Chapter 11
eleven
XANDER
Xander leaned back in the driver’s seat after putting his truck in park. His eyes climbed the stairs of his mother’s daycare, the glass front door sparkling as always, visibly displaying the daycare’s name in colorful letter blocks. Future Seeds Daycare.
He had no plans to stop by here today.
At that hour, Rylee should’ve been beside him in the passenger seat, the two of them singing off-key to 90s R&B on their way to lunch like he’d planned.
He also had no plans to hear that she was pregnant.
And of course, not that she had no plans to keep it.
The mental recap of everything that happened over the past eight minutes had him dropping his head to his steering wheel. He was experiencing so many emotions at once. Too many. He had no idea how to sort through them.
He was going to be a father… or was he?
“Shit,” he sighed, scratching the top of his locs before unhooking his seatbelt to step out.
He could think of no other place to go.
This wasn’t something he could talk to with his friends.
Xander needed his mama.
As he climbed the steps to the front door, he did a quick scan of the front yard, like always.
From the time he was a teenager working with his mother at the daycare whenever school let out, Xander had been just as responsible for Future Seeds as his mother, Michelle.
She never asked him to be… he just was.
Xander was a man of service. Couldn’t help it.
Plus, it brought him so much joy, helping his mother and being around children.
To him, a child’s life was fragile and one of the most important things in the world.
They were the future, every last one of them, with each experience shaping who they’d become.
So Xander made it his mission to make every interaction with a child a phenomenal one, knowing it could leave a lasting mark.
One they might carry forward, and one day, pay forward too.
He peeked over the brownstone’s railing at the glass koi pond, ensuring all the fish were still swimming happily, which they were.
The moment Xander pushed open the brownstone’s doors, his sound space became filled with the symphony of Future Seeds Daycare.
There was crying.
Toys clattering.
Lullabies being played low from a Bluetooth speaker.
“Oh, thank God,” Xander heard to his right.
He glanced that way to find Ms. Carla, one of Future Seeds’ caregivers, bouncing a wailing baby in her arms while patting his back.
“He won’t stop fussing,” Ms. Carla explained, closing the space between them. “Teething. His mother said he’s been fussy since the night before. We gave him ibuprofen but now he’s just restless.”
Xander quickly peeled off his bomber jacket, tossing it onto a nearby chair. He rubbed his hands together briskly to warm them up, rid them of the winter air he’d just stepped out of.
“Do what you do,” Ms. Carla said, handing the crying baby off to him. “I’m gonna go fix his crib so I can put him down for a nap.”
“My child just walked in here and you already putting him to work,” Michelle, Xander’s mother, joked from behind the counter.
“Aw, it’s aight,” Xander said to his mother, lowering his attention to the baby boy. “What you crying for, anyway?” He pressed the baby to his chest and patted his pamper in a soft rhythm. “You gon’ be able to eat solid foods once all them teeth come in. Quit trippin’.”
The crying continued, but then… within seconds, it gradually got quieter until all that remained were soft whimpers and far less noise.
“Mr. Baby Whisperer does it again,” Ms. Carla joked, smiling while folding her arms over her chest. “I’mma run upstairs, get his crib ready, and will be back for him.”
“Take your time,” Xander said low, continuing to rock the baby who had now allowed his heavy eyes to close.
“Hmph,” Michelle huffed, then laughed, leaning an arm on the counter. “You sure I don’t got no grandbabies running around this city somewhere? You too good with this, I swear.”
He glanced at her and scoffed.
Michelle jerked her head back, then lowered her attention to her wristwatch. “I’m surprised you’re here.”
“Didn’t plan to be,” he confirmed low, lifting the baby—now asleep—to his shoulder. Xander bounced the baby slowly as he approached his mother behind the counter. “When Ms. Carla comes back to get him, I gotta talk to you.”
Michelle squinted her eyes, analyzing her son.
Xander knew that look. His mother had worn it his entire life, whenever she was trying to get to the bottom of something before he even said a word.
“Well, all right.” She gestured upstairs toward her office. “I’ll be up there when you’re ready.”
Xander nodded as he turned, continuing to bounce the sleeping baby.
His mind wandered to moments ago at Rylee’s brownstone.
Walking into that bathroom.
Seeing that pregnancy test.
He thought he was seeing things at first. Probably wouldn’t have even known how to read it if the box wasn’t right there, displaying what a positive pregnancy test should look like.
