29. Taylor
29
TAYLOR
As Martha and Matty rushed past my legs, I nearly went flying with the can of paint I was carrying through to the soon-to-be nursery.
“Watch out!” I called after them, but they were already gone, having vanished through to Matty’s room to start leafing through the comics that Devon had picked up for them earlier in the day. It didn’t matter how many times we tried to tell him that they already had more than enough, he would always find an excuse to grab a few more, and it wasn’t like any of us had the heart to tell him not to spoil them.
“Have you got that paint?” Lee yelled through from the nursery, just as I appeared in the doorway with a can of the yellow we had picked out for this room.
“Yeah, and you don’t have to yell, I’m right here,” I replied. He cocked an eyebrow at me.
“Oh, sorry,” he teased. “You’re just so old, I thought you might be losing your hearing…”
“Very funny,” I replied dryly as I planted the paint pot down by the brushes. “Now, get to work. I bet you’ve never painted a room before in your life, have you, Lee?”
“I’ve never had to,” he replied.
“Well, I have,” Devon cut in. “And I don’t want you guys to make a mess of it because you can’t stop winding each other up, so how about you put a sock in the banter for a second and we get to work?”
“I second that,” Maya chimed in, grinning at the three of us. Lee looked over at her, and the moment he locked eyes with her, I could see him softening.
“Fuck, you look so cute like that,” he murmured. He wasn’t wrong—she was in overalls and a yellow tee that matched the color of the paint, her hair thrown up in a messy bun. Somehow, she looked even sexier to me than when she was all dressed up. There was something about the intimacy of seeing her relaxed that I liked even more.
“Don’t get distracted,” Devon cut in playfully.
Lee groaned. “Okay, but you can’t blame me,” he replied. “When we were dropping off boxes here, she wasn’t wearing any?—”
“Lee, kids next door,” I reminded him, before he could say something completely X-rated while Martha and Matty were in earshot.
“Shit, right. No, not shit. Whatever the non-curse-word version is,” Lee replied, shaking his head. I couldn’t help but laugh. I knew he was trying his best to be exactly the kind of parent this baby was going to need, as well as stepping up for the rest of our little family too—but that didn’t mean he could just switch off the attitude he’d had for years now like it had never existed in the first place.
“Let’s just get to work, shall we?” I suggested, dipping my paintbrush into the pot and setting to work on the far wall.
Soon, we were all painting as we chatted about what we’d been up to that day. Devon had been auditioning for some indie movie that he wanted to help co-produce, and I had taken Martha and Matty out to the park to play. The two of them were getting on so well—too well, even. I was pretty sure they were conspiring against us even as they hung out in the room next door. The few years of an age gap hardly seemed to register now that they were spending so much time together, and it was a joy to see my little girl welcome her sort-of-brother so excitedly.
“I always wanted to have a little brother,” she had told me matter-of-factly after we’d spent the day with Maya and Matty at their old apartment. “And now I have one.”
“You think you’ll be a good big sister to him? And the baby too?” I’d replied, glancing at her in the rearview mirror. I had decided to tell her about the new baby on the way as soon as I got the chance—I didn’t want it to come as a shock to her, and the more time she had to get used to it, the better. She nodded, as though it should be the most obvious thing in the world.
“Of course I will be,” she’d told me, practically rolling her eyes at the thought that I might doubt her. I couldn’t keep the grin off my face the whole ride home.
She had taken to Maya so well too. And, while she was getting used to having Lee and Devon around, we were taking it slow and not dumping a whole new family on her outright. We still had our own place and, while I could see us moving in with Maya and Matty and the baby in future, for now, that was how it was going to stay.
It was so good to see my daughter’s life filled with such love, with so many people who cared about her. Of course, I had always adored her, but there had never been a time when I wasn’t worried about what her mother leaving had done to her—wondering if she felt abandoned, or whether she was hurt by knowing her mom didn’t want to be part of her life. Now, she never had to worry about that again. She had an abundance of love and care, and soon she was going to be big sister to two whole little ones. I was still sure that the baby was going to be a girl, but Devon thought it was a boy. Either way, we were going to find out the week after next, and I couldn’t wait.
There was still plenty of work to be done on the nursery, but it was coming together. I had spent most of the day before building a crib—and yes, I’d had to deconstruct and reconstruct it when I realized what a mess I had made of it, but that was all part of the process. Now, it sat in the corner of the room, decked out in gender-neutral yellow just like the walls soon would be.
“Can I help?”
I turned around to see Martha standing in the doorway, Matty just behind her. He was still a little shy with me and the other guys, so he always let her take the lead. I glanced over at Maya, who raised her eyebrows.
“Maybe you could just work in this corner,” she suggested. “Where I can keep an eye on you. It’s tough work, this painting…”
“Here, take this brush, it’s the smallest,” Lee told Martha, gesturing for her to come over. She held her hand out for the handle, and he chuckled as he placed it into her hand.
