HUGE STEPS: A TWIN MFM MENAGE STEPBROTHER ROMANCE (HUGE Series)
HUGE STEPS: Chapter 1

It took me three days to finally decide on this dress.

This is what I’m thinking as I hear the whispering outside. Whispering that sends a rush of embarrassment through me. Embarrassment and panic are a terrible combination.

Three. Days.

I kept going back and forth between this one and the softer, lighter-colored dress that was more my style. Still, the saleslady was pretty adamant about the dark satin texture, and I guess I thought that Cody would like this one best. I was in such a blur of planning and dreaming that my feet were hardly on the floor, and my head was barely screwed on tight enough.

At least the dark color of the dress does a good job of hiding the tear stains on my lap…

Outside there’s more whispering, the snippets I catch echoing softly around the ladies’ restroom. The way they’re trying to keep their voices down is almost laughable. Numbly wiping at my wet cheeks, I sniffle and clear my throat, feeling ridiculous. Dramatics have never really been my thing, and I hate the idea of being the object of anyone’s pity.

The phone vibrates in my hand, startling me, and my heart sinks just as it starts to pathetically float upward in my chest. It’s just my friend, Bailey. Judging by all the exclamation marks blurring together on the small watery-looking screen, I’d say she’s just a tad concerned.

But it’s not him, so I set the phone back down for a moment, not bothering to really read the text. I worry at the corner of my lip before quickly tapping the keyboard and redialing, hoping for the hundredth time that he picks up.

Maybe it’s traffic.

Maybe he had a flat tire.

Or maybe he was just, well, nervous. This thought fills me with another rush of panic.

The engagement party was set to start at six o’clock on the dot, and I know he didn’t just suddenly forget the time. Not with the way his mother mentioned it every other sentence lately. Besides, Cody is just way too efficient at life, and usually way too honorable with his social etiquette for something like that to be the case. He’s either lying in a ditch on the side of the road somewhere or ignoring me—there is no in between.

A loud, quick knock breaks me from my hazy thoughts and I immediately smooth down the front of my dress as if whoever is on the other side of the door can actually see me. “Yes?”

“Abi, please come out,” my father’s strong but subtle voice pleads.

But if I come out then it means it’s real. That whatever is keeping my fiancé from showing up to our engagement party is real, and no matter what it is, it’s not good. No news is good news in this scenario.

“I’m just…” but I let my voice trail off and shake my head at myself. There’s really no point spending the next however long until I hear from Cody, sitting on this grimy toilet. With every bit of effort that I can muster, I stand up and smooth down the dress again, suddenly feeling very stifled by it.

It takes a moment to wash my face enough to get the messy lines of makeup off, but I emerge from the ladies’ restroom looking as put-together as I possibly can, considering.

Dad sighs, wrapping one arm around me. “We don’t know what’s keeping him, Abi. It could be nothing more than car trouble.” My dad is known as a realist, and the doubt in his voice isn’t exactly helping matters any.

I nod, not really wanting to agree with him since he and I both know how Cody’s phone is practically grafted to his hand at all times, and if it were just car trouble keeping him back, it certainly wouldn’t be impairing him from texting a simple ‘I’m alive,’ or ‘sorry I’m late.’ So, I let Dad guide me back into the elegantly-decorated room where everyone else is quietly mingling, doing their very best to avoid eye contact with me. My cheeks burn with shame.

“I’m going to check in with Natalie. See if she needs help in the back.” Dad gives me a quick kiss on the forehead, squeezing me around the shoulders before heading toward the kitchen area of the banquet room. As much as I hate the idea of dealing with this dread in front of him, it would’ve been nice not to have to stand here alone, as if I’m some middle-schooler waiting on someone to shyly come up to me at a school dance.

Just as I’m about to replace the seat furthest away from everyone else, a quiet sound catches my attention. “Abi!” someone hisses.

I turn around to see my best friend, Shay, leaning around the corner of the nearby exit, and I hop up. “What are you doing? I thought you were tracking down Mich…”

Cody’s best friend, Michael, peeks around the corner too, as I rush over, the look on his face enough to stop me dead in my tracks.

“I found him,” Shay says weakly, not even bothering to crack a smile like usual.

I do a quick survey of the room and as soon as I’m sure no one’s paying me any attention, I slip outside to join them. “What’s going on?”

