Chapter 6

Julie

As Julie walked to her car, she knew she had a huge smile on her face. Dinner had gone well. Cody was nice. He listened to what she'd had to say, and when she gave him suggestions, totally forgetting who he was, he'd asked her to elaborate, and by the time she was done, he'd tell her what he thought about it. A couple of times, he'd come up with ideas beyond hers as well, and she couldn't believe she'd not thought of them. At the same time, it amazed her. The man had skill. He wasn't rising in the development world just because of his good looks, and he did look good, or because he was dirty. It didn't sound like he was, not one bit.

Julie loved the way he talked about his employees and how he was always right there with them. Her dad and uncle were good, they always had been, but they'd both lost a bit of the passion for the process they'd had when she was younger. Ethan had Kyle, so that was a step in the right direction on that side of the family, but even Kyle had lost the excitement he'd originally started with too. Her dad admitted he needed a younger viewpoint at the company, and that was where Gavin came in, but her brother had joined the service, so that idea was a thing of the past.

Cody had been so considerate at dinner. Julie had tried to order cheap, but he wasn't having it, and he'd actually given her part of his food. Then he'd ordered them dessert, and they were so damn good, better than anything Julie had ever tasted. He was encouraging when it came to coding, and he'd even complimented her. Of course, he was extremely confident, but he had every right to be. The man was good. She'd never met anyone, let alone a guy, that she could talk to about coding for hours with both of them still having a smile on their face when they were done, but it had happened with Cody. She could have sat there all night, but she wanted to beat Jessie home. There was no way she wanted to have to explain where she'd been to her twin.

As Julie drove, she couldn't help but wonder what it was that made her dad and uncle dislike Cody so much. It couldn't have just been that he was their competitor. They'd never felt so strongly about any of their competition before, or if they did, they'd never voiced it like they did when it came to him.

Being around Cody had her feeling good about her future, and that never happened when she was home at the family business. For just a short while, she actually felt like someone believed in her. Could he really be as bad as her dad and uncle made him sound, she wondered? No matter how hard she thought about it, she couldn't believe it was true. It just didn't seem possible, unless he was putting on an act for her. Was he? Did he really know who she was? Was he trying to get to her dad? He couldn't be, she thought. He seemed so genuine, so real. There was no way he was playing her.

Julie had heard her phone buzz on her way back to the apartment she shared with her sister, so as soon as she parked her car, she picked it up and looked at it. It was Jessie. She never text while she was at the hospital, and her shift wasn't over yet.

Jessie: Where are you?

Julie looked up from her phone and down a few cars, and sure enough, Jessie's car was there. She hadn't even noticed.

The happy feeling she'd been feeling turned into a nervous one. Why'd Jessie want to know where she was, she wondered? Maybe she wasn't feeling well and had come home early. Did she need something? Maybe she'd wanted Julie to stop on the way home. It didn't matter, she was already there, so she figured she'd just go in and see. If Jessie needed something, Julie would just run back out and get it. She grabbed her purse and her keys, along with her phone, and got out of her car. She smoothed her dress down her legs, and she knew there was no way her sister wasn't going to ask where she'd been. Julie never dressed up, and Jessie did, so there was no way it would go unnoticed.

On the way up the walk and while she was letting herself in, she tried to think of just one good reason she was dressed up, but she had nothing. When she pushed the door open, she began talking right away.

“Hey, Jessie,” she called out. “What are you doing home early? Are you okay?”

Just as she closed the door and turned toward the living room, she heard sniffling and looked over to see her sister, sitting on the couch, quickly running her hands over her face to dry her tears.

“Jessie,” she said, with every nerve in her body immediately on edge. “What's wrong?”

She hurried over, sat down next to her sister, and pulled her in for a hug.

“Why are you home already? Why are you crying? You're scaring me,” Julie said, thinking about finding out only a month before that they'd lost one of their crew and that their brother was hurt. “Gavin.”

“No,” Jessie said. “It's not him. I don't know how to tell you this, Julie. I came home because I wasn't feeling well, but that's not it.”

“What is it then?” Julie asked. “Why are you this upset.”

“There's something I haven't told you,” Jessie said, before looking down at her hands in her lap. “I'm pregnant.”

“What?” Julie snapped out. “When? Who? How? Not how, but how? When are you due?”

“He's gone,” Jessie began, before she burst into tears. “We were only together once.”

“Jessie,” Julie said, as she held her sister tight. “When are you due?”

“September,” Jessie answered.

“What?” Julie snapped.

“There's been so much going on,” Jessie said. “I didn't know how to tell you. It sounds bad, really bad. We lost Jack, and we were worried about Gavin. We're still worried. I just didn't know what to do.”

Jessie began crying even harder, and Julie just held her. A one night stand, she thought. Her sister was social, but she wasn't irresponsible. How had it happened?

“He's not around?” Julie asked.

Jessie shook her head, and when Julie moved to pull back so she could see her sister's face, Jessie held her so tight she couldn't move.

“You've been to a doctor?” Julie asked.

“Yes,” Jessie answered.

