Of Being Yours[another way 2] (26 page)

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks.”

I
T
TOOK
a few more weeks before Laura called, not that I was surprised when she did. It had been such a stressful few months for her that I wanted to be part of giving her some time alone with her husband.

With all that they’d been through, it was nothing short of a miracle that she and Steven were still as strong a unit as they were, or as they appeared to be. Despite all that, I knew the importance of being able to spend quality time with your partner, and if I could help with that, I was always happy to.

Two rather energetic four-year-old children were delivered to our door at 11:00 a.m. On a Saturday, it was what we considered to be an early morning.

I greeted Laura at the door, barefoot and with coffee in hand. The girls were practically vibrating with excitement.

“Go on in,” I said. “I’m sure Will has cartoons on.”

They disappeared in a blur of color.

“I was going to dress them identically,” Laura said with a wicked smile. “Then I thought that I want you to do this again sometime so it’s probably a good idea to keep you on my side.”

“Thank fuck for that,” I muttered.

“Carrigan has braids,” Laura said. “And a red cardigan on. Carrigan, cardigan. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Sawyer has a ponytail,” she continued in a super-serious tone. “And she’s wearing a knitted sweater. Sawyer, sweater.”

“I like what you’ve done there,” I said. “Can I give them name badges?”

“No. We work very hard on giving them their own identities. Dressing them the same is only for when we want to piss off their grandparents.”

“Okay,” I said, laughing. “What are your plans for today?”

“I’m not sure,” she said, and for a moment I thought she looked almost shy as she brushed her hair back from her face. “I think Steven has plans. I’m just going to trust him.”

“How’s Maddie?” I asked.

“Big,” Laura said with a laugh. “She’s good. I just don’t want to leave her alone with both girls right now; it’s a bit too much for her.”

They were a handful, to say the least.

My experience of being around children was fairly limited, although I had been close to Laura before and after she had her daughters, so I’d been a part of watching them grow up. They were familiar with us too, which helped, since they saw us as authority figures and friends of their parents.

And generally, they were fairly well-behaved children.

After Will relinquished his dominance over the remote control to the girls, we were forced to watch things that were far girlier than anything that had ever graced the screen of our TV previously. I managed an hour of something to do with ponies before I cracked and announced lunchtime.

My next big mistake was allowing them to assist in making PB&J sandwiches. I knew they were at a stage where they wanted to help with everything, so maybe I should have anticipated the argument about smooth peanut butter over crunchy. And which side of the bread the jelly should go on. And which was the best flavor of jelly. And which was the best
brand
of the best flavor of jelly. And triangles or squares.

It took longer to make the damn sandwiches than it did to eat them, mainly because after cutting the crusts off the bread and not even asking if they wanted apple juice or orange, just pouring the stuff and setting it down in front of them, I served up lunch and refused to let them eat it in front of the TV.

Will watched the entire exchange with a growing expression of amusement, carefully staying neutral from this particular battle. The bastard.

“My mommy says you’re gay.”

Cardigan. Carrigan. Right.

“Did she now?” Will muttered, low enough for me to hear but the twins not to catch his voice.

“Yes,” I said calmly. “That’s right.”

“That means you like boys not girls,” Sawyer offered. I wanted to contradict this and defend the complexities of my own sexuality, but that really wasn’t lunchtime conversation for a four-year-old.

“Yes,” I repeated.

“Why don’t you like girls?”

Fuck.

“Some boys like girls, and some boys like boys,” Will said, pushing his empty plate to one side. “Same as some girls like girls too. It doesn’t matter who you like as long as everyone is nice to each other.”

“I don’t like boys or girls,” Carrigan said.

“That’s okay,” I told her. “You don’t have to decide who you like for a very long time.”

They seemed to be satisfied with that answer.

“Who do you like best, SpongeBob or Patrick?”

I could see where this was on a par with liking boys or girls more, in their opinion. Cartoons were definitely more Will’s area of childhood expertise than mine; I let him get drawn into that particular debate as they ate yogurt for dessert and I loaded the dishwasher.

“What do you want to do this afternoon?” I asked when we were all done and cleared up.

I waited for the inevitable deluge of impossible requests. Instead, I was shocked (and slightly lifted) to hear “Do you know how to play soccer?”

“I was on the soccer team in high school,” I said. “I used to be really good.”

“Used to be,” Will muttered. I hit him on the arm.

“Do you wanna play?”

We had never done much with the backyard other than updating the deck as a summer barbecue area, not that we’d had many opportunities to use it. The rest of the yard was just grass, apart from a raised mud area at the back near the fence that might have, a long time ago, been a flower bed.

Right now it served well enough as a goal area. Will paired off with Carrigan for one team in defense, and Sawyer and I took the offensive to start. There was some old sports equipment in the garage: a baseball bat and a couple of balls, a football and a soccer ball, along with the gym equipment, which was now hardly ever used.

After we spent half an hour or so of playing around and not keeping score, the low-hanging cloud that had been threatening finally broke into a hazy mist of rain.

