best friend.
“Snot? Since when do you call me Snot?” I ask him, confused.
“Since this asshole calls you babe.” There is a strange energy between those two.
I tilt my head up to see what’s going on.
Aaron has his arms crossed on his chest, his eyes bore into Chris’.
Chris is just waiting, looking at his best friend, holding me against him.
“You didn’t call.” Aaron finally breaks their staring contest.
“I didn’t call anybody,” Chris answers.
“I was worried, asshole.”
“But you found a way to know I was alright. I was pissed, Aar, and depending on how you’re going to take this,” he motions between him and me, “I might get more pissed.”
“I’m fine with it. Not the first time you’re involved with one of my siblings.” Aaron smirks. “Barn might get jealous that you don’t give him any attention.” He laughs.
“I don’t hang around people who slept with my sister,” he jokes back.
I flinch, and Chris feels right away what he just said could be hurtful for me.
It’s still strange to think Luke had something with Chris before I did.
“Not the same, babe, don’t even compare what we have with anything I had with your brother. We were just two horny teenagers. You’re my life, I told you that.” I force a smile and take a few steps back to look at him.
“I know, no worries.” He gives me a peck on the lips, and Aaron clears his throat.
“Did you see a doctor yet, Sal?” Aaron interrupts us.
“I wanted to before announcing it, but Chris couldn’t wait to tell you, so we came as soon as we could. We have one scheduled at the end of the week.”
“Who knows?”
“You and I haven’t spoken in a month, Aar, and I wasn’t sure how you would take the news. I… Don’t get mad, okay?”
“I’m the last one? You told Mom and Dad before me?”
“No,” Chris says, “they’re going to know after we tell my parents. My sister is in town, and I have to tell them. It’s going to be a lot of drama with Patricia there, but I have to tell the news to my parents. It’s their first grandchild.”
His sister always wanted to be a Gritt, for reasons I don’t get.
Once Chris discovered what part she had in my brother and Alane’s break up years ago, he got her a job on the West Coast and advised her to stay away from our family.
He barely talks to her anymore, not that they were close to begin with.
“So, who knows?” Aaron presses for answers.
“Dex, Luke, Barn, and Alane,” I mumble.
“Alane?” I nod, sorry to rat out my sister-in-law. “We said no fucking secrets, and she doesn’t tell me my baby sister is pregnant with my best friend’s child?” Aaron is not good with secrets, ever since he learned he had a twenty-six-year-old son.
That’s a long secret to keep.
He now wants to live a transparent life. It’s especially hard for his two younger kids, Hailey and Lawson. Hailey is nineteen, studying in Oregon, and can keep some of her life apart from her father, but Lawson still lives at home and having his father always in his business makes their relationship pretty tricky.
“Aar, listen, I don’t even know how she figured it out. Barn knows because he was with me the day I took the test, the others just… Dex guessed, and I guess he told Luke. He’s the one who told Chris. As for Alane, I suppose she heard through the grapevine. Don’t ruin all this. You’re going to be an uncle.” I walk toward my brother.
“I’m going to be a godfather, right?”
I cringe. “Barn kind of claimed the title,” I tell him.
“There will be others to be the godfather of, Aar,” Chris says.
“There will?” Both Aaron and I say in unison.
Chris takes me back in his arms and kisses me. “Fuck! Tons, babe, as many as you can give me.” I beam at him, and we kiss once more.
“You two are disgustingly cute. I’m going home to anger fuck my wife! Good l
uck with the Harbors, and I guess I'll see you tonight at Mom and Dad’s?” We nod, still looking at each other and smiling blissfully.
“I love you,” I whisper on our way back to his car. He opens the door for me and kisses my cheek.
“I love you too, Sal.”
“Good talk with my bro,” I tease, air-quoting the word talk.
“You should know by now most of the conversations with your brother are silent ones.”
“Which is going to be very different tonight.” I bite the inside of my cheek.
