Authors: Lindsay Delagair
The Substitute (2 page)
As soon as they bailed out of the truck, Andy asked Gabe if he’d like to come back to the house.
Gabe glanced to Candy.
“I’m sorry, I’ve got to work tonight—Saturday night’s are busy,” she said with a little smile. “Matter of fact, I was just going to tell you bye from here and see you tomorrow,” she added hesitantly. “If you want to that is.”
“Sure that’s fine. I’ll call you later,” he said as he gave her a kiss on the cheek.
Jen was surprised. She expected he’d go for a tongue bath and a chance to rub against those big tits, but he was being a gentleman.
“Your house sounds great,” he said, turning to Andy and bumping fists.
She was trying to think what to fix for dinner on the drive home. She was tired and slightly sunburned, so cooking wasn’t very appealing. Ordering pizza was an idea, but they’d been spending too much this month.
She finally resigned herself to thawing out a couple ready-grilled chicken breasts and making some big chicken sandwiches when Andy told her he was going to take Gabe out for a while; just the two of them.
“Oh,” she said, knowing he planned to tell Gabe, but why the cloak-and-dagger routine? “You don’t want me along?”
They pulled into the driveway as he leaned over and kissed her. “Not this time. We’ll be back in a while. Would you mind fixing us something to eat?”
“Not at all. Chicken sandwiches okay with you?”
“Sounds good. Bye.”
As soon as Gabe pulled in behind them, she watched Andy go to the driver’s door and talk for a moment and then around to the passenger’s side and climbed in.
She was honestly glad that he decided to do it this way. She hadn’t had an opportunity to straighten the house when they left that morning, now she could clean it up.
When the guys returned a couple hours later, the house was sparkling clean and she had all the goodies set out to make sandwiches. She threw the breasts into the microwave to warm them, opened a bag of chips, and set out a couple glasses of ice for whatever they decided to drink. To her surprise, Gabe came into the house with a beer in one hand and a six pack with four beers missing dangling from his fingers. He was on his way to getting drunk!
“You’d better not have been driving like that,” she scolded.
“I drove,” Andy said as Gabe flopped onto the couch.
“So did you tell him?”
“Yup, he told me,” Gabe spoke up and then unsuccessfully tried to cover a burp. “Cancer free,” he said staring at Jen.
She fixed his sandwich and brought it to him. He was a bit disheveled, still shirtless and wearing his board shorts that had long since dried. His thick wavy golden hair was tousled from constantly wiping it back with his fingers. His six-pack abs were red hours ago, but had already started to tan and his thick biceps constantly looked like he was flexing, but it was just that he was so damned muscular from all his military training.
He looked at the sandwich, back to Jen, and then promptly downed his beer and opened another.
“Slow down, Cowboy,” she chided him. “Eat or you’re gonna pass out.”
“Sleep on our couch,” Andy added. “I’m not letting you drive home like this.”
He never touched his sandwich. He polished off the last of the beers and fell asleep.
“What’s with him?” She asked as they prepared to go to bed. “I expected him to be happy about what the doctor said, but I didn’t think he’d get stone-cold drunk over it.”
“He was happy about what the doctor told me—most of it anyway.”
“Wh—what do you mean?” She said as some irrational fear took over that Andy might have convinced the doctor to hold something back when they talked.
“I told him I’m sterile now and that I can’t give you any children.”
“Oh. You didn’t have to tell anyone that, Andy. I mean other than your mom and my….”
“No, Jen, you don’t understand. I told him I
want
you to get pregnant. I want us to have kids so badly.”
“Andy, we can’t.”
“Do you remember when I asked you to trust me and you said that you would?”
She nodded.
“Do you still trust me?”
“Yeah,” she said, but she didn’t sound very confident at the moment.
“I asked Gabe to get you pregnant.”
The bottom of the universe seemed to open up and Jen felt like she had just fallen through it. “WHAT!”
“Calm down, please.”
