*****051:

Aubrey

I made it to the house panting, and stopped on the patio leaning against the barbecue because it was closest. The bricks were searing my bare feet, and I looked around like some kind of googly eyed monster that couldn't see over her stomach, trying to remember where I'd kicked off my flip flops. Oh, there they were.

Ben was sitting on the edge of a patio chair holding them for me. "So?"

He leaned over and set them on the ground for me and I gratefully slipped into them. I fell onto the chair beside him, same chair, right? He scooted over slightly for me, and we both felt the chair bow with my weight. I winced. I just wanted to lay down.

Ben was dressed in nice shorts and a nice lightweight pink and green striped blouse. His sparsely hairy legs were tanned under the golden hairs. I stared at the ground, then at his toes, feeling my heartbeat return to normal.

"He's still out there." He said trying to engage me. He wanted to know what was going on. I did too.

"He's okay. He's not stupid."

Ben looked over the small retaining wall, with Felicity's last painted flower pot and her dead flower. Then he looked back at me. "Are you okay? We should get you inside."

"It's too hot." I said, even with the breeze, here next to the house, the air was confining.

Ben stood up and opened the glass doors for me. I pushed off a couple of times, getting some leverage and then made it up. I gave him my most grateful expression which probably had more in common with a spitting llama grin, and waddled past him. My back was aching something terrible.

I went past Laura and her helper chatting away in the kitchen, and barely gave them a wave, then traversed the hallway to the bathroom. Always the bathroom.

Ben was in my room, sitting on the one chair we'd put in there. "Will you tell me what happened? What did he say?"

It took me a few more minutes to situate myself on the bed. Finally, I was comfortable enough to look at him. "He says he's going to Mexico."

Ben's face looked irritated, then skeptical, then angry. And Ben has a kind of baby face that doesn't ever look angry. His hair had been long when I'd first met him, long and thick, and perfect for the rocker guy he wanted to be. He was clean shaven, most of the time, sometimes he let it all grow, and then he reminded me of James Valentine of Maroon 5. His eyes were crinkly, but in the dimmer light of my bedroom they were open and fringed in short brown lashes, all neatly visible as he approached and sat on the side of the bed.

"What did you say to him?"

"I told him no."

"And did he give you a reason why he wants to go to Mexico?"

I had to shake my head.

And change the subject. There was nothing to tell. And telling would only make Rafe mad anyway.

"Ben--- can I ask you something?"

He nodded slowly and his eyelids lowered hoping for that casual unguarded expression. He wanted me to feel he was being honest. Which might have meant that he was planning to keep things from me. I'd become adept at reading those expressions on people as they decided what to say to me. What wouldn't stress me out?

Knowing what was going on, that wouldn't stress me out. Not knowing--- that was stressing me out.

"What's really up with you and Hannah?"

"I told you guys the other day." He blew out his breath. I guess he'd been expecting a different question. This one he felt he could answer. "We've been seeing each other. She needed someone who understood the dynamic of the band to help her get over Jeremy, and we hit it off from there."

"You really did? Like how?"

He shrugged and smiled somewhat sheepishly. "I had been coming over one night to talk to Rafe, I was just getting back from a meeting with my Bishop, and if you have to know, I'd decided to be less active in church. The pressure to live the lifestyle all at once was too much for me. You don't know about everything I consider wrong in my life, but---- look Aubrey. My parents are very active members of the church. They live in Iowa, as do all my siblings. Now. But when I was little we lived right here in Southern California. And I was a cute little Mormon boy and did everything I was told. And I'm the oldest kid in my family, so I had to be the good example. And when I met Rafe, who was also a cute little Mormon boy, I felt I'd met a soul mate, and he helped me overcome that cute little Mormon boy image. Because his family didn't expect it."

I rolled my fingers in the air to get him to get to the point. I knew his family history. "What about Hannah? That night?"

"I was coming to tell Rafe my decision, and Hannah was outside, on the doorstep, crying. I couldn't just walk past her, so I sat down and talked to her. She was pretty busted up about her sister falling for Jeremy---- you've got to admit it's pretty weird, she had to have been in love with him before she let on, otherwise it happened too fast, right?"

I rolled my fingers again. I knew all about Jeremy and Abbie's secret liaison.

He sighed. "I took her out for coffee. She'd never had coffee and she hated it, but it felt good to be rebellious, no matter how little of a thing it was." He chuckled to himself at the memory, and I shrugged. It probably felt like sin to a girl raised as strictly as Hannah. For Ben, I doubted he even thought about it twice--- okay, maybe twice, but I bet it didn't bother him. "And then I asked her to come to a meeting with me."

Now that got my attention. "A meeting?"

"An ARP meeting."

I had sat forward as much as the belly would let me, and now I drew up my legs and leaned back, forcing myself to relax. "An ARP meeting."

"Addiction Recovery Program." He said for good measure like I was an idiot.

"I know what ARP stands for." I rolled my fingers again as if I also knew why he would attend. Which I didn't.

"It wasn't any old ARP meeting." Ben said slowly, his eyes keenly watching me. "It's one where couples go together, and they work on the same workbook and materials, but they split up and talk in group about their own issues, and then come back together afterward, sometimes----." He smiled in remembrance. "That night we did, and she got to my side and took my hand and laced our fingers and we've been close ever since."

"You attend ARP meetings together?" I clarified.

"Three times a week."

"And why is she attending?"

"To recover."

