Epilogue Layla
Epilogue
Layla
“I’ll be right there. I just need to make sure there’s no leftover cabbage in my cleavage” wasn’t a thing I ever thought I’d tell my boyfriend. Or anyone else, for the matter. Yet here I was, in front of my bathroom mirror, tossing bits of white cabbage out of my nursing bra, glowering at myself.
“Pull yourself together,” I muttered. “It’s just a date. You’ve been on many before.”
It did feel monumental, though. Going out with Grant on a date for the first time since George was born.
Fine, he did come out looking like a George.
George Costanza, unfortunately.
It was uncanny. And more than a little troubling. At the end of the day, I’d decided to just go with the flow. It wasn’t like we actually called him George. He was Georgie to everyone who knew us.
There was a soft knock on the bathroom door. “Sweetie?” my mother called behind the plank of wood. “I think Georgie is hungry again.”
I stuffed the cabbage into the trash can, flicking my hair away from my face. I opened the door, and Mom was there, holding my three-month-old son. “Mom, how can it be? I nursed him twenty minutes ago.”
“Have you ever seen your father eat?” She blinked at me. “The Schmidt men have a healthy appetite.”
“And the Gerwig men have a fixation with their women’s bosoms.” Grant breezed past us in the hallway, stopping only to drop a kiss on my forehead before continuing his journey to the bedroom, unbuttoning his shirt on the way. He’d just gotten home from work.
My mother flashed me a sweet smile and handed me my baby, who was gnawing at his own fist. “Go say hi to Grant.”
George had very luckily grown out of his awkward bald man stage and looked like Grant’s little Mini Me these days.
With a shock of tawny princely hair—almost strawberry blond—and big eyes the color of the belly of a forest. So green, strangers stopped me on the street to stare at him. He even had his dad’s dimpled chin.
I scooped my baby from my mother’s hands and sighed, then waltzed over to the bedroom while flipping one side of my nursing bra open.
Georgie immediately latched hungrily on to my boob, his cheeks doing that hollow suction motion as he gobbled up milk.
His eyes immediately fluttered shut, as though this whole eating-and-shitting gig was taking its toll on his energy level.
“Dude, we’ll be gone for, like, an hour and a half.” I laughed a little. “Don’t be so dramatic.”
When I reached the primary bedroom, Grant was already slipping into his date clothes.
I was surprised to see he was going for something elegant.
Charcoal slacks and a crisp white dress shirt.
I was wearing my pink silk dress again. Mainly because it held nostalgic value for me, since this was the night we’d made Georgie, but also because I wanted to show off my slimmed-down body after giving birth.
For his part, Grant had made good on his promise to worship my body in any shape and form it took. When I was nine months pregnant, when I was postpartum and sported intense purple-and-blue stretch marks across my belly, and when my body had shrunk its way back to normal.
“You’re looking fancy.” I sat on our bed with Georgie in my arms, then leaned against the headboard and grabbed my nursing pillow to prop our son over it. “You don’t have to impress me, you know. I will put out at the end of the date.”
“I’m forever going to try to impress you.” After he finished buttoning up his dress shirt, he walked over to his closet to retrieve his jacket. His tone was clipped. Dry. He was Old Grant again. The one before we’d found out we were pregnant. “How’s George doing?”
Okay, almost everyone called him Georgie.
“Georgie is doing great. Just carb-loading before I leave him for all of ninety minutes to grab a bite.”
But it wasn’t just a bite. Grant had a whole thing planned for us.
He hadn’t told me where we were going, but he’d flown my parents in from New Jersey to watch Georgie, so I was guessing it was somewhere nice.
It was the first time we were going to leave him with someone who wasn’t one of us, and frankly, I was struggling a little with the idea of letting go.
I had no idea how most women were expected to just up and leave their babies after three or four months of maternity leave.
It was inhumane and cruel. I was so grateful to be in a privileged position to be able to spend time with my son, and I reminded myself of that, especially during times when things were tough.
Grant ran his fingers over his hair in front of the mirror, then turned around and walked over to us. He kissed the top of Georgie’s head, staring at him upside down. Georgie was having none of it, though. His eyes were closed and he was solely focused on getting his meal, purring like a cat.
“Hey, son. Your mother and I need to get going, so please wrap this up. I know this is hard. I’m a fan of her boobs too. But I promise you’ll have her back in no time.”
