Page 108 of Secret Baby for My Brother's Best Friends

“You didn’t do anything,” I admit, and I take a deep breath. “A few weeks ago, I got a call about Mrs. Freedman."

Jake’s eyes widen. "You're foster mom?"

“Yes. She’s dead.” Mrs. Freedman was the woman who ran my last foster home, and she's the closest thing to a mother figure that I ever had.

Unfortunately for her, by the time I met her, I didn't know what to do with a mother figure, and didn't need or want one. I met her when I was fifteen, after I had been moved around the system so many times that I told myself I didn’t care anymore. I told myself the rejections didn't hurt, losing people was a part of life, and if I had to close my heart off to them because no one could ever care about me.

So I turned down all her attempts to get closer to me, because I knew it would only hurt when I had to leave again. I was almost sixteen at that point, almost aging out of the system. The second I turned eighteen, I knew I would get kicked out of her home and have to fend for myself, and so I decided to just make it easier on both of us so we could both make a clean break when the time came.

Yet she kept trying, kept asking me personal questions about how I felt, kept wanting to get to know me.

Until she eventually stopped.

She was still kind to me, no doubt, but she stopped the casual conversation, focusing her affectionate energy on the rest of the foster kids in her care.

A week before I met Chelsea, I heard Mrs. Freedman had passed away, and that must have triggered one of the worst spiraling sessions I've ever had. I painted and carved and molded to get rid of the burning anger within me, one that had no outlet. I felt like I was losing my mind a little because I didn't even know why I was spiraling. It wasn't like we were close. It wasn't like I ever made an effort to reach out to her in the years since I'd been gone.

But she did reach out to me a few times. Sent me Christmas cards now and then. Told me that she saw me on the news, the one time Adam had forced us all to do a local interview.

And when she'd died, she remembered enough to ask them to send me an invitation to her will reading, where she apparently left me a bicycle she bought for me, which I'd ridden to school every day and didn't take with me when I left for college. She never sold it. She kept it for me the entire time, even though I never gave her any indication I was coming back. I was a piece of shit to her, and the only one who knew about it was Jake.

Maybe that was the reason why it was easier to take my anger out on him and push him away. Adam and I met in college, so it was easier for me to hang out with him because he didn't know about my past beyond that. But Jake knew. He knew how ugly it all got. Telling him she was dead would be like stripping naked and showing all my faults.

I needed to distract myself. Maybe that was what made me more susceptible to my obsession with Chelsea. It had started as an obsession, and I fully acknowledge it, but now it has turned into something more.

But before I can admit my feelings to Chelsea, I have to acknowledge how I hurt my best friend.

“I’m so sorry, man," Jake says. "Why didn’t you want to tell me?”

“I didn't want you to know. I thought that maybe it would bring back bad memories of your time in foster care. And also, I always remember you telling me in high school to treat her better, and I never listened. I thought admitting she had died would..."

"What? Make me think less of you?" He snorts. "You forget that I know you, buddy. I know why you acted the way you did with her. I know that you were scared that you would eventually come to care about her."

"I wasn't scared."

"Yes, you were. It took forever for you to open up to me, and I'm a stubborn motherfucker. Your avoidance is a direct consequence of your early childhood abandonment."

"Now you're using therapy speak, too. You sound like Adam."

He laughs but sobers quickly. “Still. You should have told me."

"Maybe." I sigh. "I also...I don’t think I’ve been a good friend to you lately. It wasn't easy being around you while I was spiraling because, well, you know me too well."

"Hmmm. I thought you just liked Adam more now."

I shake my head. "Adam’s cool. Bossy though."

"Very bossy. It's like he thinks he's our dad."

"And he cooks too much."

"Always trying to take care of us...fucking irritating."

We stare at each other mid-laugh, and just like that, things are mended. I know I'll probably still have to make it up to him. I'llhave to come out of my shell and not withdraw. I want to be the best possible guy for Chelsea, and the best father for our child.

"Want to go to therapy together?" I ask at the end of the speech.

He sighs, and I think he's going to say no, but he shrugs. "Sure. Why not?