Heroes...And The Rest Of Us.

I can hear my alarm clock ringing. It's so fucking loud and it won't stop. I open my eyes and realize that it's not my alarm clock ringing, it's the phone. Adam is groaning beside me. He sits up on his forearms and answers the phone, not sounding especially enthused.

"What?" I can hear a womans voice on the other end.

"Addammm! I need help. It's Jackie." She's wailing into the phone. Adam is staring at the wall behind our bed, looking less than half awake.

"What kind of help?" He asks her, glancing at his own alarm clock. 10:13 a.m.

"Let me talk to Sophie." My eyes involutarily widen and I shake my head at Adam.

"Just talk to her. She needs something that I obviously can't give her. Maybe she needs a fucking tampon or something." He says the last part with his face in the pillows so his voice is slightly muffled. I roll my eyes at his back and put the phone up to my ear.

"Hello?" I say cautiously.

"Sophieeeee! I need your help, you have to help me fix this." She scream/wails at me.

"Jesus, could you tell her to keep it down? There are people in this neighborhood that are trying to sleep." Adam mumbles, rolling over on his side holding a pillow over his ear. I crawl out of bed and put a robe on.

"Jackie, you need to stop crying. Calm down and talk to me here. What do you need help with?" I walk out of the bedroom and through the foyer, and stand outside on the sidewalk in front of the house.

"It's Austin. I found out that I'm pregnant and now he thinks that I cheated on him or something. He refuses to believe that this baby is his, and he kicked me out of the apartment." I can't believe this. Why me? What is with all the baby shit lately?

"OK, first things first. Are you for sure pregnant?"

"Yes. I took one of those at home tests a week ago, and I went to the doctor yesterday and she confirmed it."

"You took the test a week ago but you didn't go to the doctor until yesterday?"

"I was scared. But, I figured if I waited any longer Austin would figure out what was going on."

"Wait a minute. Austin didn't know that you might be pregnant?"

"No. I didn't want to freak him out if I wasn't pregnant."

"OK, so the next thing is, and don't get offended here. But, is the baby Austin's?"

"Of course it is! I would never cheat on my husband."

"OK, I was just trying to figure out what we're up against here."

"Now he won't return my phone calls or anything. I don't have anywhere else to go. My mom is going to fucking kill me, she never approved of me and Austin."

"Where are you now?"

"At the park by the beach where you got married."

"OK, hang tight. I'm on my way over there."

"OK, bye." I hang up the phone and go back in the house. Adam is now laying on my side of the bed, facing away from the bedroom door. I go into the bathroom, brush my teeth, put make-up on, and tease my short hair so it sticks up in every direction, then I secure the bangs with a barette. I walk around the end of the bed, passing in front of Adam's face to get dressed in the walk-in closet. He blinks his eyes open when I walk past.

"What are you doing?" He asks sleepily.

"Getting dressed."

"Why? Come back to bed."

"I can't. I told Jackie I'd come and get her." I put on a pair of faded denim cutoff's and a stretchy little red v-neck t-shirt.

"Why would you tell her that?"

"Because, she's our friend and she needs help."

"She has a husband to help her."

"Well, that's the problem. She found out that she's pregnant and Austin's being a dickhead about it."

"Excuse me? Pregnant?" He rolls to the middle of the bed and lays on his back.

"Yeah." I slip into a pair of black flip-flops and put my cell phone and cigarettes into my purse.

"I thought we were going to hang out today. We only have a few more days until Jack comes home and the craziness starts again."

"I know, Babe. But, she needs me right now." I crawl onto the bed and sling my leg over his body so that I'm sitting on my knees on top of him.

"What about what we need?" I sigh and clasp my hands in his, leaning my face down over his for a kiss.

"I will only be gone for forty-five minutes, one hour tops. I promise. Then we can hang out for the rest of the day. I just have to go talk to her and talk to Austin."

"Fine." He kisses me and lets go of my hands. I crawl off of the bed and head out of the bedroom.

"I love you." I say to him on my way out the front door.

"Love you, too." I hear him say as I slam it shut behind me.

I drive with the radio off in my car down the twisting, turning lake roads to the Bayview Market, which is a party store located in the parking lot of the Bayview Marina. All of the people who live on the lake, who have large boats dock them here so that they don't have to take up all of their lakefront. Since Adam and I only have a small fishing boat and no lake access, we don't spend a lot of time at the marina. But, we do come to the party store a lot.

I pull in and park, then go inside and buy two coffee's, some Little Debbie cakes, some donuts, a few mini bags of chips, and a bottle of water and a pack of Adam's brand of cigarettes as a consilation gift. I pay for it all and take it out to my car. I then drive the rest of the way down to the public beach and park. Not too far away is the stretch of beach where Adam and I got married.

When I pull into the park, I park next to Jackie's car. I stuff the bag of food into my purse and carry the coffee's across to where I see her sitting on a picnic table, with her ass on the top part, and her feet on the bench. She has her back turned to me, facing the beach which is already pretty full of people being as its only 11:30 in the morning.

"Hey." I say to her, handing her one of the coffee's and climbing up on the picnic table next to her.

"Hey." She pouts.

"So, tell me what Austin said to you."

"I told him I was pregnant, and he was like, no you're not. And I was like, yeah I am, stupid. It's my body, you know? I know what's going on with it. So, he said that if I was actually pregnant, that it wasn't his problem because the kid wasn't his. So I asked him what the fuck that meant, and he said that I cheated on him and I was trying to pass the kid off as his."