Shay nods to Michael. “Tell her.”

After shuffling his feet for a moment, he finally looks at me and shakes his head. “He’s not coming, Abi.”

It’s like I hear the words nice and clear, but they don’t mean anything in my head. “What do you mean he’s not coming?”

“He called me about fifteen minutes ago while we were on our way to his place. He said there was no need to come…that he wasn’t going to show up.”

I’m aware of the stars coming out one by one overhead as if they’re just poked holes through the warm, dark blanket of trust I’ve had with Cody for the past three years. “Was that all he said?” I ask, my voice gravelly. Shay reaches out to hold my hand, squeezing it.

“We showed up and uh, well…”

Shay’s patience level immediately drops below zero as she huffs, “Jesus Christ, Michael, just fucking spit it out already! We got there and I made him tell us the truth. He said he didn’t want a serious relationship right now and that it was a mistake to propose in the first place. He was also pretty wasted with a bottle of whiskey in his hand, so the rest of it was mostly just one long, unintelligible slur. It was like something out of some shitty rom-com Abi, I’m…I’m so sorry,” she finishes all in one breath, pulling me into her arms.

I don’t know how many times it takes me to catch my breath, but as soon as I manage to drag it back into my chest, it rushes out sort of like a slowly deflating balloon. “He…he…” But I can’t finish the sentence because if I do then that would make it real, and things like this only happen in the previously mentioned crappy rom-coms.

This is real life.

This is my life.

“He didn’t want to commit to you, he wasn’t ready for any of it, and he was sorry, basically, is what I understood from it,” Michael adds, looking as if he’d very much rather be anywhere else than in front of me and my splotchy face.

I step out of Shay’s hug, trying to shake myself out of this weird daze, and think back on the signs. They were there, of course they were…his unstable moods whenever the engagement was brought up, his flakiness. Even before he proposed there were so many moments that I thought to myself that I was dealing with some kind of petulant child and not my boyfriend.

“This is my fault,” I whisper, unable to help myself. I hold up my hand as Shay takes a step forward and shakes her head violently. “No, no, it is, Shay. I always made these lame excuses for him whenever he’d break his promises before, telling myself that he just had a lot on his mind, or that he had a terrible memory, or that I was just blowing things out of proportion. All the signs they were…they were already there. This was never going to work.”

Shay’s voice is lost in the fog of my brain as they both walk me back inside, and even though my parents and everyone else who has come up to me to tell me good-bye have been talking the whole time, I don’t really listen. I know what she’s saying—not to beat myself up about any of it, but it’s kind of hard not to when I already had a feeling that something like this could happen with him.

This is what I get for falling for the class clown. Cody could never take himself seriously enough, not when it came time to get real about things. About our future together. I mean…even my own step-brothers who I’ve argued with plenty of times before, are more mature than Cody.

Someone shakes my shoulder, and I realize that I’m standing back inside and that the room has pretty much emptied out.

“Hey, honey. Why don’t we go ahead and get you back home? The boys and I can make sure everything’s wrapped up here,” Natalie, my step-mom, whispers.

I nod. “Sure. Thanks, Nat.”

She gives me a squeeze and behind her I see the twins, Jamie and Jared, sharing a dark expression. Say what you will about them, but at least they care enough to be angry at what’s going on. While everyone else is trying to placate me, there’s no doubt about how they feel. Not with Jared’s stance solid and the veins in Jamie’s thick biceps bulging as he balls his fists up at his sides. Unbelievable. My brain is misfiring so badly that my eyes linger on the two of them before I finally look away. Yes, because that’s what I need right now—to be staring at them like a weirdo thinking things that I try to avoid because it’s just not appropriate.

I watch the stars glittering above us on the way back to my dad’s and Natalie’s home. It doesn’t take us long before we get there. I could probably make the case that I am okay to drive over to my apartment, but I tell everyone I need a shower and some major sleep instead. That way no one thinks twice about barging in on me in my old room, leaving me alone.

I’m able to put on a neutral expression for everyone else’s benefit, but as soon as the door is shut behind me everything inside of me crumbles. I slide down along the door until I’m lurched forward, the sobs building up until they spill out.

I desperately reach for the stereo and put my loudest music on full-tilt, trying to drown out my humiliation and disappointment from everyone else’s ears.