Chapter 26
Arthur and Tristan waited uncomfortably in the building’s lobby to give the girls some space. Arthur bounced Liam mindlessly. He was calm and sleepy.
“So what’s that all about?” Arthur asked.
“Well, there’s no easy way to say it, I guess. But we’re moving.”
Arthur’s heart dropped. “Oh,” was all he could say.
“We love it here and everything. But I finally convinced Charlie that there’s more to see out there.”
“You know Wren’s gonna kill you, right?”
Tristan laughed. “To be honest, I could use a little bit of a fresh start. Figure out what I want to do next. I hope she understands that.”
Liam let out the most adorable little yawn, his tiny arms trying their best to stretch.
“Can I?” Tristan asked.
Arthur nodded and handed him over. Tristan held Liam like a plate that had just come out of the microwave. Arthur laughed and helped him adjust.
“You can put one arm under here, and a hand behind his head. Always support the head.”
“You’re so good at this.”
“I’m just well-read. In reality I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“Could have fooled me.”
A long silence while Tristan, getting the hang of it, rocked Liam back and forth, mesmerized by him.
“I don’t know how to thank you guys, for everything you’ve done,” Arthur said out of the blue.
“No need,” Tristan said. “Happy to help a friend.”
“You pushed your honeymoon back to help us out. That’s above and beyond.”
Tristan smiled and shrugged.
“I once read about an experiment where students watched a thousand balloons fall from the ceiling. Each balloon had one of their names written on it. They were each tasked with finding the balloon with their own name. Do you know how many were successful?”
Arthur shook his head.
“Zero,” Tristan said. “Then they did it again. And this time the students were instructed to pick up a balloon and give it to the student whose name was written on it. In minutes, everyone had their balloon. Pretty amazing, right? I think about it often, and what it says about happiness.”
Arthur sighed. “You saw that on LinkedIn didn’t you?”
“Yes. But it’s still powerful.”
Arthur laughed. “You’re one of the best people I know, Tristan. You treat people with kindness, you treat everyone like a friend. If that doesn’t make a difference in the world, then I don’t know what does.”
“Thanks for saying that.”
“But if you ever decide you want to be poor and have less flexibility, come and talk to me about teaching. I think you’d be great at it. Your catchphrases would kill.”
Tristan laughed. “Maybe.” Then, as if struck by inspiration: “Maybe I could run an online course, teaching people how to become their own boss; there could be different modules, and there—”
“Never mind, you’re hopeless. I take it all back.”
The door opened behind them and Charlie emerged, immediately wagging a threatening finger at Arthur. She had makeup running down her face and was visibly heaving.
“I. Am. Not. OK,” she said dramatically. Then she walked up to Arthur and hugged him as hard as he could ever remember being hugged in his life. “But I will be. You take care of her, you hear? If you don’t, I’ll find you, make a suit out of your skin, and do it myself. Got it?”
Arthur got goose bumps. All he could say was, “Yes, ma’am.”
He took Liam back and said goodbye to his friends, then took one deep breath before heading back in.
Their first night alone with Liam. He’d read all the books, been on a crazy journey of self-discovery these past few months, and still he had absolutely no idea what to do when he walked through that door.
The pediatrician would help. All they had to do was get through one night. How hard could that be?
Liam wouldn’t stop screaming.
By midnight, they’d tried everything. Run through the checklist of reasons babies cry.
He’d eaten enough and wouldn’t take any more.
He had a fresh diaper. Wren had tried rocking him.
Arthur had tried bouncing him. He spat the pacifier out over and over.
Nothing worked. Cries and screams and screams and cries.
What had happened to their little cooing angel?!
Arthur covered his ears and winced. Liam had cried at the hospital, but my God, it was so much more piercing here.
The hospital had a steady hum of activity, machines whirring, people walking and talking outside.
Their apartment was dead quiet except for the guttural wails of their newborn.
Arthur felt as if his head might explode.
“Check the thermostat, maybe it’s too cold in here?” Wren pleaded while cradling Liam.
“It’s on sixty-eight; I don’t think it’s that. I really wish you’d let me re-swaddle him; it’s coming loose.”
