EPILOGUE #3
He had to give Johnny some credit for being such a champ through this fiasco thus far.
Victor had not been easy to get along with in the past few weeks, and it was by the grace of God that Johnny had taken the news so well.
After the test came back positive, Victor had spent two tortured days not just worried about what havoc pregnancy would wreak upon his body but that it might lead Johnny to break up with him.
Thankfully, Johnny had the opposite reaction—he’d been ecstatic.
Victor had spent years dreaming about fatherhood, and yet when the moment came, he could only catastrophize and panic about it.
By contrast, Johnny probably hadn’t spent a second of his life thinking about it, and yet he was on board the moment Victor shared the test. It was easier for Johnny to feel so upbeat—it wasn’t him who had to push an eight-pound human out of his vagina.
Victor took Johnny’s hand, held it for a moment, then lowered his head to Johnny’s thigh, watching the firelight flicker.
Johnny rubbed his upper arm gently, his fingers dancing through Victor’s hair.
Thank God he still had Johnny. If Victor had to go through this alone, he might have not survived it.
“Everything’s gonna be alright,” Johnny said gently.
“I wish I believed that. I hate that I’m already losing muscle mass. It’s driving me crazy, on top of everything else. It’s a stupid thing but, like… I worked over ten years to look like this, and I’m gonna lose it.”
“Short-term pain for long-term gain.”
“Yeah, I know.” Victor really did want to be a father.
Even as a teenager, he’d wanted a husband and kids, a peaceful little country life where he could grow old and pass on the love he’d received by his own father.
The only thing that could push past the dysphoria and anxiety was the fantasy of teaching his kid their first steps, followed soon after by their first pony ride. “Do you think I’ll be a good dad?”
“You should ask Taylor. She’d tell ya. She’s already glued to you enough as it is.”
Victor sat up to grab another marshmallow, then thrust it toward the fire. “What about you? Do you worry about what kind of parent you’ll be?”
Johnny was quiet long enough that Victor turned to look at him. He was staring into the flame with unnecessary concentration. “Sure I do. All the damn time. I don’t know if I can do it, but I’m gonna try.”
“I know you can. Taylor loves you.”
“She didn’t live with me when things were bad.”
“Would it have gotten that bad if you had a kid who needed you?”
Johnny’s expression turned sad. “Maybe. I don’t know. I was really out of control.” He huffed in exasperation. “Don’t wanna spend much time worryin’ about it now. I think you’re worryin’ about everything enough for the both of us.”
“No kidding.” Victor pulled the marshmallow away from the fire, blew on it for a second, then tried to bite it off the stick.
It ended up smeared all across his face, and Johnny laughed as Victor attempted to wipe it off.
To Victor’s surprise, Johnny grabbed his face and wrapped his lips around the tip of Victor’s nose, licking it clean.
“Very weird, but thank you,” Victor said with a laugh.
“Oh, I’ll eat your ass but lickin’ your nose is too weird for ya?”
Now Victor laughed harder. “Well, when you put it that way…”
Johnny grabbed a fistful of Victor’s shirt and yanked him into a kiss.
Victor hadn’t predicted it, but he didn’t fight the contact.
He wrapped his arms around Johnny’s neck, returning the kiss knowing they had the luxury of time.
It went on longer than it usually did without escalating, until the kiss naturally ended.
“What was that for?” Victor asked with a smile.
“Needed to buy myself a little time to do this,” Johnny said, pulling further back until Victor’s gaze was drawn toward his hands. In them, he held a little black box, and in that was a gold ring.
“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” Victor blurted. “Is this a joke?”
“Figure I should make an honest man of you after knockin’ ya up,” Johnny joked, though his mouth kept twitching like it couldn’t decide between a smile or something else. “Wanna get married?”
Victor stared, speechless. Considering the fact that Johnny’s sister had never married despite her four children, Victor had assumed it really wasn’t something Johnny was interested in.
You couldn’t really pretend to be roommates once that knot was tied.
Then again, it was hard to explain away a baby, too.
Maybe Johnny figured that as long as there was a child in the picture, he might as well suck it up and make the commitment.
