A/N - Sequel to Coming Back For You. I didn't really plan on turning this into a series of one shots, but I had another couple of ideas and I couldn't just leave the story hanging as it did.
So if you want me to do some more, I think I can probably do another two at least, tie the story up a wee bit more. Please review!
Making The First Move.
I sat in the car waiting for Matt to finish signing autographs for fans. As far as they were concerned I was still recovering from my slip on the ladder at last month's show. If only that was the only thing I was recovering from.
"They were asking for you," Matt told me, handing me a few gifts so he could get into the car. "You're down for being back for the taping next week if you feel up to it?" I shrugged my shoulders in reply and began looking through what the fans had given to Matt. In the three weeks that had passed since I had gotten out of the hospital, a shrug of the shoulders had become my reply to most things and Matt wasn't one to pry. Amy on the other the hand would interrogate me any chance she had, but had a week off and had gone to visit Sara.
Matt concentrated on his cell phone for most of the journey back to the hotel, "Amy?"
"Yeah, her and Sara are trying to cook for themselves," he laughed.
"But neither of them can cook, why don't they just go out?"
Matt gave me a look of disbelief as to why I had just asked that question. "People know about you and Sara. And if Amy's spotted with a quite obviously pregnant Sara…" He continued to talk but I stopped listening as soon as I heard the p word. That word had ruined everything. Or more specifically my reaction to that word.
We didn't talk for the rest of the journey back to the hotel. There had been an increasing number of silences between my brother and myself anytime Sara's name was mentioned. Amy and him would talk about people asking for her at work, and they asked me what they should tell them when that happened. Each time they asked that question I gave them the same answer, that I didn't know what they should say. I hadn't told anyone about Sara's pregnancy and I knew as it got further than between just myself, Matt and Amy, it would be all around the locker room and wherever else. I didn't even know who Sara had told. I was guessing that she hadn't told many people considering her magazine was still running as normal with no formal announcement of her leaving, or taking time off, or anything to do with her at all.
Instead of following Matt up to the room, I went to the store next door to the hotel for something to eat. I glanced at the news stand and immediately spotted the latest issue of the magazine that I had been torturing myself with for the past month. Intrigued to find out what Sara had been doing since her last article two weeks ago, I bought it.
"More torture tonight then?" Matt asked, picking up the magazine from the coffee table and flicking through it. "Have you read this?" I looked up from the TV and shook my head, "Blah blah blah, this is going to be my last article for a while, I'm working on a project that's going to keep me on home turf for a while. I can't say much about it, because to be honest, I don't really know what I'm going to encounter on this journey. But I am really looking forward to working closely with my sister at home in NC…" Typical Sara, cryptic as ever to her readers but completely obvious to me. Before I would've known that the intent of that was to make me smile. Talking in code, sometimes about me, for my amusement. I couldn't know that for sure this time though. She could've been doing it for old times sake. She could be doing it to spite me. "You know we'll be home for a few weeks after the taping next week, if she's at her sisters, you could go see her?"
"That wasn't an invitation Matt," I sighed, getting up and taking the magazine from him.
"You sure that isn't exactly what it was? Remember what she said at the hotel, she wanted you to come back to her, like she came back to you. She's telling you where to come back to…"
I ignored him and turned my attention back to the TV. I didn't want to listen to him lecturing me about what he would do if he was in my situation. He wasn't in my situation and he had no idea how I was feeling. Not even I was sure of how I was feeling. There was one thing I was sure of and that was that I missed Sara, I missed her like hell. Everyday I woke up and hoped that she would have managed to make an excuse for her to make a stop off in whatever city we were filming in to see me. I just needed the chance to explain.
Thankfully Matt took the hint and went out. I turned off the TV and flicked through the magazine. There were no new pictures of her, so I couldn't tell if she was starting to show yet. Maybe that was the whole reason of there being no new photos, maybe she was starting to show. She probably thought she looked fat even though she would look beautiful. She always looked beautiful. Damn, I miss her…
I was woken up from my sleep by Matt talking on his phone, most probably to Amy. He mouthed 'sorry' to me, but continued to talk at the same volume as he had done that had woken me up. As he listened to Amy talking he couldn't keep himself from grinning, "So are you starting to show yet?" Or not. He was talking to Sara. "Yes he's fine… He's been doing his physiotherapy everyday…yeah he saw the magazine…I don't know what he thought…you could just talk to him?" I glared at him and shook my head, "Oh, okay. Yeah, tell Amy I'll call her when we land tomorrow…don't think I'm not not coming to see you. I don't know…yeah…love you too Ace." He put his phone down and sat on the bed opposite the one I was now sitting up in, "She had to go pee, but she spent most of the call talking about you. I wish you would just talk to her."