“You want a hand taping up the edges?” Devon asked Matty, crouching down before him with that face-splitting smile he always got when he was around his son. It reminded me of how I had felt when Martha first came along, that total joy of knowing that you got to watch this little human grow up and turn into the best version of themselves.
“Yes, please,” Matty replied, and Devon set about carefully taping around the baseboards so they didn’t cover them in paint. I paused for a moment to watch him, as Matty helped him line up the pieces and then tack them on. He was a good dad, even though he was new to it. He was patient, and that would get you a long way, especially as they started getting older.
“Daddy, can you lift me up?” Martha asked me, tugging on my sleeve. “I want to paint the top, there, next to the curtain rail…”
“I can try,” I laughed. “But you’re getting big now. I don’t know how long I’ll be able to hold you up there…”
“Let me get on your shoulders!” she insisted, and I shook my head at her fondly—but then I dropped down to my knees and gestured for her to climb on.
“All aboard!”
She scrambled onto my shoulders, hooking her legs over my arms and balancing for dear life as she reached the paintbrush up to do the detail work. I held on to her knees, making sure she didn’t go toppling over all of a sudden. I had to admit, she had a steadier hand than I did for all of this. Everything I painted tended to end up looking a little wobbly, but she worked slowly and carefully, her eyes narrowed, her tongue sticking out of her mouth slightly as she kept her focus.
“There! You can let me down now!”
“Phew, thank goodness,” I joked. “I wasn’t sure how much longer I could hold you.”
“You did a great job, Martha!” Maya remarked as she inspected her work. “That part is hard to reach. Thank you!”
She held up her hand, and Maya slapped it with a high five. I grinned. I loved seeing the two of them interacting, my girls. Maya had taken Martha under her wing right away, as if she’d been her own daughter all along. In some ways, I wished she had been, but hey, you couldn’t change the past. All I could do was look to the future, and trust that it was going to be better than anything that had come before.
We continued painting the room, all of us pitching in to get it finished—and, in an hour or so, the whole place was a beautiful, bright yellow, the streetlights outside casting a warm glow over the room. It already felt so peaceful, a perfect place for a baby to rest, and I knew it would be even nicer once we’d had a chance to do it up properly with decorations and furniture.
“Well, team, I think we did a pretty good job,” Lee remarked as he stepped back and admired our handiwork.
“Agreed,” Devon replied. “I think we deserve a reward for that. Pizza, anyone?”
The words were hardly out of his mouth before Martha and Matty were both shrieking their agreement. The two of them dragged Lee out of the room so he could help them pick a movie we could watch over dinner, and Devon headed to make the order, leaving Maya and me alone in the room together.
I stepped toward her, wrapping my arms around her waist and letting my hands rest on her belly. I loved feeling her little bump there, our baby girl growing just under my fingertips.
“You like how it came out?” I asked her, brushing my mouth over her ear gently.
She nodded. “I love it,” she replied. I noticed, all of a sudden, that her eyes were a little teary. I pulled back at once, frowning and concerned.
“Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, more than fine,” she replied, turning to me, wrapping her arms around my shoulders. “I just…I can’t help but think about what it was like at this stage when I was pregnant with Matty. It all felt so…so different then. I really didn’t know how I was going to be able to get through any of it, I felt so alone in the world, I couldn’t even imagine being a mom, let alone a single one. And…”
She gestured around.
“This time, it feels so right,” she finished up. “I’m here with you guys. And Martha and Matty. And I know we’re going to have the most perfect family ready for this baby when they come along?—”
“This girl,” I corrected her playfully.
She laughed. “You’re really stuck on the idea that it’s a girl, huh?”
“Look, I know when I’m right about something, and I’m right about this,” I replied, squeezing her close. “Trust me. It’s a girl.”
“Bet me your pizza crusts from our next movie night?” she asked, raising her eyebrows. I whistled through my teeth.
“Damn, that’s a hell of a wager. But I guess I can put them on the line.”
“You really are confident, then.”
“You bet I am.”
I planted my lips against hers, just softly—it wasn’t often we got time alone together, and I always wanted to make the most of it. In some ways, it still felt like we were in the honeymoon period, though I wouldn’t change a damn thing about it.
“I love you,” I whispered to her. The words didn’t seem big enough to capture the full extent of my feelings for her and everything she had brought to my life, but they were something. A start.
“I love you too,” she replied. And just as she went to kiss me again, we heard voices from the living room—Matty and Martha disagreeing over something. I groaned and pulled back from her, heading for the door.
“Guess we should go deal with that drama,” I remarked, rolling my eyes skyward. She laughed and followed me, slipping her hand into mine.
“Guess we should.”
And with that, the two of us headed out to join the rest of the family in the living room.