“My swaddle is not the problem.”
“Should we try feeding him again?”
“We just tried that! He’s full.”
“Maybe he’s got gas pains. Try burping him.”
“He ripped a huge one after he last ate; it’s not gas.”
“THEN HOW THE HELL DO WE MAKE HIM STOP?!”
“I DON’T KNOW, DO YOU WANNA TRY ASKING HIM NICELY?!”
The yelling continued. Things were said that would be regretted later. But also, this was wartime. There were no rules. There was only survival.
Eventually, suddenly, and finally, the cries stopped, winding down into adorable little coos. Arthur walked over quietly to take a look at the little bundle in Wren’s arms. He’d fallen asleep, just like that. Thank fuck.
Arthur and Wren looked at each other, locked eyes, and started laughing.
“I think we handled that well,” Wren said in a low voice.
“Totally. We didn’t buckle under the pressure at all. Go us.”
Wren held out a fist and Arthur bumped it with his.
Together, they walked into the bedroom and laid Liam down in his bassinet, carefully, slowly, as if defusing a bomb. Once he was down, they both backed away with their hands up, careful not to disturb the air and somehow wake him again.
“Ready to do this again in a few hours?” Arthur whispered.
“Do we have to?”
“We don’t have to; we get to,” Arthur said.
“That’s it, you’re not allowed to hang out with Tristan for a while.”
Arthur laughed. “I can finally admit. He’s not so bad.”
Silence. Only little heart-shattering noises coming from their son, sound asleep in the bassinet a few feet away. Arthur opened his phone, swiped his way through TikTok until he found a video with bold, aggressive text overlaid: Newborn won’t stop crying? 3 HUGE things you’re doing wrong!
“Anything helpful?” Wren said. Arthur paused, then closed the app.
“Nope,” he said, holding his thumb on the icon and deleting it from his life forever.
They lay down on the bed. It was too early for them to go to sleep, but they also felt like they couldn’t make even the smallest peep of noise. They were trapped. But there were worse things.
“We never got to talk about the house,” he said out of nowhere. It had been looming over them since the hospital. There never seemed to be a good time to discuss it. “It’s over; I got us out of it.”
Wren shot up.
“You didn’t have to do that. How much money did we lose? Arthur, I was being selfish; we could have made it work.”
“No, you weren’t, and we couldn’t. I can admit that now.”
“So…” she said. “How much money?”
“Believe it or not, none.”
“I’m sorry? I’m no real estate attorney, but even I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work like that.”
“Let’s just say Linda Kellerman took pity on us.
” After he’d run into her while cleaning up the mess—the mess he himself had created—he apparently looked like such hell, so down and broken, that she just couldn’t bring herself to rake him over the coals.
The home, it turns out, was owned by a big property development company Linda did a lot of work with.
She had sway, she said, and could probably get them to rip the deal up.
It didn’t hurt that she felt a little bad about breaking the news to Wren prematurely after a bit of wine at the wedding.
“So we got off scot-free?”
“Not quite. She made me promise to volunteer at her Spring Cleaning Dumpster Day, and she’s going to drop off about twenty boxes of hideous baby clothes we have to pretend to love.”
“So she’s made herself an honorary grandma,” Wren said.
“Small price to pay.”
Silence. Only little coos and baby snorts.
“So what do we do now?” Wren asked.
“I think we still need to move.”
“Because you hate this place.”
“Are you kidding?” he asked. “This is where we stopped being a couple—just a pair of lovebirds running on hormones and Lean Cuisines—and became a family. Even before Liam came along, we were learning how to be a family. We took our lumps and came out the other side better for it. We did it all here. How could I ever hate this place?”
Wren searched for Arthur’s hand, found it, and gave it a squeeze.
“I think you’re right,” Wren said. “It’s time for the next phase.”
Arthur squeezed back.
“But we’re gonna be so broke if we move into a bigger place. Are we gonna be OK?”
“We are. That part’s going to suck. But I say, If it’s not good, it’s not over.”
“Another Tristan-ism?” she asked.
