Chapter 25. Ford
"What are you doing?" I ask. He has Angel in his arms. Every time she starts to wake up, he's there, singing to her.
It calms her down immediately for her naps, and I couldn't be more grateful.
I used to spend forty minutes to an hour trying to get her down, and now all it takes is Jude singing to her.
She doesn't enjoy her crib very much, just like any other baby, but his voice is the one thing that settles her.
So when I find him dancing and singing for her, it's not a surprise.
However, he always chooses the most random songs.
I asked him about it once and he said, "My generation doesn't know any lullabies, and that's probably your generation's fault. "
"I have nothing to do with that," I tell him.
He usually sings Disney songs. "Out There" is one of his favorites, and he hits all the notes perfectly without any effort.
That little bastard. I spent my whole life singing, and I have twenty more years of experience, and still, he sounds better than I do.
It's unfair, but I always give him a hard time about it, and I love the face he makes when I do.
He also sings "Once Upon a Dream" from Sleeping Beauty, and dozens of others I can't keep track of.
It's been a while since I've watched any Disney.
Now I do because of Angel, and it seems Jude never grew out of it.
That little baby boy. Right now he's singing "Yo Ho, Yo Ho, A Pirate's Life for Me. "
Angel is not even pretending to sleep. She giggles and dances with him and watching how tenderly he holds her face toward his does something to me every time.
"Are you singing about thieves and beggars and people who like to set things on fire to my nine-month-old?" I ask him, and he laughs.
"See how much she loves it. Don't worry about it, Angel. Your daddy is very square, but you have Uncle Jude to help you."
I roll my eyes and scoop her up. I nod to the armchair. "Nap time. Sit down and let her sleep on you."
"I love how much babies trap you in place all the time. Good thing I like being trapped."
He settles into the armchair with Angel draped across his chest, her cheek pressed against his collarbone, and within three minutes she's out.
Gone. The kind of deep, boneless sleep that only babies can achieve.
Jude doesn't move. He barely breathes. His hand rests on her back, rising and falling with her tiny exhales, and he stares at the ceiling.
I watch them for longer than I should. Then I go make coffee, because watching Jude hold my daughter while she sleeps is doing things to my cardiovascular system.
His PTO runs out on Thursday. I know this because I know everything about his schedule.
Thursday evening, the shift begins. He told me about it over Martha's casserole the night before. Casual, like he wasn't testing whether I'd ask him to call in sick.
"Night shift starts tomorrow. Eight to four. It's remote, though. Just need my laptop and decent Wi-Fi."
"You have both of those here," I say, and he looks at me with those honey eyes. I'm not ready for him to leave. I don't say that part. I don't need to. He hears it anyway.
So now it's seven forty-five on a Thursday night, and Angel has been down since six thirty, and Jude is transforming my dining room table into his personal command center.
His laptop, a mechanical keyboard that sounds like a hailstorm, a mouse with too many buttons, and a headset with a microphone that makes him look like an air traffic controller.
There are cables everywhere. My pristine mahogany table is buried under a tangle of USB-C cords and adapters and something he calls a "dock" that I'm fairly certain is just an expensive power strip.
He doesn't look up. His fingers move across the keyboard with a focus I've never seen from him in any other context.
Jude, who can't fold a towel without turning it into a modern art installation, who leaves his shoes in the middle of hallways, who treats every domestic task like a personal affront.
this Jude is locked in, precise, efficient.
I settle into the armchair across the room and open a book I have no intention of reading. What I intend to do is watch him.
At eight, he logs in. I hear the chime of whatever system they use, a series of rapid clicks, and then his posture changes. He looks like someone who knows exactly what he's doing. It's disorienting. It's really attractive.
"Alright," he mutters, scanning something on his screen. "Let's see what these idiots broke while I was gone."
He works in silence for twenty minutes, and I learn more about him in those twenty minutes than I have in some entire evenings together.
He reads fast. He mutters to himself, a running monologue.
Motherfucker, who pushed this to prod without testing.
Jesus Christ, this API call is a war crime.
Oh, beautiful, someone hardcoded the credentials, that's great, that's really great.
At nine twenty-three, his headset lights up. He glances at the incoming call notification, and his whole face changes. The focus cracks open into something warm and bright and boyish.
"There he is," Jude says, clicking accept. "The love of my life. The wind beneath my wings. The only person on this godforsaken team who knows what a merge conflict is."
The voice comes through the speakers. I wonder if he meant to leave them on.
"You've been gone for a week and everything is on fire. I hope you're happy."
"Ecstatic. What'd I miss?"
"Brennan deployed the new auth module to production without a rollback plan."
"Of course he did. Alfie, we deserve a fucking raise.
" Jude laughs. Alfie. I remember him. The boy who came with Jude the first time he showed up at my church, the leather jacket, the sunglasses.
I've heard about him extensively since. Alfie is a constant presence in Jude's stories.
Alfie said. Alfie thinks. Alfie would kill me if he knew.
"Hold on, let me turn on video. I need to see the bags under your eyes," Jude says.
"I know you love me, you don't need an excuse," Alfie says.
The screen flickers, and I catch a glimpse of the video feed from my angle in the armchair. A young man, ridiculously attractive, with olive skin, brown eyes, and honey-colored hair pushed to the side. Behind him, a dimly lit house.
