Page 135 of Loving Wild

“Get Zac, put your phone on speaker,” I ignore everything he’s just said and tell him.

“He’s here, go for it,” Coop says.

“Bro, you right, mate?” Zac asks.

“We’re pregnant.”

I’m met with silence, and I feel like something is fizzing inside my belly. Nerves, excitement, fear? I’m not sure, but it’s there. Like I’ve swallowed a couple of Berocca whole, and what they usually do in a glass, they’re now doing in the pit of my gut.

“What?” Coop asks.

“We’ve spent the morning at the doctor’s and then the hospital. We’re pregnant.”

“Fuck me,” Zac says. “How’d you feel about that, dude?”

“It’s twins.”

A whistle sounds down the phone. Followed by a laugh.

“Fuck me,” Coop says. “Bro, you two don’t do things by half, do you?”

“You okay?” Zac asks.

“I’m over the fucking moon.”

“But . . .?” Coop knows me well enough to know that something’s off.

“I think Lauren’s in shock.”

“And you’re fucking not? Dude! This is fucking amazing news; congratulations. I’m stoked for ya as long as it’s what you both want.” Zac, possibly for the first time ever in his life, brings something sensible to the conversation.

“She’s barely said a word, I don’t know what she wants. She’s booked in to go back and see the obstetrician next week. They’ve given us a load of shit to read through. Her IUD, coil thing is still lodged inside her, so they need to decide what to do about that, then there are all the tests because of her age.”

“Bro, I can hear the excitement in your voice, and I’m genuinely pleased for you guys, but like Zac says, it has to be something you’re both down with.”

“Sammie was thirty-one when the girls were born, and it was fucking hard, man. Lauren’s what, forty?” Zac asks.

“Forty-four?” I tell him.

“Is she really? Wouldn’t have guessed it, but yeah, it’s gonna take a lot out of her.”

“What would you do?” I ask, but not sure what it is exactly that I’m asking.

“Her body, her choice, man,” Coop says.

“First thing I’d do . . . I’d fucking wife her, or at least ask if she’d let me. Then, like Coop says, her body, her choice, but I’d be fighting all the way for those babies. Twins, man. Fuck me, Gabe, only you.”

“Well, technically it’s not only me, it’s me and Lauren, and it’s also you and Sam. Where the fuck did we pick the twin gene up anyway?”

“Dad’s side,” my brothers reply in unison.

We’re silent for a long stretch, and I know it’s because each of us has become lost in the rubble of that wall of fucking grief that hits us every time we remember he’s no longer here.

“He’d be over the fucking moon,” Zac says quietly.

“He really would,” Coop adds.

“I’m gonna take her up to the house right now and ask her to marry me.”