Jack

I bounce my leg up and down as I chew on my thumbnail, nerves making me want to puke just as Kim storms through the door and hands me a pregnancy test.

I can’t be, I think, swallowing bile as my throat works hard and fast. It’s just change of season, maybe a cold or flu. It can’t be this, I think, shaking when she crosses her arms and taps her foot on the hardwood floor.

“This is ridiculous. I can’t believe you made me drive an extra twenty minutes out of my way just so no one saw me. I could have told them it’s for me.”

“Shut up and come watch me pee on the stick,” I bark, getting to my feet slowly because I’m terrified I’ll faint and make Kim go into a panic attack.

I’ve seen it happen once before when she babysat Essie and Skeeter’s terrors and Bull laughed so hard he passed out.

Kim huffs and follows me to the bathroom, her eyes glued to me the whole time I’m squatting on the toilet and peeing, the stick taking at least most of the hit along with my fingers. Gross.

I’m freaking the hell out and it’s not because I don’t love Cord and don’t want a family someday, it’s just that I’m only almost twenty-eight and we’ve been together a total of six weeks.

It’s been the best six weeks of my life, I won’t lie. Most nights he sleeps over here, or I go to his place so there’s not even a separation that we can use to define things as dating.

We’re together. All the time. He goes to work, I go to work and then we’re together for the rest of our time. I don’t even bother to go home on weekends anymore because he just turns up at my house, whines that his pool is bigger and then I give in and go home with him.

It’s been great, even better than the first throes of my relationship with Felix. But here’s the thing. The clock is ticking on my two-month deadline, and I am completely freaking about that.

You’d think a baby in the mix would be my greatest fear, but no, it’s what the baby signifies. That I have no out, that when two months is officially up next week I won’t have an out, or a leg to stand on if I say no to more.

“This isn’t a big deal. The two of you are practically married anyway. Mama even calls him son,” Kim huffs when my lips start quivering, her foot tapping impatiently when I put the stick on the counter and scrub my hands clean at the sink.

“We aren’t married! Goddammit, what the hell is wrong with you people? Why can’t anyone understand that I am just not ready for that?” I yell, my emotions going nuts with dread choking me.

“Jack, baby I know you don’t want to talk about this right now, but I have to point out that you’re being irrational. You’re practically married to Cord. You live with him more often than not, you wash your washing together, he walks into the bathroom while you’re on the throne and you used his toothbrush the morning you couldn’t find yours.”

“Because I was running late and you know I’ll puke at some stage in the day if my mouth feels icky.”

She sighs, comes over to sit me on the edge of the tub and sits beside me to take my hand.

I know what she’s thinking, what she wants to say but right now I can’t hear it. Yes, she’s right, Cord and I are practically married in practice, I get it.

When a guy walks into the bathroom to tell you he’s running to the store, while you’re going number two, and doesn’t even bat an eyelash, you’re married, end of story.

I get it, okay, but everything is so great as it is. We contract to the resort which offers the package we agreed upon to people. We work well together when I’m there to work out menus with the kitchen to cater the wedding, and I am happy.

I’m doing well, the business is booming, with both shotgun weddings and the regular kind where the grooms father-in-law-to-be only wants to kill him, not peel him alive.

I have it all right now. The good job, a nice house and a great relationship. Why can’t everyone just get the hell off my back and let me enjoy, I think scowling when Kim’s eyes go soft the way they do when she’s trying to explain to Bull that eating his own poop will make him sick.

That kid is gonna be so screwed up when he’s older.

“Honey, you’re not thinking straight. Cord loves you.”

“I know! He says it every day, and he even took me home to officially meet his parents as his girlfriend. It was awesome, and I got to sit down for Sunday lunch at a table where people don’t attack you with a fork for taking the last potato.”

“So then what is the problem exactly?” she asks, for once not sniping at me or calling me a weak-willed bottom feeder.

“I…” I pause, staring at the stick on the sink where it has yet to change.

“Have you ever had this feeling about someone or something, wanted it more than anything in life?” I ask, rubbing my index fingernail in a move that I have always made when I’m stressed.

“Sure,” Kim says, looking back at me with beetled brows. “I wanted that Barbie with the scuba gear one birthday, but mama got me a fishing pole and told me I needed to learn to be useful, not an airhead who talks to herself.”

I giggle because I got the same thing. Mama says playing with dolls and talking in character is insanity, that it all boils down to you talking to yourself having a one-sided conversation with two strange voices. She calls childhood roleplay schizophrenia.

