Still, I was curious as to what had caused this fuss. It had to be some big misunderstanding that had nothing to do with reality.
Sam and I wasted little time heading up the stairs and moving toward Grace’s designated room.
Sure, we came on a little strong, but she was the type of girl to inspire such behavior in us. We never overstepped the mark of decency or any boundaries.
But neither of us were going to stop pursuing her until we got a solid rejection.
She wanted us as badly as we wanted her, and she wanted two other guys on top of that.
It was all too obvious.
And then she also had to tell us about the pregnancy.
Until she did that and told us what she wanted to do, we couldn’t help with that, as none of us knew for sure. Even Noah was only guessing.
When I rapped on the door, I cleared my throat and called, “Grace? You there? It’s your favorite stepbrother here to entertain you.”
As I expected, I didn’t get an immediate response.
“Come on now. Both of us know that you’re in there,” Sam tried. “We can do this whole song and dance about beating on your door for fifteen minutes until you relent and open it anyway, or we can just cut to the chase. If you’ve already got a dude in there, don’t throw him out the window. Just cover his ass in the bedcovers.”
My brother made me smile, as always. “Let’s just get to the point, hey?”
Sam winked.
She heard our logical plea and she cracked open the door.
“What do you want?” she asked as if she didn’t know the answer. Well, in the general sense anyway, I guess we were technically here for something else besides what we always wanted.
The nice thing about being a twin is you had two minds focused on getting to the object. While I wondered how to begin, Sam went ahead. “So, uh, the old man told us we’ve been rude to you.”
She silently glared at us for a moment before pinching the bridge of her nose and shaking her head. “Oh, God, she did totally mistake my words. I’m so sorry.”
“Huh?”
“Come in, and there’s no man in here. Not even in the closet or under the bed.”
We stepped into her room, and it looked much like it did on her first day in the house. The bed in the middle of the room was the only clue that the room was, in fact, used as a living space. The rest of the room was stacked with boxes and piles of clothes. There was nowhere to sit but on a tiny patch of clear floor or on the bed. I caught sight of a chair covered by a pile of clothes, and I suspected there might be another chair buried in the room, somewhere.
“My mother. She wondered why I’d been avoiding home so much when I used to practically live here when we were back at school. She asked, so I honestly admitted the reason involved you two, and she jumped to the wrong conclusion. She thinks you two must have been doing something to spurn me and be rude to me. That... I dunno, you went full high school bully on me and I’ve been hiding from you. But that story was created in her own head, I put her straight, but she obviously didn’t listen.”
My brother and I exchanged glances again.
And then we burst into laughter at the idea that either of us would be high school bullies who’d tormented our new stepsister out of jealousy or petty mindedness. Why would we bother? What would be our motive?
Grace sat down on her bed and giggled too.
I laughed harder, given her mother knew us, our father knew us. That wasn’t us. Some kids were cruel, merciless bastards, but not most kids.
“Good, good, we can go and tell her that’s not the issue.” I sat on the bed next to Grace and placed a hand on her shoulder.
Sam perched on the mountainside of the pile of debris covering the chair. “First, I think we should address the real issue. The ‘why you’re hiding from us’ issue, Grace.”
She grimaced.
“Yeah. Why would you be running from your very loving stepbrothers who only want to love and care for you?” I asked.
Sam shuffled about to get more comfy and beamed at us.
“You don’t know how hard this all is for me.” Gracey closed her eyes, thereby avoiding making eye contact with us.
“Just because you can’t see me, Gray, doesn’t mean you’ll forget how gorgeous I am,” Sam said.
Gracey ignored him. “I can think of so many reasons why what we did was wrong and why it’s even more wrong with what’s happened. You’re going to be my stepbrothers. We can’t exactly be, uh... doing things. It’ll make the holidays awkward.”