“You've known for a while?” Julie asked, trying to remain as calm as she could over the fact that her sister had kept something so important from her.

“Yes,” Jessie answered.

“Why are you crying?” Julie asked.

“I wasn't feeling well, so I came home,” Jessie said, as her tears slowed a bit. “You're always home, but you weren't, and that was the moment it hit me that I'm going to be doing this alone, and I don't know how I'm going to do it.”

“You're not doing this alone,” Julie said sternly. “I'll be right here with you.”

“You're leaving in a few weeks,” Jessie said.

“No, I'm not,” Julie replied. “I'm not leaving.”

“You have to go,” Jessie said, as her tears began again.

“I'll be right here,” Julie said.

“I don't want mom and dad to know,” Jessie said. “You can't tell them.”

“I won't,” Julie said, as she thought about her parents. There was no way she could judge her sister when she was keeping something from them herself. It wasn't as big, but it was just as bad. “I love you, Jessie.”

“Love you too,” Jessie said, through her tears.

Julie sat there with her arms around her sister for a very long time. When Jessie's tears stopped, she'd fallen asleep, so Julie grabbed a pillow and helped her sister down onto it. Then she lifted Jessie's legs onto the couch and covered her with a blanket.

When she walked into her room and closed the door behind her, she thought about her sister. There was no way she was leaving her there alone, and if Jessie didn't want their parents to know, Julie would be right there, supporting her in that decision. Their crew was always there for each other, but with Julie and Jessie, it ran so much deeper than that. Not only were they crew, but they were sisters, twin sisters, and that was something that came above all else, even if they'd always been complete opposites.

Julie took off her dress, so glad that her sister hadn't noticed, yet sad that it was for the reason it was, and she got ready for bed. She sat down on her bed with her phone in her hands, and she thought about her day.

How could she not have noticed that Jessie was pregnant? It wasn't like her sister had just found out and was barely into her pregnancy. She was five months along. They lived together, saw each other every single day. How had she missed it, she wondered? Was she that into herself, her thoughts of the family company, and her classes that she'd totally missed something that was right in front of her? The most important person in her life had needed her, and she hadn't seen it. How could she have let that happen? What else was she missing?

She thought back to the few months before. Her sister had been staying home every moment that she wasn't at work, and that was unusual. Not that she was a huge party girl or anything, but she liked to hang out with her friends, and she hadn't been doing it. So much had gone on. Both Julie and Jessie had taken Jack's death hard, harder than they'd ever taken anything before. Jessie had shown way more emotion than she ever had before, and that was saying a lot. Julie had thought it was strange, but it was making more sense knowing that Jessie had been pregnant then. Her hormones were going crazy. Just seeing how hard she was crying over being pregnant was another example of that. Jessie was always the one that kept her emotions in check. Most of the time, Julie couldn't tell what her sister was even thinking, but it had been different, and she'd missed it. Her sister had been wearing baggier clothes as well. How had she not seen that, she wondered? Jessie had always been confident with her body, but that had changed. Well, it wasn't the confidence as much as her hiding the baby bump she was sporting.

Julie let her head fall back, and she closed her eyes. She'd been a horrible sister and an awful crew member, but that would never happen again. She would never fail Jessie, not ever.

Julie sat up and grabbed her phone. One thing she hadn't told anyone, not her parents, not her sister, and not Cody either, was that she'd been offered a summer and possibly fall teaching position at the college. That offer had only come to her the day before, when her last class had ended, but she hadn't yet responded. She'd been going back and forth in her mind about her family's company and what she wanted for herself, and she'd needed more time to think. Jessie, on the other hand, knew exactly what she was doing. She loved her job at the hospital, and not once had she thought about leaving it to go home, so she was staying. If Julie even brought up her sister moving to a hospital close to their family, Jessie shot it down right away. Was it because she really loved her job, or was it because of the baby? Julie wasn't sure. She also wasn't sure how Jessie planned to keep her pregnancy and eventually her baby from her parents, but that was a thought for another day. The moment Jessie told Julie she was pregnant, Julie knew exactly what she was going to do, so as she sat on her bed, she made a decision she knew was going to come with major backlash. She hit reply on the email she'd received seconds after the call had come through offering her the teaching position, and she accepted the job.

Julie set her phone on the stand next to her bed. Then she fell back onto her pillow. Being there for her sister was more important than anyone or anything. She barely talked to her father, yet he expected her to run home to work for him. Cody seemed nice, and she honestly wanted to talk coding with him again, but she couldn't do that if she went home. She needed more time to figure out exactly what it was she wanted out of life. She knew she wanted to be somewhere she felt her work was appreciated, and she wasn't sure being somewhere she was given a job out of obligation was that place. The one thing she did know was that there was going to be a baby. She was going to be an aunt. That was the only thing she was sure of and the one thing she was going to hold onto.

As she closed her eyes, so many thoughts were going through her head. Her dad, Cody, the baby, her brother, and even Jack, they were all there, but there was one thing that was getting her so much more than the rest, and that was the fact that she was going to be keeping things from her mother. That was something she'd never done before, not ever.