“Calm down?! Oh, my god, Andy, what did you do? I can’t sleep with Gabe!”
“You told me that you had a crush on him,” he began.
“Yeah, I did—
in eleventh grade!”
“Look, Honey, I want you to get to experience motherhood. This is the only way it’s going to happen.”
“Bullshit! I’ll go to a fucking sperm bank. I can’t—can’t cheat on you!” She had begun to tremble all over as Andy wrapped her in his arms and held on tight.
“I don’t want you going to a sperm bank. I know right now the idea sounds flipping crazy, believe me, he thought the same thing when I asked him. I’ve given it a lot of thought. Even before the doctor told me we shouldn’t have kids; I’d already figured that out. Please trust me that this can be a good thing. I want children. Gabe doesn’t want to settle down. He wants to live a little until he finishes the military.”
“He probably has an STD, or several STDs!”
“He doesn’t. He’s not as wild as everyone thinks. A lot of what you see is show.”
“So you just figured you’d get him drunk and—and….”
“No. I wouldn’t let him touch you drunk. I told him I want the two of you to go on a date, sort of. Take a weekend off together whenever your….” His face reddened.
“Whenever I’m what? Whenever I’m okay with shagging your best friend?”
“No. Whenever your—your cycle or whatever it’s called is right for getting pregnant. I honestly don’t think I could handle him fucking you more than once or twice.”
She burst into tears. Andy was completely serious. Did she like Gabriel that way? She’d kissed him when they were teenagers before she chose Andy. She remembered how hot that kiss had been. She’d been willing to go farther, but he seemed more interested in playing the field, so she backed off. She went out with Andy—and then fell in love. She couldn’t deny that Gabe had been a fantasy of hers for a long time, but she’d always felt so ashamed to be in love with one man and day-dreaming about another. Surely that wasn’t natural, right?
“Shhh, Baby. Please don’t cry. I know you’re thinking that somehow this is wrong, but I know I don’t want you going to some sperm bank and picking a guy out of a folder that we don’t know anything about. Gabe is my best friend. We grew up together. He’s a show-off and a hot-dogger, but underneath all that he’s a good person. And—and he’s—he’s always liked you. When we started dating he told me to go for it because you were the hottest chick on campus, and that
you
deserved a nice guy.” He dried her tears and kissed the tip of her nose. “Think about it tonight and tell me in the morning. And, Jen,” he said tipping her chin back so that she had to look at him. “It’s okay to tell me no, but I want you to understand it is okay to tell me yes, too. I want to have a baby with you, and this
is
the best solution.”
She didn’t sleep much at all that night. She laid there and wondered about what Andy had said to her. She did want a family, but with his best friend? Gabriel was a very beautiful man, but what if the unthinkable happened? What if she fell for him? She loved Andy with every ounce of her life, but what if Gabe changed all that? What if she got pregnant and then Andy changed his mind? She was pretty certain he’d never ask her to have an abortion, but what if he grew angry and bitter that the child she carried wasn’t his? No, she knew Andy too well. He would be a good father whether the baby belonged to Gabe or a random number from a sperm bank. He was right about that though; she didn’t want to pick an unknown. And what would they tell their families about how she got pregnant? Just before dawn she fell into a worried sleep.
She woke a little after nine to discover that Andy was already out of the bed. She smelled the aroma of coffee as she pulled on her robe and stumbled for the kitchen. Gabe was seated at the breakfast bar nursing a cup of Joe and looking rough. He looked at her and then immediately looked down at his cup.
Andy was already fixing her coffee. He knew how she liked it; two sugars and a ton of cream. He put it on the bar next to Gabe. She picked it up and left a chair between them.
“Did you decide?” Andy asked point-blank.
She felt the color drain from her face.
“Look you two,” he began, “we’ve got to be able to discuss this like adults, not like little kids hiding a dirty secret. Gabe, did you decide?”