“I’ll do all the talking. I got you, babe, you don’t have to worry about a thing.”
23
Chris
Telling Aaron was stress-free.
The Gritts are going to be noisy but easy.
My parents? It’s going to be awkward.
Uptight, religious, gossipy mother and absent father aren’t the parents of the century.
Growing up, I never saw them.
My mother was always at church and my father at work.
We barely spent time as a family, and we still hardly do.
My sexual orientation confuses my mother, my friendship with the Gritts pisses my sister off, and my choice of career disappoints my father.
It really never bothered me until now, even when they welcomed Jordan with pinched lips and scrunched noses.
I need them to accept Sal and the baby.
I want them to be better grandparents than the parents they were.
I know that with the Gritts around us the peanut is going to be surrounded by love, but I still want my parents to be part of my child’s life.
Nevertheless, I’m not here for their endorsement.
The approval of Bella and Ridge Gritt is essential, but that of Shelby and Kip Harbor is optional. It has been so for a while now.
“Brother,” my sister snarls opening the door to Sal and me, “and, oh surprise, the bottom of the Gritt’s barrel.”
“Pat.” I jerk my head in her direction, passing her without any comment.
She tends to forget that I’m the one who found her a job after the scandal that she was harassing fathers at the school where she was the principal imploded two years ago. The school that I’m a board member at, the board I pushed to hire my sister as the principal when my parents begged me to. Patricia always had a short-term memory. I let her comment slide so as not to be fighting with her right from the get-go, but Sal doesn’t.
“I’m surprised you still show your face in town with all the restraining orders men filed against you.” Patricia is about to answer back when my mother appears in the lobby.
“Chris, what a pleasant surprise.”
That’s not true.
She’s never really pleased to see me.
“Hi, Mother, do you remember Salomé?” I introduce them once again.
She knows who Sal is, of course, but my mother pretends people who don’t go to church don’t exist, so reintroducing them is anticipated.
“Salomé, I haven’t seen you since the… well…”
“Nice to see you again, Mrs. Harbor.” Sal saves my mother from embarrassment.
She had trouble calling it a wedding when I was getting married, but since it didn’t happen and the fiancé committed suicide, I don’t think she can ever refer to that day.
“Is Father around?” I ask, impatient to tell them what I came here to say, and leave.
“Somewhere… Can I offer you something to drink? Tea, water?”
The way my mother speaks and the way we had to call them mother and father, you would think we’re from money. We’re not.
My mother was a stay at home mother who helped a lot at the church—so much that some wondered if she wasn’t assisting Father Smith, Alane’s dad, in ways other than with the church. As for my father, he owned the diner in town, and until Aar took over the management years ago—before he opened his own restaurant—he was never home. Now that he’s retired, he’s still barely home, and I have no idea how he occupies his days.
Sal and I sit and let Patricia monopolize the conversation about how wonderful her life is in Portland.
My mother keeps eyeing us peculiarly, probably trying to understand why Sal is with me. After fifteen minutes of torture, my father finally comes in, stumbling a little and with enough glint in his eyes that he might be drunk.
When he approaches Sal and hugs her tightly, I know he is.
I step closer to protect her.
“Chris, my boy.” He hugs me as well. My father is not a hugger. I think I barely received a handshake for graduation. “What are you both doing here?”
I look at Sal, who nods at me to say what we came here for and give an end to the suffering my family can be.
“Sal and I are having a baby,” I announce, before leaning back in my chair and waiting. Patricia’s face pales, my mother’s brows rise in confusion, and my father’s shoulders start shaking because of the laugh he can’t suppress.
“But… but…” my mother tries to articulate. “Don’t you like men? You were going to marry one?” I sigh while taking Sal’s hand.
“Are you two together?” Patricia snarls. “I thought the Gritts didn’t share conquests.”
“Isn’t it a little early after that boy you almost married? I mean, we didn’t even know you two were seeing each other. Did you get married? I mean, if there is a baby it means you got married?”