"OK....so then what?"

"So, I said that of course the baby was his, you know? Why would I cheat on him?"

"I don't know."

"I wouldn't. So then, he said that he wanted me to leave so that he could figure out what he was going to do next. Like, what the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

"OK, I will talk to Austin. Do you want me to take you somewhere?"

"No, I'll stay here. Thank you so much for doing this, Sophie. I feel like you and Adam are the only people that could help me with this. His retarded friends obviously don't know anything about marraige and babies."

"Right. I'll be back." I force a smile and get up from the table and start walking back to my car. About halfway there, I turn around and go back to her.

"Here, have some food." I hand her the bag from my purse and walk back to my car.

This time, I drive with my radio blasting and all the windows in my car rolled down. Austin and Jackie live in a really nice apartment building right in town. I've only been inside the apartment one time, but I've driven by it a bunch of times. I pull in, park and take the elevator up to the second floor. I find the apartment pretty easily, and knock on the door. On the second knock, Cody answers. I smile at him. I haven't seen him since my wedding.

"Hi gorgeous." He says.

"Hi. Is idiot here?"

"I assume you talked to Jackie?"

"Yes I did."

"Come on in." He moves to the side of the door and I walk in past him. Austin is sitting on the couch in the living room, drinking a beer and watching tv. He looks at me with his eyes only when I walk in the room.

"I already know what you're going to say, Soph, and I don't want to hear it."

"What the fuck is wrong with you? I mean, come on, Austin. She's your wife for fucks sake!"

"It's not my fucking kid! And even if it was, why did she wait so long to tell me?" I sit on the edge of the couch next to him.

"She was scared of how you were going to react, and look at you! She had a right to be scared, because look at what's happening."

"Whatever. You're a woman, you're going to take her side." He says, getting up from the couch in a huff. He stalks off to the fridge and gets another beer.

"Sophie, you want a beer?" He asks like nothings wrong. My turn to stand up in a huff.

"Alright Austin, lets look at it this way. You and I are both married, right?"

"Right."

"We both took the same vows, right?"

"Right."

"So, if I went home right now and told Adam, who also took the same vows that you and I did, that I was pregnant. Do you think that he would doubt for a second that the baby was his?"

"No, because Adam trusts you. He has to, you're his wife. And, you love your husband. You wouldn't cheat on him."

"Ok, so do you think that your wife loves you?" He doesn't say anything.

"Do you trust your wife?"

"I don't know."

"Well, you better figure it out because you're married to her and she's having your kid. You need to grow the fuck up right now, because this isn't going away."

"It's so easy for you to come over here and judge me, isn't it, Sophie? You, and your perfect husband, and your perfect marraige. Living in your big ass house on the fucking hill with two brand new cars in the driveway!" He yells.

"Goddammit, Austin you fucker! This isn't about who's better than fucking who. My life isn't perfect. I'm not perfect, Lord knows my husband isn't perfect and we don't always have the most perfect marraige. But, you know what? It works for us. I love my husband more than anything in this world, and I would do anything to make him happy. I couldn't live without Adam. Can you say the same about Jackie? You need to decide if you can live without that girl, because if you don't get it together and man up, that's exactly what you're going to have to do." I can hear someone's cell phone ringing the whole time I'm screaming, but no one does anything to make it stop.

"I'm fucking scared, Soph. I'm not ready for this." He says very quietly.

"I know, but you have to deal with it because it's not going away."

"I know."

"Let me know what you've decided. I'm going to go make sure Jackie's OK." I grab my purse from the coffee table in the living room and walk back out to my car. While I'm driving back to the park, I hear my phone ring in a voicemail. I dial my voicemail and put the phone up to my ear to listen to it.

"Babe." That's all it says. I sigh. For as long as Adam and I have been in a serious relationship, we have called each other Babe. It can be used as a greeting, when Adam's happy, sad, turned on, pissed off, scared, or annoyed. Pretty much any emotion. This time I'm going with pissed off or annoyed. I told him that I would gone for an hour at the most, and it's now been closer to two hours since I left the house. Shit.

I pull back into the park and see Jackie sitting on a swing. I again park next to her car and get out, walking over to her.

"I talked to Austin." I say, sitting down on the swing next to her.

"What did he say?" She asks hopefully.

"He's still coming around. Cody's with him. I think he's just scared and coming up with excuses."

"Did he say why he thinks I cheated on him?"

"No, but again, I think he's just coming up with excuses because he's scared."

"Oh."

"Yeah, but, you can't just stay in the park all day until he comes around. So, I suggest that you go over to your mom's and tell her whats happening. She needs to know, because like I told Austin, this isn't going away. I will call you when I get through to Austin."

"OK, but what if he doesn't come around?"

"He will, have some faith. He just needs some time to get used to the idea of being a father, you know? This is a big deal. I mean, you guys just got married."

"Yeah, I guess. Thank you so much again, Sophie. You're the best." She leans over and gives me a hug.

"I'll call you when I find something out for you." I say.

"OK, bye." She gets up and walks over to her car. I watch her drive away and then I call Daisy. She doesn't answer so I leave her a voicemail, thanking her for not calling me everytime she thinks she might be pregnant. When I hang up, the phone rings again. It's Austin.

"Hey can you come over here?"

"Yeah, I'm on my way."