Chapter Thirty-Seven
Ben
Ben stumbled into the kitchen, his boxer shorts hanging haphazardly off his hips, his robe open in the front. The house was quiet still, the sun barely up yet, sending shoots of golden light through the windows, warming the tiles under Ben’s bare feet. He heard Tina before he saw her, the quiet hum and swoosh-swoosh of her breast pump alerting him to her presence. When he turned to glance at her, he could see her pumping both breasts, plain as day for the world to see.
“I doubt I’ll ever get used to that,” he said as he filled a reusable coffee pod and loaded it into the machine.
Tina snorted a small laugh. She looked exhausted. James slept silently in the bassinet next to her. “If I can, you can,” she said dryly.
“Fair point,” he said as he sat down heavily in a chair at the table.
“Gavin still sleeping?” she asked as Ben looked anywhere but at her.
“Yeah, he’s sacked.”
When James started to stir, Ben reached for him.
“He’ll go back to sleep if you let him be…”
Ben only smiled as he lifted James up and put him on his chest. “Yeah, but then I don’t get to hold him. Between you, Ma, and Gavin, I get to hold him about once a day.”
“That might be a slight exaggeration.”
“But only slight,” he whispered, pressing his lips to James’s silky hair. He took a deep breath, tucked James’s blanket around him as the baby settled and seemed to fall back asleep again. “He’s pretty cool,” Ben said to Tina.
“Yeah he is.” With a laugh, she added, “Especially when he’s asleep.”
Ben remembered Anna with her first baby. She was a zombie, never slept more than two hours at a stretch. Her type A personality flew out the window, and she was suddenly late for everything and usually covered in one bodily fluid or another. She and Ben got along far better now than they had before she had kids. “You’ll be fine,” he said, shifting James into one arm so he could drink his coffee. “He’ll bring out the best and the worst of you.”
Tina turned around as she unstrapped the pumps and went about cleaning and putting everything away. “I don’t even know my best and worst.”
“Get set, ’cause you’re gonna.”
“You sure you’re ready to meet the real me?” Tina asked on her way to the refrigerator. She wrote the time and date on the plastic storage bags and stashed them inside.
“I was in the delivery room, remember? I at least got a glimpse.”
Tina nudged Ben on his shoulder. “Fair point,” she said. Ben wasn’t sure if she meant to repeat his own response from earlier, or if she had simply started to sound like him. Either way, he found it endearing. She let Ben hold him for another minute, then said, “Now put him back in his bed. The nurse told me not to let people hold him too much when he sleeps or he’ll never sleep on his own.”
“Baby cuddles are better than sleep,” Ben teased, but he kissed James’s head and then carefully set him back in his bed.
“Remember that when I bring him to your room at three in the morning.”
“Hey, I put him down. You don’t have to threaten me.”
Tina only laughed softly in response. “You and Gavin decide on a dog yet?”
“We’ve shelved that idea for a while. I want a puppy, and Gavin wants an older dog.”
“Sounds about right,” Tina teased as she pulled a breakfast casserole out of the refrigerator. “Gavin likes reliable, and you like unpredictable.”
“I hate unpredictable,” Ben said, his tone hovering between teasing and defensive.
Tina set the oven to preheat and then looked at Ben. “You really believe that, don’t you?”
“Uh. Yeah.”
“You like stability, but I think you get bored when things are too predictable. I bet that’s part of why you like Gavin so much.”
She had a point there. Gavin stirred Ben’s soul, brought out all of the colors in his world. “Okay, that’s probably true. But unpredictable is… uncomfortable. Gavin isn’t totally unpredictable. He just likes to shake things up. But he’s always home at the end of the night.”
“And he likes having you there to catch him when he falls.”
“We catch each other. That’s how this works.”
The oven dinged and Tina popped the casserole in. “True.”
Tina didn’t have much to say after that, but neither did Ben, so that worked for him. He sipped his coffee and looked over James. If someone had told him six months ago that he’d be sitting in his kitchen, chatting with Tina—that the two of them could sit in a room together without her bursting into tears—he would’ve called them a liar. But now? She was family and Ben could barely remember a time when she wasn’t.
When Nora came into the room, she paused to look at the baby and then went to make herself a cup of coffee. She would be heading back to the east coast soon, and Ben hated to think about it. When he’d picked up and moved from his hometown, too many years ago to count, he’d had reasons, but now he couldn’t think of what they were. Going back wouldn’t work. He couldn’t uproot Gavin, couldn’t abandon Tina, or the new house, but damn it all. He hated being so far away from her.
“You should move out here, Ma.”
Nora turned and looked at Ben. “Good morning to you too, son.”
He laughed, shrugged. “I’m just sayin’. It’d be nice having you closer.”
“You should move back home, then.” She sat down at the table, a brow arched as she blew over the surface of her coffee. “I’ve lived there all my life, lived in the same house for more than thirty years. And I have no desire to start all over here.”
He’d known that, had no doubt what her answer would be. “I get it,” he said, taking a sip from his own mug. “But you should come out more now that we’ve got a bigger place.”
She only nodded in response at first. “That I can do.”
Good enough. Ben would take it.
“Do what?” Gavin asked as he shuffled into the kitchen.
“Visit more,” Nora said. “Get you sick of me.”
Gavin didn’t even pause before responding. “Never happen.”
Tina checked on James again and said, “I’m gonna hop in the shower real quick. Can you keep an eye on him?”
“Get a nap if you can too,” Nora said, shooing her out of the room with a smile.
Gavin reached into the bassinet and ran his fingertip over the top of James’s head, not enough to wake him, but enough to make James stir and take a deep breath. “If this kid gets any cuter, I don’t think I’ll be able to stand it.”
“This is nothin’,” Ben said, grinning. “They’re sweet little lumps at this age. Just wait till he calls you Uncle Gav or tries to climb into your lap.”
“Or won’t sleep at night, or throws a toy truck at your head because you told him it was bedtime…” Nora shot them a knowing smile. “It’s not always cute.”
“Way to bring down the room, Ma.”
Nora shrugged as she took another sip of coffee. “I’m just sayin’. You need to know what you’re getting into.”
She was right, of course, but Ben thought they should enjoy the easy parts—easy for them, at least—while they could. He looked at Gavin and said, “It’s gonna suck, so keep that in mind.”
His mother only rolled her eyes before asking, “Have you two started discussing the wedding?”
“That’ll be easy,” Ben said. “Something simple with close friends and family.”
Gavin had plated the food and set it on the table. His eyes were narrowed on Ben. “Why simple? Why not elegant? With good food and good champagne and you in a tux?”
“And there we go,” Nora said, obviously trying not to laugh.
“Why a tux?” Ben asked as he took a forkful of food.
“Why not a tux? I’ve never seen you dressed up…”
Ben still hadn’t gotten a chance to take a bite. “There’s a reason for that.”
Adding fuel to her fire, Nora asked, “What kind of flowers do you want?”
“Something fragrant but not too cliché,” Gavin said. He rolled his eyes when Ben crinkled his nose. “Oh my God, what’s wrong with flowers?”
Ben had finally taken a bite of his breakfast, buying himself a few seconds. “Flowers are fine, but…” He shrugged and gave up on eating for the moment. “Seems like a waste of money is all.”
When Gavin huffed in frustration, Nora actually laughed. “And this is why I’m happy living on the other side of the country.”
Ben could relate.