She was shocked. She had assumed all along that Gabe told him yes. She never dreamed that he hadn’t given his answer.
Gabe looked up, first to Andy, but then he seemed to realize he needed to address the woman sitting near him. “Jennifer, I—I….”
She was certain he was getting ready to turn down the offer. The offer she had finally accepted just before dawn.
“I would be honored if you’d allow me to be the guy to—to provide a family for you two.”
She had an unintentional quiver roll up from the bottom of her panties to her solar plexus. He was keeping her in his dark blue gaze, waiting for her response.
Oh my god, she thought, my lips don’t work! She took a sip of coffee to thaw them apart. Both men were staring at her by this point. She still couldn’t speak.
“Jen,” Andy began.
“I—yes, okay. Yes I do want a baby.”
“Great!” Andy said sounding as chipper as if they had been discussing another rafting trip. He disappeared from the kitchen for a moment and then came out with her wall calendar in hand. “Okay, you finished your period three days ago and…”
“Andy!” She snapped, pulling the calendar from his grip.
“What? Baby, we’ve got to figure this out because he ships out in two months.”
“Forty-nine days,” Gabe corrected.
“See. We don’t have much time to plan. I googled all of this and next weekend should be perfect. The cabins up by the river would be a nice place to…”
“Andy stop, please,” she said, tears starting to form. “This is hard enough without you—you being so involved.”
“We could make this a three some,” Gabe offered sheepishly.
Jen cut her eyes toward him so hard you could almost hear the slice through the air.
“Or not,” he added and went back to staring at his coffee.
“I appreciate the offer,” Andy stated (to Jen’s utter amazement). “But, I don’t think I could be there watching you do her.”
“Then why….” She began.
“Because I’m okay with this as long as it doesn’t happen right in front of me or in our bedroom. Gabe is the only guy I’d ever trust with you. I know he’d—he’d never hurt you, Jen,” he stated as his emotions started to show. He may have been the one to plan this all out, but it was obviously difficult for him, too. “Friday afternoon,” he finally said sounding a little more in control. “Pick her up. I’ll make the arrangements.”
“But—but what about Candy? Aren’t you seeing each other?”
“No. We’re only friends,” Gabe stated with a little smile, confirming what Candy had already revealed. “I met her two weeks ago when I was leaving a club. She’d been there for a bachelor’s party, and I caught some asshole giving her a rough time in the parking lot. I beat the hell out of him; she and I have been buddies ever since.”
By the time Friday came around, Jen was a nervous wreck. She had changed her mind at least a hundred and fifty times during the week. At the moment she was back to ‘no-way-in-hell.’ Ten minutes later, Gabe’s truck was pulling into the driveway.
She watched him get out and walk up to the door. He was one of the best looking guys she’d ever met, besides Andy. She was up to ‘maybe,’ by the time he knocked. Andy had already told her goodbye. He said he didn’t want to watch them leave together. He was in the bedroom.
He knocked again.
Her pulse took off like a rocket. She opened the door and gave a weak smile.
He looked petrified. “Are you ready?”
She glanced toward the bedroom then back to Gabe. “I think so,” she said picking up her travel bag.
“Here, let me get that for you,” he said taking it from her shaking grip, but then pausing. “If you don’t want to do this, I understand, Jen. I’m not the guy you’re in love with.”
“No, but you’re a—a really wonderful friend—to both of us. Yeah, I’m ready.”
“Where’s he at?”
“He didn’t want to see us leave.”
“Jen, are you sure he’s okay. I mean I know this was his idea, but I’d never—I’d never do anything to hurt either one of you.”
“I know that. He’s okay. It’s just hard.” She stepped out the door and headed for his truck.
Andy had reserved them a cabin on the river. It was a charming one bedroom unit with a fireplace. She had to laugh a little when she saw it. He’d always told her he wanted a house with a fireplace. It was hot outside, almost muggy near the water, but the air conditioner had been turned down to seventy inside.
