SWNOVELS HUGE STEPS: Chapter 14
I don’t remember what it’s like not knowing how to cook. Ever since we were little, Mom made sure Jared and I knew the basics. By the time we were ten we knew how to cook chili, grilled cheese sandwiches, hot dogs, and even make a homemade pizza. I’ve always been proud of that, but looking down at the half-ass spaghetti and meatballs isn’t really giving me that vibe.
Outside of the kitchen, I hear Jared come in, his boots hitting the floor a little heavier than normal. “Hey, in here. Hope spaghetti’s okay. The noodles are kind of overcooked and mushy, but I’m sure it’s all right…”
Jared’s standing at the entryway to the kitchen, glaring. “You’re in a very charitable mood today.”
Confused, I look back down at the pitiful noodles in the pot. “I always cook us dinner.”
Jared smirks. “No, Jamie. I’m not talking about dinner. I thought we agreed not to go after Abigail?”
“What?”
“The waste disposal. You just happened to be passing with an expensive bit of hardware, I suppose.”
“I found the one you lost before, and I knew Abi needed one. No big deal.”
Jared steps further into the kitchen, leaning up against the refrigerator. “And feeling her up wasn’t part of the plan?”
Forgetting about the noodles, I take a step closer too. “No, no. It wasn’t like that. All I did was just…wait, how do you know about that?”
Now that I’m closer to my brother, something stands out like a sore thumb. Mom recently mentioned something about Jared needing a haircut, and funny enough, it seems his hair is magically shorter since I saw him this morning. For someone with a supposed eight or nine calls today, he sure had enough time to go to the barber. “Nice haircut,” I add. “Dude, you were just there, too, weren’t you?”
Jared waves me away, but I’m not letting him off that easily, especially as he’s acting all pissy about me helping Abi. “No, you were. That’s how you know about the garbage disposal. So, you came home to chew me out, but you did the same fucking thing! Go figure, asshole! What else happened? Did she give you a nice trim? Maybe rub your shoulders a little bit? Maybe rub something else, too?”
Jared grits his teeth at me but looks away, and that’s when I know I got him. “You know I’ll be honest. We kissed. It happened. We stopped though.”
As if that’s any consolation. “Nice.”
He’s back to the pissed off expression he walked in with. “So you’re telling me nothing like that happened when you went over there earlier?”
“I didn’t say that. Abi, she…kissed me. But I broke it off because we already agreed.”
The timer on the stove goes off, breaking us both of the tension between us. I flip off the dial for the sauce and turn back to my brother. “What a right fucking pair we are.”
Jared pulls away from the refrigerator, shrugging. “I think we have to face the facts, Jamie. It’s clear we both feel something for her. And as much as she’s fighting it, she seems to like us too. The question is, what do we do about it?”
I lean against the wall across from him and sigh, unsure of how to really answer him. “I don’t know, man. If it were easy, we wouldn’t be having a mother’s meeting about it.”
And it’s true. We’ve shared some wild ass chicks in the past, and there was always this unspoken agreement where we never really did much else with them past a one-night stand type deal. But this is Abi and not only do we have to think about her feelings in this situation, but there’s always the chance that this could cause a much bigger problem with our family. And there’s no way we want any part of that.
“Did she kiss you?” I finally ask the question that’s been burning in my head that past few minutes finally bursting through.
Jared shuffles his feet until they leave a small scuff mark on the linoleum. “I kissed her.”
I don’t know whether to be angry with him or to gloat. “And you come in here to make me feel guilty.”
“I don’t know how you stopped it. It was damn near impossible for me, and I’m the one who initiated things with her.”
But that’s the thing with Abi. She makes you feel like that the only option is whatever gets you closest to her.