Chapter 24 #2
Glad that the conversation was over, he went to the kitchen, dipped up a bowl of soup and carried it to the living room. Ivy looked up from her notebook and smiled. “He’s been sleeping ever since Mary Jane fed him a bottle in the middle of the afternoon. Did you have a nice nap?”
“Yes, I did. Thanks for keeping an eye on him, but if you’ve got something else to do, I’ve proven that I can eat and watch him at the same time.”
She slipped her notebook into a worn backpack, stood up, and stretched. “Ursula invited me over to her house to talk about writing, but I can stay until you finish eating.”
“You go on with your plans,” Tripp told her. “I can eat and watch Nicky at the same time.”
“When are you going to ask Willa Rose to marry you?” she blurted out.
Tripp almost choked on a bite of soup.
“Don’t look so shocked,” Ivy said. “When Nicky arrived, y’all became a family. It’s time to own it all the way.”
“I don’t want to rush her, so I’m waiting for the right time,” he answered. “First, she had to decide whether to stay in Spanish Fort. Then the baby came, and it’s all happened so fast that sometimes I think I’m dreaming.”
“Well, don’t wait too long. Grandpa used to tell me that when opportunity knocks, it’s better to open the door and invite it to come right inside than it is to chase it a mile down the road.”
“That’s good advice. I’ll remember it.”
“See you later, and remember me if you ever need a sitter. I love babies, and Nicky is just the cutest little guy ever. I told him that he can call me Aunt Ivy,” she said and blew the baby a kiss as she left the room.
You need to do some soul-searching. His mother’s voice was clear in his head.
He nodded in agreement. As much as he hated to admit it, Bernie had made some very valid points.
Could he be mounting up on a white horse for the first time?
In the beginning, what he had going on with Willa Rose had been a flirtatious game that he figured wouldn’t go anywhere since no one believed she would ever stay in town.
Then the chemistry began to build—at least for him—and now there was Nicky.
Am I mistaking love for wanting a family? he asked himself.
“Hey, what happened to everyone?”
Willa Rose’s voice almost made Tripp drop his bowl of soup. She went straight to the sofa where Nicky slept and asked, “Are we the only ones here?”
“Ivy left a few minutes ago. Everyone else has gone, but she stayed behind to keep an eye on him while he slept. Mary Jane gave him a bottle sometime around two, I would guess, and it’s probably about time for another one. Should we wake him to keep him on schedule?”
How had they gone from enemies to friends to lovers and now parents in less than a month’s time? Tripp wondered. “I’ll fix him a bottle and feed him while you get something to eat. Did your nap help?”
She nodded. “More than words can say. I believe Endora now more than ever, though.”
“About twins being double work?”
“Yes, and that they are the best birth control on the market,” she answered. “Even if I could get pregnant, we’re both too tired to even think about sex.”
“Speak for yourself, woman,” Tripp growled. “I can think about it even if that’s all I can muster up the strength to do.”
She bent down and kissed the baby on the forehead. “I still can’t believe that you were ever inhibited. While you get his next bottle ready, I’ll have some soup and then we should probably go home. Maybe we can catch a movie while we wait for his next feeding.”
“Or make out a little, then doze through the movie,” he said.
“That, too, or whichever comes first.”
***
Everything had turned upside down, or perhaps a better saying would be that it had turned inside out, or so it seemed to Willa Rose.
She and Tripp had been about to find some solid footing in their relationship when Nicky showed up.
Now they were sliding into a four-hour routine without the benefit of a romance, a wedding, or a honeymoon.
The proper sequence should have been flirting, lovers for several months, then planning a wedding for a year and a wonderful honeymoon.
All that should have happened two years at the very least before a baby made them a family.
Surely, he was teasing about marrying her in this crazy, mixed-up world like they had been tossed into. How could he love someone who was constantly worn out from lack of sleep?
Whoa! Wait a minute. He hasn’t said those three words to me yet. He’s skipped around the bush and kidded me about being parents together, but the words, “I love you, Willa Rose Thomas,” have never come out of his mouth.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked as he shook the bottle containing formula and water.
“Eating this bowl of soup,” she lied. “My energy level is so low that I don’t know if I can chew the potatoes.”
“No one ever said that parenting is easy.” He set the bottle on the table and hurried into the living room when he heard Nicky whimper.
He is making a wonderful father, the annoying voice in her head said.
“Yes, but I want more than that,” she muttered under her breath, and admitted to herself that she wanted the excitement of the banter, or the long looks across the room, the sly winks and sneaking away to be alone for a little while.
She wanted that tingle when his fingertips brushed hers at the dinner table and to feel the thrill of his naked body lying next to hers after making love.
“Want me to feed it to you like I did Brodie and Audrey’s wedding cake?” he asked when he came back with Nicky in his arms.
“I like you better when you are flirting,” she blurted out.
Nicky latched on to the bottle nipple like he was starving. “What do you think I was doing? Don’t you think eating from my fingertips is flirting?”
“How are you going to feed me soup from your fingers?” she fired back at him.
“Very carefully. Are we having our first fight as new parents?”
“No, we’re having a discussion about flirting,” she answered, “I am committed but you can walk away from this.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Tripp told her.
“Remember to burp him after every ounce, or else he might get colic.”
“I thought these bottles were supposed to prevent that, and how do you know so much about babies?” He held the bottle up, checked the milk level on the side, and set it down.
“On the Sundays that Mama and I kept the nursery at church, I didn’t learn a lot about God, but I did learn quite a bit about babies. Tell me, and answer honestly, what happens when you get tired of playing daddy?”
“Trust me.” He put Nicky up on his shoulder and patted him on the back. “I loved this baby the first time we threw back the blanket and looked at him, and I’m just as much in the game as you are.”
“What happens if we get swallowed up by that love, and forget…”
The baby burped loudly, and Tripp repositioned him in one of his big arms to feed him again. “Are you breaking up with me?”
“No…maybe… I don’t know. Besides how can we break up when we’ve never been on an official date?”
“Ivy said she would be more than happy to babysit, so I can remedy that in a hurry. Willa Rose Thomas, will you go out with me Friday night on a real date? Dinner in Nocona and a walk in the park?”
“If Bernie hadn’t already given up on us, she would flip out.”
“Do either of us really care at this point what Bernie says?” he asked.
“I certainly don’t, so yes, I will go with you if Ivy can come to the house and babysit, but between now and then I want you to stay at your house. You can pick me up at six.”
“Can I see Nicky both days?”
“Of course, but I need a couple of days to sort out all this, to figure out if there is time for us when the dust settles from all this newness.”
“You got it.”
“Why do you have to be so agreeable?” she snapped.
“Because in this case, I need some time to think over what you said too. The chemistry between us could be rebound feelings for you and merely a flash in the pan for me. Or maybe it’s just been having a good time for both of us.
We need to figure out where this is going and if what we have is for us , or is it for Nicky? ”
“I agree,” she said in a softer tone.