“If you turn me down…” Johnny began.
“Of course not, idiot. I’m just—yes. Yes, definitely. I’d love to get married. Before or after the baby?”
“Whatever you wanna do. We could elope to Vegas tomorrow and I’d be cool with that.” Johnny pulled the ring from its box and held it up to Victor. “Try it on and make sure it fits.”
Victor did so. It was a little big, but it could probably be adjusted. After staring at it a few seconds, Victor tossed his arms around Johnny and yanked him into another kiss.
“Kinda like the idea of eloping,” Victor said after pulling back a few inches. “I don’t think weddings are all they’re cracked up to be.”
“Yeah, it ain’t like I have many people to invite anyway.”
“I could change our flight. We really could go to Vegas.”
“Really? You’re serious?”
Victor pressed his forehead to Johnny’s, relishing the contact and closeness. “I’m serious.”
Again, Johnny kissed him, then swallowed him up into a tight hug. “You crazy sonuvabitch, let’s do it. I’m gonna be a father and a husband by next year.”
“I wonder what Taylor will think.” Right after the pregnancy test came back positive, Victor had decided it was time to tell Taylor the truth about himself.
At eleven, he figured she was old enough to understand it.
To his surprise, she already knew what transgender meant.
When he asked how the hell she’d learned about it, she told him the internet with a roll of her eyes.
“What do you think about me being transgender?” Victor had asked.
Taylor took a moment to think, then shrugged. “It’s fine.”
Fine. That was what he spent months agonizing over.
Children really were something else. But it was probably the best reaction he could have hoped for.
He hadn’t proceeded to tell her that he was pregnant, because he didn’t want to hit her twice with shocking news.
He figured he’d let her know when he got back to Oklahoma.
Over the next few days after Victor’s coming out, Taylor had peppered him with questions that coming from anyone else might have put him on the offensive, but he knew Taylor didn’t mean anything by it.
What was your girl name? What happened to your boobs?
How’d your voice get low? How come you grow a beard now?
He hadn’t gone into much detail, but Taylor would probably be hitting puberty in the next few years, so maybe she’d understand it better by then.
“She’ll probably get jealous she ain’t the sole focus of our attention,” Johnny said with a grin.
“Sounds likely.”
“But she’ll be happy if we get married. She’s been telling me I should.”
“Really?”
“Can’t wait for her to turn 14 and care more about boys than she does our life.”
“She’s a horse girl. She’s not going to get with anyone until her 20’s, if we’re lucky.”
“Speaking from experience?”
Victor snorted. “If it weren’t for Diego, then yeah.”
“Well, she comes from a long line of white trash. If she ain’t knocked up by 20, we can pat ourselves on the back for setting her right.”
“Yeah, what kind of trash gets knocked up accidentally?”
Johnny laughed. “God saw me make it to thirty without a baby mama and fixed that mistake real quick.” His smile faded, but his expression stayed serene.
He grasped Victor’s hand. “I had a scare once with a girl I dated for a few months back in my early twenties. I knew for a fact I wasn’t gonna stick around with her, but before the test came back as negative, I remember thinkin’ God was givin’ me a chance to fix my daddy’s mistakes.
I was ready for it. I almost felt sad when she told me she wasn’t pregnant.
Thank God she wasn’t cuz I was a mess then and so was she but…
” Johnny pulled Victor’s hand to his mouth to kiss the ring on Victor’s finger.
“Maybe God really is lookin’ out for me.
He heard my prayer back then and chose the right time in my life to deliver it. ”
“Thought you weren’t religious.”
Johnny shrugged. “Desperate times and all that.
Victor was probably even less religious than Johnny, but he would like to believe in this idea of a dream deferred.
They were always saying God worked in mysterious ways.
Victor probably never would have chosen to pursue this particular dream, so God forced it on him.
Victor still wasn’t sure whether to be mad about that or not.
If he survived through it all, if everything fell into place in the way it should, then Victor would have the one missing piece in his life.
He had his farm, his man, his niece—and now, a promise of a child.
A curse right now, perhaps, but in the end, a miraculous gift he’d have the rest of his life to enjoy.