My father is still laughing.
I’m about to answer all of my mothers’ questions when Patricia opens her mouth.
“You knocked up the Gritt sister to get into that family? Seriously, Chris, that’s low.”
“Patricia, I’m sorry none of my brothers were ever interested in you. Nevertheless, if you want to be an aunt to our child, you will change the way you talk about my family, about your brother and about me. Mrs. Harbor, I know this could be very confusing, Chris and I got close after the wedding and, one thing led to another, we discovered we cared for each other.”
My father cuts Sal off by laughing hard.
It’s so uncomfortable compared to the shocked face of my mother and sister that sweat falls down my neck.
Thankfully, again, Sal takes matters into her own hands.
“Mr. Harbor, may I ask what’s so funny?”
“I’m so happy for you two,” he says, still laughing. “Did you tell your father yet?”
“No, we’re telling him afterward. Why?” Sal asks suspiciously.
“When we saw you dancing at Aaron and Alane’s wedding, he bet that you two would end up together. I told him we couldn’t bet because I agreed. So we bet on either you'll get married before having kids or kids before getting married. Ridge was sure you would get married before having a child. I bet the opposite; I don’t know why, just knowing how you went with everything in your life, Son, I knew you would. Anyhow, I’m happy I’m going to be a grandpa! I’m glad you two found each other. But I’m ecstatic Ridge just lost five thousand dollars, and Bella is going to have his ass.”
Tears are now cascading from his eyes.
I didn’t even know our fathers were friends. I guess over the years they found common ground. My mother seems scandalized at the idea of my father taking bets, but my father ignores her.
I never saw them kissing, hugging or even talking to each other.
I often wondered if they would have divorced if my mother wasn’t so religious, but at my age now, I don’t give much of a shit anymore.
My father stands up and wraps his arm around Sal’s shoulders while walking her to the door.
I guess we’re leaving.
Once in front of my car, he stops and brings Sal into a hug.
“Welcome into the family, honey, and if it’s okay with you, I’ll take those five thousand dollars and open an account for the child. All bets with your dad that I make from now on will be deposited into the account.” He lets Sal go, opens the door for her and she slips in. Once the door is closed, he takes me in his arms.
“Son, it’s about time you finally gave that poor girl a chance. Now, please ask Luke to take a video when you announce it to Ridge, I want to see the poor bastard’s face.”
“I will.” My voice breaks with emotion. He really seems happy for me, and I don’t think he ever was. “Is it because she’s a woman? I mean, you were so distant with Jordan.” He puts both of his hands on my shoulders.
“It’s because she’s right for you. I want to tell you, I‘ll talk to your mother, but I’m trying hard not to get into any discussions with her anymore.”
I get in the car and start driving away from home like I did so many times before. I’ve never seen my father as a broken man. I always thought he was never home because he worked a lot; never that he worked a lot because he never wanted to be home. Until we were teenagers, my mother was there every afternoon, demanding us to call her mother and be the perfect angels of God.
“I want to be there for the peanut and stop working,” I tell Sal.
“What if I want to be home?” she quips. I take her hands and kiss her fingers.
“I have enough for us to both stop working, if that’s what you want, but you don’t have to. I want to be there every day. Hockey practice or ballet classes, homework, playdates. I want to do it all.”
“Stop the car, Chris,” she says earnestly.
“What’s the matter?” I ask, parking the car on the side of the road. She gets out of the car and slams the door behind her. Before I jump out to run after her, the back door opens, and she slides in.
“What is going on, Sal?”
“Come in the back and fuck me, Chris, because what you just said has me dripping with desire. You wanting to be a stay at home dad and giving me a chance to continue doing what I love is the sexiest thing I ever heard. I need you inside me, and I need you now.” I jump in the backseat while she removes her pants and panties.
“Sit,” she orders. I slide my pants and briefs down my knees to free my length.
She bends to kiss it, and I thrust forward with pleasure.