He sucked his teeth when his heart ached at the words she spoke to him.
“This decision is mine to make.”
He bit at his bottom lip, lost cadence in the bouncing of the baby, but quickly regained it when the boy started to stir.
It was kind of ironic… him being able to calm other people’s children with ease… but unable to find any calm in his own life in that moment.
As expected, Ms. Carla returned and skillfully retrieved the sleeping child. Xander and Ms. Carla made their way upstairs together, whispering conversation so they wouldn’t wake the baby until they split off in different directions.
This daycare was like Xander’s second home.
His first real job, if you let him tell it.
He loved Future Seeds, loved what it represented—a place in the community where he’d watched so many neighborhood children grow up.
So many of them had gone off to high school and college, and it always warmed his heart to see them pop back in, their baby pictures still on the bulletin board his mother kept by the door.
Xander walked through the open door of his mother’s office.
He found her sitting behind her desk, her glasses resting on the bridge of her nose as she typed on the keyboard of her computer.
He stopped in front of the couch she kept in her office and dropped himself onto the cushion, sighing loudly.
Michelle removed her glasses and turned her chair away from the computer to focus on her son.
Xander dropped his head back against the couch and turned to look her way.
“You look like someone stole your smile.”
“Hmph.”
“Who I gotta go see and fuck up?”
Xander hollered a laugh. A laugh he really did need in that moment.
He shook his head a second later and said, “I’m just tired.”
Obviously not true.
But there was no way he could get right to it after she said that.
Although Rylee’s words had cut like a hot knife to his heart, he loved her… and he loved that his mother loved her too.
But this?
It was eating him up.
And it had only just happened moments ago.
“Mmm-hmm.” Michelle leaned back in her seat and folded her arms. “Tired, huh? You only come here on your days off to fix something or when you need to talk. So I know it gotta be more than you being tired, Xander. What’s up?”
He inhaled a deep breath and puffed his cheeks as he exhaled.
She sucked her teeth. “Boy, if you don’t…”
He snickered.
“Out with it.”
Xander sat up, then ran his hand across the back of his neck and said, “Rylee’s pregnant.”
Michelle gasped so loud, her reaction echoed around the room.
“What?!” she shouted, her smile so big Xander could see all of her teeth. “Oh, baby!” she squealed. “I’m so happy… ahh! That’s awesome news—”
“She might not keep it.”
“Oh,” she whispered, blinking a few times before nodding quickly. “Oh… okay.”
Her chest visibly rose and fell a few breaths before she closed her eyes, inhaled deep, and sat up.
“Well, damn,” she exhaled. “I have never experienced such a high and low in my emotions in one breath in my life.”
Xander scoffed a laugh. “Tell me about it.”
“Well…” She shook her head and waved her hands in the air. “What do you mean by she might not keep it?”
Xander told her everything that had transpired. Him showing up at Rylee’s home, walking into her bathroom, and finding the pregnancy test.
He then took his time retelling the conversation in which Rylee told him it was her choice what she might do… and that she might not keep their baby.
“She said she’s still grieving,” Xander added, pinching the space between his eyes. “Said she never planned on three kids.” He stopped to lick his lips and bite his bottom one. “I told her I’d handle it, that I wanted this baby, but… she said it’s her decision.”
He squeezed his eyes closed. The recollection of her stating it was her choice cut just as deep as actually hearing her say the words.
“And she’s right.” He forced a nod. “I know she’s right. But damn, Ma.” He lifted his gaze to his mother, who now looked so sad for him. “How can I live with that?”
Xander was up on his feet, hands at the top of his locs as he started pacing.
“I want this family,” he confessed, stopping to look at her. “I want her, so bad. But she’s so loyal to Lennox, which I love and hate at the same fucking time because sometimes I feel like I’m fighting a ghost… and getting my ass handed to me every time.”
Michelle sighed, then ran her fingers through her pressed hair.
She pointed up at him and told him, “First, I’m gonna let that language slide because this is a moment which justifies it… but you gon’ get no more fucks out that mouth around here.”
He sucked his teeth. “You said fuck earlier.”
“I don’t give a fuck what I said,” she snapped back, which made him laugh. “You don’t say it. Watch what I do, not what I say.”
He held his hands up in mock surrender.
“Second,” she exhaled, standing from her desk. “You’re not fighting a ghost, baby.”