"Because the last time me and Sara discussed the baby that went so well." He rolled his eyes at my sarcasm.
"Well maybe if you just told her that you meant for her to not go back to work at all and not for her to have the baby terminated then you wouldn't be continuing your relationship through me and Amy." He handed me his cell.
I shook my head and handed it back to him, "As soon as she hears it's me she'll hang up."
"You don't know that Jeff. You haven't seen her since you jumped off that ladder. You didn't see her face when you fell into Adam onto that table. You didn't hear her crying when they put the stretcher in the ambulance. You didn't see the hesitation in her eyes when she walked away from the hospital that night because she blamed herself for all of it."
Tossing and turning I couldn't sleep. There was a big difference between sleeping in a double bed and having someone to share it with, than there was sleeping in a single bed alone. Matt's cell was still on the nightstand next to my bed, I picked it up to check the time but found a missed call from Amy only minutes earlier. I flicked on the light and called her back. She picked up after the first ring, "Matt…" the sobbing on the other end of the phone wasn't Amy, it was Sara, "I'm scared… I wanted Jeff to be so okay with it and when he wasn't, I just thought that it meant he didn't want us anymore. I didn't think for one second about how he was feeling. Amy told me what he said in the hospital. He does think it's all my fault, getting pregnant, him falling on the ladder. I want to explain. I just want to fix it Matt, what I can do to fix it?" Clearing my throat, I knew that she would immediately know it was me when I spoke. So I had to find the right words. "Matt?"
"It's not your fault I slipped on the ladder that night."
"Jeff?" she spoke so softly, practically whispering my name in disbelief.
Matt groaned as he rolled over and the brightness of the light woke him up. Seeing me holding his cell, he waited for me to talk so he could work out who it was that I was talking to.
"We can talk properly when we're home. Just get some sleep okay?"
I could swear Matt muttered "Finally," under his breath.
Sara was still crying, her voice now even more of a whisper "I'll see you soon then?"
"Yeah, you will. Bye." I ended the call and put Matt's cell back on the nightstand. He stared at me expectedly, "What?"
"What? What do you think? Did you just tell Sara you were going to talk to her? Are you finally going to talk this through properly and sort things out?"
Shrugging my shoulders, I got back into bed. Matt probably wouldn't give up with the questioning until I told him exactly when I was going to see Sara and what I planned to say word for word. Especially after Sara tells Amy and then Amy forces Matt to question me. "Amy told her what I said in the hospital…" I trailed off, knowing that Matt would probably swing for me when I told him what I had said. It definitely wasn't one of my finer moments, "I said that I thought Sara hadn't taken her pill on purpose. That's what we fought about in the hotel when she first told me…"
Matt's first reaction was shock. I'm not sure at what though. That Sara hadn't taken her pill, or that I had thought that she'd done it on purpose. He sat up in his bed and folded his arms, "Let me get this straight, you told her that you thought that she tried to get pregnant on purpose." I nodded, "And did she say why she hadn't taken it?"
"Didn't really give her the chance," I admitted, "Just sort of screamed at her to get out and that I couldn't have anything to do with it because we spent so much time apart anyway. My first thought was that neither of us would give up our travelling up til now, so why would things change? And can you imagine what Sara's mom is gonna say? I mean, she hardly ever liked me before-"
"That's because you corrupted her little girl." Matt cut in, "But can you imagine what she's going to think of you after all this? First of all you'll have to let her sister let you see her, and then once you and Sara have sorted things, you'll have her mother to deal with. Rather you than me little brother."
I knew turning off the light was pointless, there was no chance of me getting any sleep now. I had a lot of thinking to do. Encountering Sara's mom was never something I looked forward to. "What makes you think me and Sara will sort things anyway?" I asked, trying to ignore the rest of what Matt had said.
He was now out of bed, throwing clothes into a pile, "Because it's you and Sara. You've done nothing but talk about each other the whole time you've been apart. You've been fixated with her magazine and she's had me giving her daily reports since the night at the hospital. You've made the first move, you've just got to get the next one right."
Sara did always say that Matt was like her conscience. I don't know where he got all of his words of wisdom from, but they sure did come in useful. Maybe Sara and I would be fine, but I might be making another trip to hospital if I see her sister and mom. They were enough to give anyone nightmares.
