10. Luca
LUCA
I hang back in the doorway as she goes to lift Polly out of the crib and into her arms, and for a moment, I just stand there and take her in.
When I got that text from her, asking to come over, I had been dead asleep—one of the few nights I got off from the hospital, and I wanted to catch up on as much rest as humanly possible.
But the moment I saw her message, I jumped to my feet and rushed over, not even thinking twice.
If there was something going on with her, then I had to be here to protect her—I wasn’t going to let anything happen to her or my daughter, and that was the end of it.
When I got here, of course, I found out that it likely hadn’t been anything too serious.
She was apologetic, which is ridiculous, but that shouldn’t surprise me.
She still doesn’t really understand how serious all of this is, how much danger she could be in if she takes her eye off the ball for too long, and I’m not going to be the one to force her to find out.
And now, as she cradles a wailing Polly, I can tell how tired she is.
She looks exhausted, and not just in the way that most new mothers are, but something deeper.
Something bone-deep, the worry of what she has brought into her life by getting involved with me.
I hate seeing it, but at least I can go some way to assuaging that by being here with her.
“Hey there, honey, it’s alright,” she coos to her little girl, bouncing her up and down in her arms. “I’m right here. You’re all good. You can go back to sleep whenever you want…”
Polly’s cries slowly began to die down as Katie speaks to her, the sound of her mother’s voice utterly relaxing to her.
At this age, babies hardly knew they aren’t still a part of their mother, and it’s clear Polly can see no real difference between the woman who holds her and the person she actually is.
Once she has settled, Katie glances over her shoulder at me. “You want to hold her?”
I hesitate for a moment, surprised. I haven’t actually held my daughter as of yet, something I’m all too aware of. But one of the reasons I’ve been trying to hold back on that is that I know I’m going to get too attached to her.
I don’t want to let myself get drawn into all of this, this feeling of being part of a family.
It’s not what I need here, not what I can live with.
I have a whole life that has nothing to do with this place, and it’s a life I’m not willing to abandon for anything.
It’s a life I have trained for as long as I’ve been alive, and a life I won’t let slip through my fingers.
And yet, as she holds Polly out toward me, I find myself cradling her in my arms for the first time. And as she gazes up at me, taking me in for the first time, I feel a rush of emotion so intense it nearly takes me off my feet.
“You okay?” Katie asks, probably able to read the expression on my face right now.
I nod. “I’m fine,” I assure her, gently brushing a strand of Polly’s hair aside. “I’m fine.”
I just hold her for a moment, relishing this chance to be close to her.
It’s unlike anything I have felt before, this connection with her—knowing that she is my own flesh and blood, and being able to see her for all the potential she holds in her own right too.
A whole lifetime stretched out ahead of her, from this moment when she’s resting in my arms, and it’s hard to wrap my head around just how much that means.
After a few moments, she starts sniffling again, and Katie reaches out for her once more.
“She must be exhausted,” she murmurs as she brings her back to her crib. “You get some rest, baby. I’ll be back to check on you soon, okay?”
And with that, she slowly backs out of the room, setting up the baby monitor so she can keep an eye on Katie from the other room. She plants the screen on the table in the living room, and sits down on the couch again, rubbing her hand over her face.
I’m not sure what to do. Does she want me to go now? She seems like she has calmed down, and I can’t imagine she wants to keep me kicking around for any longer than I need to be.
“You can sit,” she tells me softly, glancing up at me.
“You sure? I can go?—”
“I want you to stay.”
The words are simple, but they send a shock wave through my system. There’s something completely all-consuming about being here with her right now, as though everything that exists outside of this apartment has ceased to be. I take a seat next to her, and glance over to the baby monitor.
“She’s sleeping already,” I remark, and she smiles and nods.
“Yeah, she does sleep well,” she agrees. “I’m really lucky. I know a lot of babies have trouble at this age, but she usually goes down like it’s nothing.”
“It’s not just luck.”
She glances over at me, confused.
“You’re a great mom, Katie.”
She smiles and shakes her head. “I appreciate the sentiment,” she replies. “But I don’t know if it’s possible to be a great mom this early on in her life. Give me a few months and I can really accept that compliment, you know?”
