Page 151 of Dirty Rock

“One of you?” I scowled.

“Yeah.” Pres laughed. “A pussy-whipped mug.”

“Can’t say I mind.” I laughed with him.

We ended the call after a few more jokes, and another satisfied feeling settled in my chest. All those times I thought I’d been alone had had nothing to do with the people around me. They’d always been friends. I’d just been too lost in that damn void to realise it.

We were more than just a band. We were brothers in all of this.

The beach I was sitting upon was becoming my place of solitude, and I revelled in it for a few minutes before I saw a familiar body walking towards me.

“Sarah?” I called out. Her long, blonde hair swam in the direction of the wind, and her eyes were red raw. I couldn’t see Jules chasing after her sister, so I assumed they’d talked, and Sarah now knew what was happening.

She wore a chunky woollen jumper, and just like the way her sister stood, she curled her arms against her chest and looked out to sea. Her body was a little rounder than Julia’s, but it wasn’t much different. Two people who looked the same yet were bizarrely worlds apart.

Twins baffled me.

Twins.

The thought struck me like lightning.

What if Julia was carrying two babies? Not just one?

Sarah caught my eye just as I swallowed down the thought, and she stared at me like I was the last person she ever wanted to see.

I stood immediately, dusting down my jeans and hooking my thumbs into the back pockets.

Sarah looked around, perhaps for an escape, before she bowed her head and reluctantly came closer. The tear stains down her cheeks were obvious. Her emotions were over spilling, and today’s were, quite possibly, the worst of all. She came to stand beside me before she turned back to look out at the ocean with her swollen eyes narrowed.

“Do you love her?” she asked me after a minute of nothing.

“More than anything.”

“If you ever hurt her or the baby, I’ll kill you. You know that, right?”

“I’d want you to.”

Another minute of silence was swept away by with the winds, which were picking up. It felt like the whole world was getting faster, forcing me to face things I’d never had the chance to face.

“Are you… happy for her? For us?” I asked with more caution than I was used to.

“Right now, I’m being selfish and focusing on my own pain. Eventually, I’ll be happy for you both.”

“I know it’d mean a lot to her.”

Sarah turned to me slowly. “And you?”

“I don’t care what anyone thinks but Jules.”

“Especially not me?”

“You can be happy for us in time, when it feels right, or you can hate us for it. It makes no difference to the way I’m gonna love her and the baby.”

“Nice.”

“Honest,” I corrected her.

“Seeing you two together in the papers and all over the news was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” she said like that was painful to set free.

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