“Do you want to go in?” I called out to the girls. They were already covered in mud and grass stains, their nice sweaters already abandoned as we got hot from running around. I knew I’d need to get them in soon enough before they caught cold, but the idea of tiring them out for the rest of the afternoon was too tempting.

“Not yet!”

I raised an eyebrow at Will, who shrugged and nodded.

“I’m just going to grab a water,” I said and jogged back to the kitchen door.

I was pretty sure Laura wouldn’t have called to check up on us just yet; if at all, she would call later in the afternoon, once things had calmed down a bit. But this was the first time she’d left them with us while she was out of town, so I wanted to check for missed calls.

And it was probably worth getting the girls to take a drink too.

We kept the fridge fairly well stocked with drinks, so finding the water wasn’t a problem, but I couldn’t find my phone anywhere.

“Fuck sake,” I muttered and ran my hands over my face. They smelled of grass. After a moment I decided I didn’t care; Laura had the number for our house phone anyway. If there was a problem, I could hear that ringing from the backyard.

Rehydrating the girls was more important.

And soccer in the rain was one of the most fun things
ever.

Chapter 18

W
HEN
I finally got to my phone, I had four missed calls from Maddie.

“Will!” I yelled back into the yard. “Phone.”

I saw an arm wave up through the window and turned my back on him, smirking. Let him see how two four-year-olds could tire him out.

“Hey, Maddie,” I said as her phone connected. “Sorry I missed you. Everything okay?”

“Jesse,” she gasped. “The baby’s coming.”

“No he’s not,” I said soothingly. “You’ve got weeks to go yet.”

“He really is!” she exclaimed, then let out a long, low moan of pain.

“Fuck,” I growled. “Call Laura. I’ll get the kids cleaned up.”

“No!” she said. “No, Jesse. I just need to get to the hospital. I’ll call her later. It might be a false alarm, and I don’t want to—”

Her words broke off into a low moan of what I recognized as agony.

“It’ll take me thirty minutes to get across town at this time of day,” I said. “Let me just call you a cab. Or better yet, an ambulance.”

“No,” she gasped again. I rolled my eyes. Fucking
women
. “I need you, Jesse. Please.”

“Okay,” I said. “Okay. I’ll put the hands-free on in the car. If you need me, call me, for fuck’s sake.”

I hung up and ran my hands through my hair. I could tell by my reflection in the fridge that I was a mess, but there was no time to clean up. For the sake of making something of an effort, I washed my hands and face in the sink before stepping back out onto the deck.

“Will,” I called.

Maybe he was getting better at reading my expression, or maybe he could just read my mind these days, because he extracted himself from Sawyer’s grasp and jogged over.

“Everything okay?”

I shook my head. “Maddie thinks she’s going into labor.”

He swore under his breath. “Have you called Laura?”

“No, she doesn’t want me to,” I said. “I’m going to go over there and take her to the hospital.” I paused before delivering the worst of my news. “You’re going to need to watch the girls for the next few hours.”

His face fell. In any other circumstances, it would have been amusing. “No, Jess, please. You can’t leave me alone with them.” He reached out and took my wrist, grasping it tightly, as if this was enough to stop me from leaving.

“Baby,” I said gently, “they’re just two little girls. You’ll be fine. I’ll call you as soon as I have news.”

“You stay with them,” he said desperately. “I’ll go get Maddie. She’ll respond better to me, anyway.”

I couldn’t help but laugh then. “If you get them cleaned up, then you could bring them down to the hospital later. But I don’t think that’s a good idea until we know what’s happening.”

He fought me all the way out the door but kissed me hard before I climbed into my new car, which had been delivered the week before. All I could think was that if Maddie got birth stains all over my new car, I’d have to kill her.

The distraction of the radio was welcome as I tried to use my slightly encyclopedic knowledge of Seattle’s streets to get across town as quickly as possible. I managed to make it in just under the anticipated half an hour and parked sideways across the drive in my haste to get in to her.

“Maddie?” I called as I knocked on the door.

She looked like shit.

“Oh God,” I said. “Do you need anything? Your purse or whatever?”

“I’ve got a bag,” she said, shrugging her skinny arms into a coat.

“Where?”

“In the closet.”

It took me a few minutes of rummaging through the mess of children’s…
stuff
that had been dumped in there before I found a simple black duffel bag.

“This it?” I asked.

She nodded, her hands clasped around her vast belly.

Carefully, I stepped over to her and brushed her loose hair back from her face. “It’s gonna be fine,” I said softly. She nodded against my chest. “Promise.”

In the drive over to the hospital, things seemed to get worse, despite my attempts at keeping the tone light.

“Don’t get childbirth crap all over my car,” I warned her, finally voicing my concerns.

Maddie huffed a laugh that quickly turned into a grimace of pain.

“Maddie,” I said, reaching for her hand across the divide. “I have no fucking idea what I’m doing here, okay? Really, none at all. I need you to tell me what you need.”

“I need—” She gasped. “I need….”

“Can I call Laura?”

She shook her head vehemently.