"And what does she think she's addicted to?"

"Aubrey, the workbook is for everybody, to learn more about Christ's atonement. That's all. Anyone can benefit from doing it. It's geared toward those who suffer from addictions, and those who suffer from addicted family members. Hannah's issues are her own. You've been to AA? It's like that--- anonymous. So don't ask."

I blinked. Hannah was addicted to something, or just going to impress Ben? Or be a support to him?

"And me? I'm an alcoholic, and a drug addict and addicted to porn. That last one is my hardest believe it or not."

I felt the world rocking and reeling, and forced myself to breathe. Sometimes you really didn't want to know all these things. "You hide your addictions really well. I've known recovering alcoholics and drug addicts and even porn addicts and they all manifest it in their faces. Apparently, you don't. The ravages of your drugs of choice don't show."

"I would have thought recently that everyone knew about me."

"I know you've been struggling with your testimony of the gospel, like having a hard time with the principles. I didn't realize you were also trying to give up major addictions."

He smiled openly. "I have a testimony, Aubrey. I don't always want to believe I do. It takes too much out of me. It's too deep. But I told you before I liked those things, and I was planning to take a break. But I didn't take a break. God sent me Hannah. But he sent her at the last possible second. Right when I was about to decide to leave the church again."

"And now you're not planning to leave the church?" I felt my belly tightening, deeply harder, starting in the back and moving around to the lower front. I closed my eyes and breathed.

"No--- Hannah and I are going to meetings and dating and exploring who we are together."

"Oh." Now, as interested as I was, I had to focus on the contraction. Was it the first of many? Were the babies stressing out over the news of Daddy going to Mexico and Uncle Ben dating Auntie Hannah?

It slowly receded, and I let out my held breath. Ben had stopped talking to eye my expression keenly.

"Was that a contraction?"

"Yes. But it doesn't mean anything."

"How do you know it doesn't mean anything?"

"Ben, just stop it. I'm fine." I held my breath as the tightening got really--- tight, and it felt like me and the five inside all held our collective breaths. This pain radiated.

Yuck. Did I actually tell people not to sweat early labor? As if early contractions were nothing? Even Braxton-Hicks contractions that really weren't accomplishing any of the work of actual labor. If that is what this was, I take back every word.

Either that or I am the world's biggest wimp.

Ben moved over to sit beside me, he tentatively put one hand on my lower back. "I've heard that pressure here can help."

He pressed. It helped. I closed my eyes and blew out my breath. Stupid contraction.

It eased up.

I opened my eyes and laughed slightly, covering all the emotional trauma and discovery that one contraction just caused me.

And---- right on cue---Rafe walked in.

I noticed Ben's hand drop first. The warmth, the pressure, the perfection of deeply digging relief.

My eyes slowly rose. Rafe's face was completely full, overwhelmed with blatant shock.

"Damn it, Aubrey! What the f--- is Ben doing in my bedroom massaging your butt?"

My shock was just as great, and I felt no remorse, having just had my first real contraction, I did what every red-blooded mother of quints would do. I burst into tears.

Rafe slapped his hand to his forehead. "Get the f--- off my bed!"

Ben scrambled. "Rafe, why do you always jump to conclusions?"

"I don't need to jump to conclusions, motherf-----! I can see for myself, and there is absolutely no other explanation, no matter what."

I literally sobbed. Ben angrily stomped out of the room, and since this room is fairly close to the front of the house, I heard the front door slam as well. And my swimming eyes couldn't see where Rafe was so I covered them, tired of trying to make sense of his jealousy, and his infernal way of interpreting every little nuance in light of it.

"Aubrey--- ."

Apparently, he was still in the room. My hiccups hit with a vengeance. And they hurt. Each and every one stuck in my chest and felt like one of those mean contractions. One of the quints kicked my ribs and my hand rose to press it back instinctively, working up another hiccup. Another one stretched it's elbow into my bladder. Feeling sorry for myself was becoming a bad habit. My eyes overflowed again, and I didn't bother to wipe them.

"I'm so tired of this." I gritted out, my voice sounding eerily unlike myself.

"You are? You're tired of this? Every f-ing time I come in to talk to my wife, she's engaged with my best friend, and both of them want me to believe it's nothing."

I flung out my hands, both of them, sitting there looking like an enraged beluga rising out of the sea of my rumpled sundress---- suddenly feeling cold, despite the heat outside. Tears streaked my cheeks, and I swiped at them as they kept coming--- like a fountain. "You are a hot-headed, hot-headed--- you are---- you jump to conclusions and ---- you---- you brought him here--- your whole band, you make our home---- our home is like their own home, and no room is sacred. I have no place to go to be alone, you--- Ben is like having another brother, and he's ---he's always needy---- like... not from me needy---- he's always hurting needy--- and you're off going to Mexico!"

I buried my face in my hands, knowing-- and angry about knowing -- that I sounded like an idiot! And that made the next contraction even worse. And scarier because there were two in a row, and that couldn't be good. Plus, it started in my back, and radiated around my middle and the babies all froze in terror, and my stomach just got tighter and tighter, and nothing I did could stop it.

"Aubrey—this has got to stop. I don't want Ben in here. I don't even want him over if he's going to be scoping out my half-dressed wife in her see-through gauzy dress with nothing on underneath. I can't deal with that. He's not welcome."

"You're stupid. You're so stupid." I mumbled clutching my middle, having nothing better to say.

*****