it was just a dream

Macy watched Gabby in the kitchen washing dishes. Actually, Macy was stunned. Not once had Gabby ever took the notion to wash dishes at Macy and Draco's apartment.

"Is anything the matter?" Macy pushed baby Stephen up on her hip more. He was practically a toddler. There was something big and husky about him. He was all muscle, and he was right where he wanted to be, with his mommy,  Macy.

"What?" Gabby looked with those doe-like eyes, that she might be a little scared.

"Did something happen? Are you and Ste..." Macy hated to ask, but she knew the holidays were difficult for Gabby.

She shook her head, no. Yet, she didn't say much of him.

"Ste," Macy shook her head, no, at the thought of him being anything like his moody brother Maxie, but then again he seemed so different now. "He's nothing like Maxie."

Gabby only sighed, but looked to Macy as if she might say something. "What was Maxie like?"

Macy felt bad that she never talked about him. She didn't want to admit that she was scared of him.

"He did have his mood swings." Macy nodded. "He was very unpredictable. Maybe..maybe he wasn't happy." She figured as much now.

Gabby nodded.

"Ste, has been through a lot." Macy did have to take up for him. "I don't think he had it very good with his brother. Maxie, WHO generally took his anger out on Ste. I know, Maxie had a way of making us both jump, some of the time."

Gabby went on washing the dishes and then rinsing and left them in the dish rack to dry.

"I want things to work out with Ste." Gabby told her as much. "We've made up. And..and I know I have to be... a better girlfriend."

"What's that suppose to mean?" Macy winced thinking Gabby was too young to be thinking this way.

"Oh, you know, be there for him." She was straight lipped. "I want him to feel, he can count on me."

"I see." Macy nodded, thinking of her own life. Perhaps, she counted on Draco for too much. But she understood what Gabby meant. She sounded more than a shallow teenager now.

"Well, he is a few years older than you." A part of Macy didn't want her to be that serious about Ste, still she knew Ste needed family, and Macy had her hands full these days. She couldn't be the family Ste had counted on, before.

Macy pressed her lips tight and a glimmer of one cold winter night back in England caught her off guard in her thoughts. Her body almost staggered with the heavy baby, remembering a moment when she was with Ste.

A certain sadness gave her a heavy heart. Ste gad been beaten, yet drunk. Funny, how she hadn't thought of Maxie then. It had been the two of them in the back store room. She'd only meant to tend to Ste's bloody face.

Macy's parched throat could barely speak now.

"You, don't look so good, Mace?" Gabby looked at her wide eyed as she took the baby from her.

Macy felt so weak, but she plopped down on the couch to get her senses together. She felt as if her voice was gone as a little revelation played out in her head. She felt herself have a slight shake.

"I think I'm getting a headache," Macy said as she squinted hard. She didn't want it to be true, and yet she'd made herself forget the night she spent with Ste.