Daddy called it fun and bought the dolls and even played with us while mama was out with Luanne.

“Not exactly what I was going for, but close enough,” I chuckle, pushing away the habit of keeping my feelings inside unless they’re anger.

Then it’s open season.

“Okaaay. You want to tell me the rest of it?” she asks, nudging me with her shoulder.

“Well see, I always just wanted to be happy, have a family like mama and daddy did. I mean it’s gross, but they love each other so much, and even today they still look at each other as if it’s the first time. There’s no age or passing of time. I swear I heard him tell her the other day she still has the best ass he’s ever seen.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“Yeah, but it’s also sweet and cute and nice, ya know? I want that.”

“You have it with Cord. Jesus, Jack, the man buys you feminine products and lets you swim in his pool even when there’s a danger of shark attack ‘cause you’re bleeding so much,” she gripes. “I am so jealous.”

I concede, it is great that he’s not grossed out by any part of me, even the dreaded bloodbath but that is not…

“It’s not that, and yeah, I know he loves me, trust me. And I love him too, so much. But it’s…that realm of the perfect wedding got tarnished you know. I settled for someone who was a good choice because I didn’t want to be alone and now that wedding, it doesn’t mean shit to me. The only thing I feel when I think of going through a whole wedding is nausea. If it had been Cord, if I’d actually gotten to the I do’s I don’t think I’d feel this…but it was all so fucked up, Kimmy. People still laugh and ask me if I drink Gummy Berry juice, and that fat slut down at the deli told everyone I’m on steroids.”

Kim laughs, an outright belly rolling chuckle that has my mouth curving upward even though I’m not feeling all that jolly.

“Still not getting your beef, Jack,” she says.

“I don’t want to make the same mistakes with Cord that I made with Felix. I loved Felix, please don’t think I didn’t and it hurt when he threw me over for Melinda, but with Cord it would be like being stabbed in the gut if he left. I love him like mama and daddy love each other. It scares me to think that I could have that dangled in front of me, and then it’ll get yanked away,” I say, confessing my darkest fear.

Rejection.

Jesus, I hate being rejected. Felix hurt, Cord would gut me.

She sighs, seeming to get what I’m saying and then shrugs as if none of it matters at all.

“Don’t matter. You’ll have to get over it and learn to move on or you’ll be stuck, alone. Cord isn’t the kind of man who’ll be satisfied with halfway, Jack, he wants it all because he gives it all. So suck it the fuck up and take a shit or get off the pot and leave the man be. Before you hurt him more than is necessary,” she says, smiling and kissing my cheek gently.

“You’re in the clear. It’s either a bug or your nerves. Tests negative.”

She leaves without another word and I sit in the bathroom for an hour, thinking about why exactly I’m disappointed and not relieved that I’m not having a baby.

It’s not easy for me. I’m not into examining my emotions. Usually when a Brady feels blue or confused we go to the shooting range with Luanne, and she gives us her gun to take it out on an inanimate object.

Today I’m stuck in the shitter, melancholy, and all too aware that I have a week to make a life altering decision or odds are Cord walks.

 

*****

 

Cord

“You heard her say that?” Jeff barks, making me nod and put back a neat whiskey before ordering another.

We’re in Sully’s, in the back where we usually play poker on a Saturday night, and I’m getting myself completely drunk because I feel like shit and I don’t know what to do about it unless I confess to Jack that I was outside that bathroom door listening to her confide in Kim.

I don’t know what makes me feel worse, her not telling me she suspected she was pregnant, and isn’t, or the fact that I just had to listen to the woman I love pour her heart out about a legitimate fear that I haven’t once given any credence to.

“She said she’s afraid to reach for happiness because what if it gets taken away again. Christ, I feel like shit man. She’s been skirting around an actual commitment from the beginning, and all I kept thinking was that sure, it’s happening fast, but it’s because we’ve loved each other forever. I never once considered that Jack is terrified of getting married,” I mutter, slurring slightly when the whiskey hits me head on.

Sully grunts, pushing me back into the chair before I sit on my ass on the floor and I groan, leaning back to glare when Ky chuckles.

“We’re all pathetic. Here’s Jeff, wanting a woman who looks at people like she’d steal their soul if they stare long enough. Sully is into a sadistic woman who wears shoes that can be seen from space. I’m so into Dee Brady it literally makes me tear up when I see her out and about with Zac, even though I have no room to talk since I’m still dating Janice. And you, you’ve been with Jack for almost two months and still, no dice.”