Twenty minutes later, we jogged to our car and started driving. A thick layer of snow covered everything within sight. New York winter was brutal, but Minnesota winter tested your will to live.
Still, I loved it here. We’d created something that was uniquely ours. The house was spacious and beautiful, and before winter hit us, fall was absolutely stunning.
“Where are we going?” I asked Grant.
He was rubbing his lips with his fingers nervously, checking that his messenger bag was in the back seat through the rearview mirror. “Patience, my love. It’s right around the corner.”
A few minutes later, we parked in front of a striking Tudor-style estate. It appeared to be stunningly preserved, even while covered in a white sheet of snow.
“Plummer House.” Grant unbuckled, then immediately reached into the back seat to retrieve his messenger bag. Was he hiding a down payment for a house there in cash or something? Why was he so fixated on his bag? “I rented it for the evening.”
“Are we picnicking?” I gasped. Even better, we could DoorDash McDonald’s. Surely they delivered here.
Grant circled the front of the car and opened the door for me, then ushered me into the house. When I walked in, I was speechless.
Fire crackled in a fireplace, and a dinner table was set for two people only. The place was gorgeous and tastefully furnished from the inside. Heavy wood beams and wooden flooring.
But what hit me more than anything was the scent of delicious food.
Honey-glazed roasted chicken. Freshly baked bread. Onion soup. Garlic mashed potatoes and cinnamoned apple pie. My mouth began to water. The place clearly wasn’t a restaurant, but some kind of a historical landmark, so I wasn’t sure where the food had come from.
Grant pulled a chair out for me at the table, and for the first time since we’d met, I noticed his hands trembling around the carved old wood of the piece of furniture.
“I’m guessing we won’t be having ramen and chicken nuggets this year.
” I flashed him a smile, blushing—blushing—despite, and perhaps because of, who he was to me.
I had discovered in recent months that no milestone was enough to steal away from the magic of Grant Gerwig.
Not even after he had crouched between my legs for ten hours straight and watched my vagina being torn open by his unproportionally big-headed son.
“I now understand why female dragonflies fake their own death to avoid mating with their male counterparts!” My roar ripped through the dry, cold air of the hospital room. “If you think you’re getting anywhere near me after putting me through this, you have another thing coming.”
“No ramen and chicken nuggets for us this year,” Grant confirmed.
I elevated an eyebrow, watching from my periphery as a waiter in a traditional black-and-white uniform scurried from the kitchen door with a bottle of red wine. He presented it to me with elegant fingers.
I tapped my finger on my lips. “If I’m going to pump and dump, might as well drink something I like. Do you guys have, like, a Cosmo?”
The waiter’s eyes widened in horror, his skin turning a sickly shade of green.
“Sweetheart.” Grant reached to touch my knee under the table. “It’s a Chateau Lafite-Rothschild Pauillac 2000. It’ll go very well with our meal.”
I googled the name of the wine on my phone and nearly choked on my saliva. It cost like a New York rent. In Brooklyn, but still.
After our wine was poured, Grant took my hand and looked into my eyes and said, “Layla, there’s something I wanted to ask . . .”
Just as he began, I saw a silhouette of a very familiar celebrity chef stomping the grounds of the estate through the window. He tore the door open like a mythical beast intruding an isolated cabin and there he was, in all of his glory.
Row Casablancas.
Chef to seven different Michelin-starred restaurants.
And my own personal TV crush.
He was married with kids, but still.
“Oh my God! It’s Ambrose Casablancas,” I squealed. He stopped and stared at me coldly. This mountain of a man. Tall, dark, handsome, and tattooed to his last freaking inch. Grant swiveled his head to look at him, then returned his attention back to me.
“Yeah. I know. He is making our dinner.”
“What?”
This was the equivalent of Vera Wang sewing my wedding dress directly onto my body. Of Prince William giving me etiquette lessons (not that they would help).
“Yeah.” Grant blushed a little, and I loved that he, too, was still capable of blushing next to me. “Chase asked him to do us this favor. He owed him.”
Row walked briskly to our dinner table to say hello, even though his expression suggested it was the last thing he wanted to do.
He jerked his chin. “Hey, lovebirds.”
“Thanks for doing this, man.” Grant and Row did this bro handshake.
“No problem. Break a leg.”
“With my luck? I don’t doubt it.”
“Why did he wish you to break a leg?” I asked after Row had retreated into the kitchen, leaving us alone. Grant gave me a little shrug, and the food started coming.