Chapter Ten
Magnolia
Ifelt like an explorer venturing into the jungle, hoping to return with berries and nuts.
Just because we'd bought everything in the store related to feeding a baby, didn't mean I had any idea what to do with it.
I had a vague notion that you mixed the formula with something—water? —and put it in the bottle.
I read the side of the formula canister.
Then I read it again. It only took a few minutes to boil water in the electric kettle and wait for it to cool enough for Rosie.
I mixed in the right amount of powdered mix, wrinkling my nose at the smell.
It didn't smell awful, but it wasn't appetizing either.
As long as Rosie was willing to eat it, that was all that mattered.
Vance met me in the kitchen just as I was headed upstairs, a squalling Rosie in his arms.
"Here, take her for second?" he asked, passing Rosie to me.
I didn't get a chance to protest. Vance dropped her into my arms and was gone.
Rosie screeched louder when I squeezed her too tightly, but she was squirming like mad.
I was juggling the bottle, plus the baby, and I didn't want to drop anything.
I got us into the small sitting room off the kitchen, sat in the armchair, and tried to arrange her on my lap.
When Vance had done it, it looked so easy and natural.
With Rosie wiggling and the bottle falling over, I was mostly frustrated and a little freaked out.
I grabbed the couch pillow to prop her up and popped the bottle nipple in her mouth, watching in delight as she went to town. I felt an absurd sense of triumph. I'd figured out she was hungry, made her food, and now she was eating.
Yay me.
I only had to do this about a thousand more times. Surely, it got easier. This was only the first day.
I’d always wanted kids, wanted a family, but I'd never been one of those people who was instinctively good with children.
Vance was. Not that his life intersected with small humans very often, but I'd seen him with kids before, and he was always easygoing and comfortable, which in turn set them at ease.
I, on the other hand, got nervous I wasn't doing the right thing and then felt awkward and out of sorts. I'd agreed to help Vance with Rosie, at least for the foreseeable future, so I was going to have to get over it.
I wanted to. Looking down at Rosie's face, a barely formed combination of her parents, with Amy's black hair and pale skin and Vance's vivid blue eyes, I was already half in love with her. She'd lost her mother. As troubled as Amy had been, she'd also been sweet, and funny, and kind.
I don't know if she would've been a good mother. It's hard to say since she was also an addict. If she'd kept doing drugs, she would've made little Rosie's life difficult, to say the least.
I thought that if Amy had been clean, she could've been a great mom. I hated the idea that Rosie was so tiny and had already lost so much.
She had me, for as long as she and Vance needed me.
As soon as Rosie finished the bottle, I propped her up on my shoulder and promptly learned what burp cloths were for when she vomited half the formula into my shirt. And on the chair. And in my hair.
Vance and I switched places. He popped her into a swinging chair while he tried to clean up the chair and I headed upstairs for a shower. I returned to find Vance in the middle of cooking dinner, Rosie crying in her swinging chair.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
Vance stirred the sizzling vegetables on the stove and said, shaking his head, "I have no idea. Seriously. I tried to give her another bottle. She's not hungry. I tried picking her up. I tried putting her in the floor gym. I checked her diaper. I am fucking clueless."
So was I. Vance had already exhausted all the options I could think of. Leaving her in the swing didn't seem to be working, and the sound of her scream was drilling through my brain. The sight of the tears on her pink cheeks hurt my heart. I picked her up and bounced her on my hip.
Her crying stopped, and I felt like I'd won the lottery. For about a second.
The moment the bouncing stopped, the wailing started up again. Dammit. I switched her to the other hip and bounced her again.
She stopped crying. For another second.
Five minutes of bouncing her from one hip to the other, and my arms were aching. She wasn't that heavy, but the position was awkward and it only stopped her crying for moments at a time.
Vance stayed in the kitchen, working on dinner and eyeing us warily, probably afraid I was going to ask for his help.
Finally, I looked down at Rosie's face and saw her mouth working again. Maybe this time, she was hungry. "Vance, can you make a bottle, or take Rosalie so I can do it?"
"Yeah, one sec." He was sliding dinner onto our plates when the phone rang.
"Don't answer that," I called out. I didn't care who it was. They could wait until we plugged Rosalie's mouth with a bottle.
She was adorable, and I was half in love with her, but the sound of her scream was a bloody nightmare, and she showed no signs of stopping. The bottle was my only hope.
The phone stopped ringing, then started again.
"Don't answer it," I warned.
"I'm not. I'm making her bottle," Vance said, staring at the kettle, willing it to boil.
We should have bought the ready-made formula. Or prepped bottles ahead of time. Anything so we weren't standing around with a starving, screaming baby and no food.