Ky’s just as drunk as I am so I take no exception to the bitter tone he uses, knowing that if he were sober, he’d probably be moping and pretending not to cry.

I feel worse though because unlike these poor idiots I know what it’s like to love and be loved by my woman. I just haven’t given her what she needs.

And the truth is that I don’t know if I can. I love Jack more than I thought I could love. I wake up and see her and my day is made, no matter what happens. I make love to her, hold her at night, spend hours just talking to her, and it’s all I could ask for.

But I need the rest too. I need her to look at me when I give her a ring and say yes because she loves me so much she wants to spend forever with me.

I want kids, a home, a family.

I want it all, and it’s only hitting me now that maybe that won’t happen for me. Not if we stay together. And that hurts because I know that I can’t just walk away, and it’s blatantly clear that I should.

Before I twist her up even more than I already have and hurt her with my needs.

“She isn’t ever going to want marriage,” I say hoarsely, blinking when my eyes go hot and wet. “She wants to be with me and take her time, as if she’s test driving me like a fucking car.”

“Dude, don’t look at it that way. Jack loves you, man,” Jeff says, his conviction admirable and kind but not what I need right now.

I’m angry. At her for not trusting me enough to look at the life we’ve made and want more, want it all. At me, because it doesn’t matter what I feel, in the end I know I’m going to have to give up the only thing I have ever wanted.

“How else should I look at it? She got engaged to some asshole and planned her wedding while I was away trying to build myself into a man she could want. I worked my ass off, gave up everything, and for what? So I could come back here and slaver after her like a chump while she leads me around by the nose and uses me to fill her gaps?” I scoff, getting angrier the longer I think about it.

For me it’s about her seeing me, the man I am and knowing I’m enough. To her it’s freak outs about a pregnancy I didn’t even know about because she couldn’t be bothered to actually share anything with me.

It’s all about the day to day, no future, no sharing anything deeper than the little childhood stories she tells me. I don’t get anything from it, nothing. Just sex, which honestly, I can get anywhere if I were so inclined. And a warm bed.

Yeah, I’m pissed and right now, the way I feel I could happily tell her to get the hell out of my life and not care. Tomorrow it will hurt, I know this, but tonight I’ve had my heart ripped out by a woman who doesn’t understand what love is, never mind true love.

“Cord, you’re drunk man. I get it. She kept something from you that she shouldn’t have. She’s human man, she’ll make mistakes like everyone else. If you love her you’ll talk to her and work it out,” Sully intervenes when I scoff and let out a curse.

“Love her? Fuck that Sully, I goddamn worship that woman. I try, every single day to show her that being with me isn’t going to be her relying on me but us together, doing it the way a real couple would. I try and try man, and she just doesn’t get it. You know what the worst part is? It’s one week to countdown and all she says so far is that we should plan a trip before she loses her vacation time. A trip. I want her to marry me, the entire fucking wedding is planned and just waiting, and she redirects by trying to get me to leave for a few days,” I say, clenching my fists when my anger and resentment amp up.

“Cord, buddy, please just calm down. I know you’re hurt, I get it. Fuck, Kimberly brought a date here last night and all but blew him at the table while I was watching. I know hurt, but man, you have Jack. All you have to do is hang in there and make her see it,” Sully pleads.

That only makes it worse because we all know that I don’t have her. This pregnancy scare is just one small part of the bigger issue I’ve been trying to pretend isn’t there.

She isn’t going to say yes when I propose. She knows it and I think deep down I knew it the moment she said no marriage. I thought I was winning, that I’d scored a major victory with her, but the truth is that I wanted her so much I refused to acknowledge that she walked into my life with the rules already in play and we started this relationship with those rules guiding us.

Jack is a control freak, a competitor in everything she does. She plays to win, and for her, that victory would be me giving her more time, more leeway and in the end, just one more part of my heart for her to shit on.

Screw bringing her closer and giving her time. Screw it all because, in the end, it’ll be me conceding and compromising while she gets what she wants.

Everything will be on her terms. We’ll have a family when she’s ready, not discuss it with me because she won’t want to argue and eventually I’ll cave and say fine, let’s do it your way because truly, all I wanted was her. I thought it would be enough to just have her.

In reality, I’m not that guy. I’m not a chauvinist at all, but I do believe that as the man I have a certain role to play as does Jack. With everything else, it’s supposed to be a partnership.

I just didn’t think it would end with me holding the bag alone.