Chapter 12 #2
“We were gonna have a kid,” he finally tells me.
Maybe he isn’t talking to me. I can’t be sure, one way or the other.
“We’re at dinner last night, and Jules says something about ‘we should try.’ My first thought was, ‘we just lost him, is she crazy?’ But we didn’t.
It’s been two years; and I keep thinking that maybe everything’s just been fucked since. ”
His faraway stare in the direction of the bollard next to me suggests that he might not even be aware that he’s saying all of this out loud.
“What the hell?” I gape. “How did I not know about that?”
A hollow chuckle slips out of him as he pulls in a drag from his cigarette, tilting his head toward the sky to blow out a stream of smoke as the hint of a wistful smile ghosts across his lips.
“It was getting hard, but she hid the belly really well,” he tells me. “We were gonna keep it to ourselves as long as we could and pull out one of those ‘surprise, we had a baby’ deals. Jules saw it on the internet and thought it was great.”
Flicking the butt of the cigarette onto the ground and stomping out the ash with his toe, he says, “I lied to you about us going up to Orlando; we were dealing with procedures and funeral homes and…we just didn’t wanna see anyone after we lost him.”
“I didn’t know you guys even wanted kids.”
I cringe the second the words leave my mouth.
Stupid comment, I tell myself. That was so incredibly stupid.
“We wanted that one,” he shrugs, “and a whole bunch more of them after him.”
No matter how deep I dig into my memory, I can’t think of a single moment that would have led me to believe anything was going on with the two of them, good, bad, or otherwise. I remember Tripp being in his usual good mood, tattooing clients and coming out with me for late night rides.
I remember how out-of-the-blue it seemed when he texted to let me know that they were going out of town – to Orlando, of all places – but when he came back, he seemed fine.
He didn’t have much to say about their trip, but I just wrote it off as some married couple stuff that wasn’t any of my business, anyway.
“I’m sorry, T-Mo,” I finally tell him. “If I’d have known—”
“B’s the only one who knew anything about him,” he says with a dismissive shake of his head, “and that was only because I didn’t know what the fuck to do for Jules. I thought it was gonna kill her.”
Pulling another cigarette from the pack, he says, “I told B I needed help fixing it, and he told me to stop trying. ‘You can’t fix this. Stop trying to fix it and just hold space for it.’ Might be the best advice he’s ever given me.”
Like his brother told him to do, I sit in silence, watching as Tripp pulls drag after drag from the smoke in his hand until it’s nothing but ash. Tossing the butt to the ground next to the other, he grinds his toe against it and clears his throat.
“Keep these away from me for a while, will you? Fuck.”
I catch the pack of cigarettes as he tosses them in my direction, tucking them into the pocket of my flannel.
I shouldn’t say this. I shouldn’t ask.
“You don’t think she’s pregnant again, do you?”
I need to learn to keep my mouth shut.
“That would be immaculate fucking conception and I’d have to rethink the whole atheism thing,” he says. “Unless—” he cuts himself off with a shake of his head as he reaches for his helmet. “Never mind. We going?”
“Unless what?” I ask as I pull on my helmet, securing it into place.
I can hear my heart slamming in my ear drums.
Tripp’s voice crackles to life through my Cardo. “Nothing.”
He slides across the seat of his bike, flipping up the kickstand as he revs the engine, telling me without words that our conversation is over. His chest is lowered toward his fuel tank and he’s peeling out of the lot before I’ve even gotten my own kickstand up.
Shit.
I hurry to catch up and follow behind him, barely making it past a sedan without clipping it as we weave between lanes of traffic.
The Cardo is silent while we ride; no conversation, no music.
The only thing I can hear is the sound of my own engine, which is slowly drowned out by a single repeating thought.
He knows.
The roads aren’t empty tonight like we usually like them to be, which leaves us splitting between rows of cars until we hit an open patch of road on the highway.
Tripp’s speed picks up, and I ramp up my own in response to keep up with him, scanning ahead of us for any incoming patrol cars or obstacles that might cause us issues. As my speedometer climbs past a hundred and fifteen, I blow the horn on my bike.
“Pull off on the shoulder,” I tell him.
I get nothing from him in response.
“You fail two out of six,” I grit. “Don’t be stupid.”
An aggravated growl rips through the comms unit, but his bike veers toward the shoulder as it starts to decelerate, and I follow behind. I’ve already lost enough friends who rode upset, I’m not adding him to that list.
Even if it’s my own damn fault.
Pulling my bike to a stop behind his, I climb off of it and move to snatch his key as he dismounts. He pulls off his helmet and rests it on the seat of his bike, stepping away as he runs his fingers through his hair with a groan.
I slide out of my own helmet, waiting with my heart slamming against the wall of my chest as he walks away from me and out of my eye line for only a minute before he returns.
When he does, he swings his foot toward the guard rail next to him with a loud curse, shoving his hands into his hair once again.
There’s a pain etched into his features that I’ve only seen a few times before, normally when he mentions his oldest brother, the one whose name is written into the space behind his ear.
My hand tightens around the keys in my hand with enough force that I think it may cut right through me.
Everything inside of me wants to look away from him, but I can’t let myself do that.
“I gotta get home,” he tells me.
“So take a minute to calm down or hop on the pegs and have someone come pick her up,” I say, angling my head toward his bike. “You’re not getting back on the road like this.”
His gaze moves between his bike and my own, the wheels in his head visibly turning as he tries to make whatever decision it is that feels right to him, before finally dropping to the ground to sit against the guard rail that he just got done kicking the shit out of.
I’m not sure if he cares about our lack of conversation. I’m not sure that he even notices it, if I’m being honest.
I do, though, and all I can think is that he knows, he knows, he goddamn fucking knows.
I can feel Julia’s skin against my palms and the warmth of her lips wrapped around my dick.
Every conversation she’s had with me over the past month that should have been with him plays in my head like a broken record.
I swear he can hear the slamming of my heart echoing through my chest while I wait for him to launch at me any second and take my head off.
A small handful of cars zoom past us, and I wave away each of them as they slow and seem to look toward us, expecting to see the scene of some grisly accident.
No accident here, but it may become the scene of a murder.
“I’m good to ride,” he announces after what has to be fifteen minutes of horrible silence.
“Keep it under a hundred,” I tell him as I slip my helmet back into place.
Our ride back is quiet, save for the screeching in my head, and when we pull up to the Montgomery house, I brace my hands against my fuel tank.
Tripp’s bike crawls up the driveway, disappearing into the garage without a word, and my stomach churns.
He knows.