"You look rested," Alfie says. "I hate you."
"I've been sleeping nine hours a night."
"Disgusting. While I've been here, alone, holding the entire infrastructure together with duct tape and prayers. And since when do you sleep?"
"Daddy makes me," he says, without looking at me. Alfie chuckles.
A pause. The sound of typing. "So. You're at his place?"
I keep my gaze on my book. I am reading. I am absolutely reading this page about Roman stoicism that I've been staring at for ten minutes without processing a single word.
"Yeah," Jude says. "Still here. And he's right there, by the way." He grins at me. "In the armchair. Pretending to read."
"I'm not pretending!"
"Yes, you are. You've been on the same page for twelve minutes."
"I'm savoring it."
"You're eavesdropping."
"It's my house. I'm not eavesdropping. I'm existing in a space I own."
Jude laughs and spins the laptop so the camera catches me, and suddenly I'm face to face with Alfie.
"Nice to see you again, Ford," Alfie says. "Jude talks about you constantly. It's unbearable. I know what you eat for breakfast. I know your thread count. I know about the laminated schedule."
Something tightens and loosens in my chest at the same time. I love that he talks about me. I'm less comfortable with how thoroughly he does it.
"Ford, this is Alfie. Alfie, Ford. Now you've met. Can we all move on with our lives?" Jude says, spinning the laptop back toward himself, but I catch the flush on his neck. He's pleased. He's trying to hide it and failing spectacularly.
"Not so fast." I set my book down and rise from the armchair, bringing my coffee with me. I pull a chair up beside Jude. "Alfie. I've heard a lot about you."
"I have to say," Alfie continues, leaning back in his chair. He has one hell of a smirk. "You're not what I expected."
"What did you expect?"
"He said you were terrifying," Alfie adds, and a cat appears behind him, stepping delicately across the keyboard of what looks like a second laptop. Alfie doesn't acknowledge it. The cat doesn't care. I laugh, and Jude hides his face in his hands.
"Oh, is that so?" I ask, loving every moment.
"I didn't say that," Jude tries, but it's obvious he did, and it's obvious Alfie lives for embarrassing him.
"Oh?" Alfie asks. "Ford, didn't you tell him it's bad behavior to tell lies?"
"I did, indeed," I play along.
"I wonder if he's fishing for punishment. Probably."
"Shut up, Alfie!" Jude exclaims, but he's laughing.
"Don't worry, he'll be dealt with accordingly," I tell Alfie. Alfie has a predatory grace about him.
"Good. That's what I expect."
"Alright, enough socializing," Jude announces, pulling the laptop back to face him. "We have a production environment that's actively hemorrhaging, and Brennan's auth module is probably leaking credentials into the void as we speak. Daddy, go back to your book."
"Don't tell me what to do, brat," I tell him, but there's no bite. I do go back to my book. Alfie calls out:
"Bye, Ford! Please teach him a lesson!"
"I will!" I call back. Jude focuses on Alfie.
"He's gonna kill me!" he complains, as if I'm not right here. Alfie laughs.
"So I did you a favor. You love it."
Jude rolls his eyes, sighing, but they do go back to work.
They're extraordinary together. Not in the way I expected.
Not chaotic, not reckless. Incredibly intelligent.
Precise. They speak in a shorthand that's half-technical, half-telepathic, finishing each other's diagnostic trains of thought with the same synchronicity I've only ever seen in musicians who've played together for years.
Alfie identifies the problem; Jude dismantles it.
Alfie maps the system; Jude finds the flaw in the map.
They argue, briefly, sharply, about something called a "race condition" that sounds like it should involve horses but apparently involves database transactions, and the argument resolves in under a minute because they arrive at the same conclusion from different directions.
"There," Jude says at eleven forty-seven. "Rolled back. Patched. Deployed to staging. If Brennan touches this again before it's reviewed, I'm going to put his credentials through a shredder."
"I'll hold the shredder," Alfie says. "Good work."
"Good work yourself. You kept it from burning down without me. I'm almost impressed."
"Almost. The highest praise."
They lapse into something quieter after that. Maintenance tasks, monitoring, the digital equivalent of sweeping up after a storm. Their conversation drifts from technical to personal. Alfie mentions a scene he went to over the weekend.
"But no one is as fun as Glynn," Alfie says, sighing.
"You should come to the club this weekend," Jude says. "Ford took me last Saturday. It was good."
A pause. I hear the cat purr through the speakers, a low, mechanical rumble. "Maybe," Alfie says, and the word is loaded with something heavy.
"Callum asked about you."
Another pause. "Did he."
"He did. He looks good. He's restoring a Victorian armoire. He showed me pictures. It's gorgeous."
"I miss everybody. You know that. But it's hard."
"I know," Jude says. He knows.
I hear Alfie exhale. "Fine. Maybe I'll come."
Jude grins. "We're going to have so much fun!"
They go back to work.
At two in the morning, Angel wakes.
I hear her through the monitor before Jude does. I'm on my feet before I fully register moving.
And then I hear Jude's chair scrape back.
"I've got her," I call down.
"Let me…"
"Work. I've got her."
But the way he was fully intending to go get my baby and help her sleep again, even when it isn't his job, even without being asked…
I realize I might be in love.