“Nah. That’s all me.”
In the morning, a knock at the door woke Arthur far too early, right in the middle of a good stretch of sleep from Liam.
Wren slept through it, somehow, but Arthur shot up instantly.
Without so much as half a second of transition from deep in the dreamworld to full-strength reality, he was disoriented, bleary-eyed, and highly annoyed.
Arthur stormed quietly through the apartment, determined that if this was Mrs. Flynn asking him to help her carry a hundred pounds of dog or cat food or drums of oil or whatever heavy-ass thing she was bringing into her apartment today, he was going to lose it.
He and Wren had worked tirelessly over the last eight hours to have some semblance of a normal circadian rhythm.
Liam had other plans. He was up and angry, then hungry, and then alert, and just when he had finally broken them, he decided it would be hilarious to lull his parents into a false sense of security, allow them to doze off, and then start screaming to start the whole process over again.
But now, he was finally down, temporarily at least. And whoever had knocked had somehow managed to wake only Arthur. Arthur was determined to keep it that way.
He flung the front door open without so much as a look through the peephole.
Greeting him with smiling, nervous faces was a gaggle of children—his former students.
There was Martin, in the front, and behind him floppy-haired Grant and extremely tall Mackenzie and a few others he’d taught over the last two years.
Martin held a bouquet of flowers and a card.
What were they doing here? It had to be some kind of mistake.
Maybe they’d announced the news at school, but instead of telling everyone that Wren had delivered the baby, they accidentally told everyone Arthur had slipped into a coma.
The kids were here to celebrate and draw crude things on him while he lay there helpless, he knew it.
“Congratulations on the baby, AP,” Martin said instead, handing over the flowers and light pink envelope. “From all of us.”
“What are you— You guys didn’t have to come here.
” He’d hoped to be more elegant as he realized that they were indeed here for him, because they cared, but found his throat closing up rapidly.
Surprised and overwhelmed couldn’t possibly do it justice.
It was like being back in the dreamworld all over again.
He was half expecting one of the kids to morph into his father. “This is too much, really.”
“Well, we all chipped in and got you a present, but someone forgot to attach the card,” Grant said, as Martin’s face grew red. “So we decided to bring it by. Sorry it’s a little late.”
“And sorry it’s pink,” Martin added. “We were all sure it was going to be a girl.”
“That reminds me, you owe me five dollars,” Grant chimed in, nudging Martin.
Arthur laughed. “I don’t care about the color, it’s perfect. But I didn’t get a present from—” He stopped mid-sentence, realizing. “The car seat. That was all of you?”
“Well, and our parents,” Mackenzie added with a hunch of her shoulders. “My mom headed up the collection.”
The parents were involved, too? They actually…
liked him? This really was too much. With the exhaustion coming into play, he was dangerously close to breaking out into a hefty, on-his-knees sob right here in the hallway.
The kids were being nice to him now, but there was no way they’d ever let him live that one down.
“I gotta be honest, I didn’t think you guys liked me all that much,” Arthur admitted. “Martin, I let you down. And the rest of you…I don’t know if I was always giving you my best.”
“You didn’t let me down, AP. My grandma wouldn’t let me buy the trumpet, but chasing you with that bat was the first time she’d been up off the couch in weeks.
” The kids laughed. “I’m serious, once she knew she could do it, everything changed.
She’s been walking, cooking. She even changed a lightbulb the other day—I’m not kidding! ”
“And I definitely would have failed seventh-grade English without your video about how the object of a sentence would drink a soda versus the subject,” Mackenzie said.
“Oh yeah, that was fire!” a few of the others chimed in.
“Oh,” was all Arthur could think of to say.
It was a lot of information to take in, knowing that yes, they had trolled him and teased him and made his life pretty difficult at times, but maybe that’s just what kids were supposed to do.
That’s what his kid would probably do one day.
In the end, he had gotten through to them, some of them.
In the end, he had made a difference after all.
“I guess, you’re welcome, then.” He nodded his thanks again, turned to head back inside, and then paused. “And hey—I’ll see you all around the halls.”