The phone started to ring again. Vance checked the screen and picked it up. I tried to shoot a death glare at him, but I must have missed. Maybe Rosie's screaming was causing interference. God knows, she was loud enough.
"This had better be an emergency," Vance growled into the phone, holding it between his ear and his shoulder as he tried to mix formula. Whoever was on the line said something. Vance answered, "I'm at home, and I can't talk right now, okay?"
Damn right, he couldn't. Rosie screamed louder, wiggling in my arms and pulling on the ends of my hair. I needed that bottle. Now. "Vance," I said, trying to get his attention without yelling in Rosalie's ear. He ignored me and spoke into the phone.
"It's a long story. I have to go. I'll call you tomorrow."
Rosie dripped a string of drool and snot on my arm, her sobbing face red and distraught.
I'd had enough. I didn't care who was on the phone.
I needed that bottle. Now. Covering Rosie's little ears, I yelled, "Vance Winters, you put down that phone and get that bottle over here right now, or so help me, I will end you. Do you hear me?"
Vance said something else into the phone and dropped it onto the counter.
"I've got it. Here." He shoved the bottle at me, and I snatched it, juggling Rosie in my arms with the nursing pillow.
She didn't wait for me to get her arranged but tried to get the nipple in her mouth as soon as she saw the bottle. Our girl was starving.
I got her settled, and my heart rate slowed as she snuggled into my arms and went to work on her bottle. She was a little demon when she was hungry, but once her tummy was happy, she was too cute. I cleaned her tear-streaked face while she ate and managed to burp her without getting puked on.
Victory.
Vance had purchased a bassinet we could roll around the house. Rosalie fell asleep after her bottle and stayed that way as I put her into the bassinet and sat down to my cold dinner.
We ate with single-minded attention. We hadn't been that hungry at breakfast, both of us too nervous about the test results, and then we had been way too busy with shopping and moving and Rosalie to think about lunch.
We'd fed the baby but forgotten to feed ourselves. Vance was a good cook, but I would've eaten anything to quiet the gnawing in my stomach.
Sitting back, I looked at Vance and said, "I'm exhausted."
"Yeah. So am I."
"If she eats every few hours—"
"We're going to be up all night," Vance finished for me.
"How do people do this?" I asked.
"Were going to find out," Vance said. He sat back in his chair and studied me, his blue eyes serious and warm. “I owe you for this. Big time. Bigger than anything."
I shook my head. Vance didn't owe me anything.
"No, I do," he said. "I couldn't do this without you, Magnolia. If I were on my own, I'd be scared shitless right now."
"You're not? Because I am," I said, only half-kidding.
"I am," he admitted. "Of course I am. But we can do this. I know we can do this. If you stick with me, I know we can handle everything, anything. I just want you to know what it means to me to have you with me."
I shifted in my seat, suddenly uncomfortable. Avoiding Vance's eyes, I got up and started to clear the table.
"I mean it, Magnolia."
"I'm not going anywhere, Vance," I said.
I didn't know exactly what he was getting at. He sounded like a friend thanking another friend, but it also sounded like he was trying to say something more. I didn't know if that was the truth or just wishful thinking on my part.
We were friends. He was also my boss, but that wasn't the conflict of interest as it might have been in a different situation. I liked working for Vance.
I liked being in on the deals and helping organize the business aspects of his art career, but I could take care of myself if I decided I needed to pursue a new direction, professionally speaking. No, the boss-employee aspect of our relationship wasn't complicated.
But friendship . . . friendship was all complication. You weren't supposed to lust after your friends. It was easier when I had Brayden as a shield, asshole and awful fiancée though he was. Now that I was single, there was nothing between us, nothing keeping us apart.
Back when he was drinking and sleeping with half the women in town, I could tell myself I didn't want to be one more notch on his bedpost. But the last woman I knew for a fact he'd slept with had been Amy, probably the night Rosalie was conceived.
I doubt he'd been completely celibate since then, but he had definitely been far more circumspect in his sex life.
Now I had no reason at all to tell myself I didn't want him. Only the looming specter of heartbreak far worse than anything Brayden had dealt me. If I let myself get involved with Vance, I'd be setting myself up for a huge fall.
I'm not going to read anything into this, I told myself. I'm helping a friend, that's all.
I kept telling myself that for the rest of the night. The very long night. Brief periods of sleep interrupted by Rosie's crying and a seemingly endless stream of bottles.
Next on my shopping list? A mini fridge for the sitting room and a bottle warmer. No more mixing formula in the middle of the night.
As I fell asleep, again, the faded light of dawn creeping through my curtains, I wondered how long it was going to take to get used to dealing with an infant.
I had a feeling that by the time I got my bearings, things would change and I'd have to start all over again.