I reach over and grip her knee tightly, gazing at her. I need her to hear this from me. I need her to know how serious I am. Because something tells me she doesn’t have a lot of people in her life who are willing to tell her what she needs to hear.
“No, I’m serious,” I murmur to her. “You are. I can see it in the way you look at her, the way you talk to her—you’re great at this already. I see plenty of mothers come in and out of the hospital, so I know when I’m looking at a natural.”
She smiles again, but this time, it’s a little more sincere. She looks a little more certain, as though she’s starting to trust the words coming out of my mouth.
“I’m not saying that I ever could have planned for any of this,” I tell her softly, reaching my hand up to rest on her cheek. “But if I’d had the choice—I would have chosen to have a baby with someone like you.”
She draws in a sharp breath at those words. For a second, I worry I’ve overstepped—worry that I have said something too intense, something too hard for her take.
But then she grins at me. “You really mean that?”
“I really mean that.”
“Well,” she breathes. “That’s…that’s a lovely thing to hear, that’s for sure.”
She falls silent for a moment, and as I study her face, curiosity gets the better of me. Despite the fact that we have a daughter together, I still hardly know anything about her, and I want to.
“What about your mom?” I remark, trying to keep my voice casual, not to make it too obvious that I’m delving for more information about her. “Are the two of you close?”
She nods—but then shakes her head.
“We were,” she replies, carefully. “When she was alive.”
“She passed? I’m sorry?—”
“Both my parents did, a while ago,” she explains, her voice dropping to a near whisper. “I—it’s been a long time without them.”
I can hear the pain in her voice. No matter how long it might have been, it’s clear that the weight of it still hangs heavy over her head. I squeeze her knee lightly.
“I can’t even imagine how hard that’s been,” I murmur. “I lost my mom, and that was bad enough. Thought it might damn near carry my father away too, with how heartbroken he was by the whole thing…” I shake my head. “So, you don’t have any other family?”
“No,” she confesses. “I mean, I have Cara, my best friend—and she’s as good as family to me, as far as I’m concerned. But I don’t have any direct relatives here. It’s just Polly and me.”
Things start clicking into place a little more now—why she would have wanted to have a child, after a single hookup with a guy she didn’t know. She had no family of her own, but now, she does. And that’s a pretty damn good reason to want to have a daughter.
“So you were going to raise her all by yourself?” I ask, frowning, as that part of it strikes me too. “No help from anyone other than your friend?”
She shrugs. “I’ve done plenty by myself,” she replies. “I got into college, I came to this city, I got that internship with the councilor…”
“That’s what you were doing when we met?” I ask her, cocking an eyebrow. “You were there with a politician…?”
“I guess,” she replies. “It was my first time going to anything like that, like I told you. It’s crazy now, looking back…”
“So what happened to all of that?” I wonder aloud. “Your internship, college…?”
“I managed to finish college before I had Polly,” she replies, gesturing toward the baby monitor. “I didn’t even know I was pregnant for a few months, I was so distracted with getting everything done for my final exams. But the internship…”
She trails off for a moment, picking at something on her sleeve.
“I had to leave that. I couldn’t keep up with Polly and that kind of work. It takes everything from you, all your time, all your energy, and there was no way I was going to do that to my daughter.”
I eye her for a long moment—so, this job, this career that she had just started that she had already worked so hard for, she let it go for the sake of raising her daughter right?
I have to admit, there’s something seriously admirable about that.
Even if it breaks my heart a little to think of her turning her back on all of that.
“You don’t miss it?”
“Of course I do,” she replies. “I’ve wanted to get into politics for years, and I was doing well on that internship. I would have been offered a full-time job right out of college, I think, had it not been for…”
She stops herself before she can say her daughter’s name, as though determined not to lay the blame at her door.
“But I made my choice,” she finishes up. “And I know it was the right one. Besides, I can always go back to work, right? I can keep building my knowledge, working on my skills out here in the real world, and come back with even more causes to fight for.”
“I like that,” I reply. “I bet you’re going to kick ass when you go back to that world.”
She smirks at me slightly.