Forty-one
Liem
Babies are strange. Having one unexpectedly dropped into your lap is something else altogether.
Looking at Vaughn, seeing so much of me in him, I feel a level of dedication I’ve never felt before.
A sense of duty to protect him and give him the life he deserves.
It’s what my mom always wanted for me, and the type of love my grandma told me about, but I can’t look at him and not feel like my choice was stolen.
I feel the same way when I look at Natalie.
She’s doing better. With more time to get back into her old routine and to see a therapist, she has warmed back into her old self.
She’s alert, quick-witted, and was desperate to get back to work.
While her first day back wasn’t meant to be until next Monday, we all agreed it would be good for her to do anything that brings her joy.
Natalie’s mom cleans the dishes in the kitchen while I change Vaughn’s diaper for what feels like the fortieth time today.
All he does is eat, poop, cry, and laugh at my misfortune, and it’s cute as hell.
It took me a moment to connect with someone who’s a half step more sentient than a doll, and even longer to feel like he was part of me.
My dedication to him was never in question, but looking at him and seeing a stranger filled me with guilt.
Not as much guilt as quietly wishing I hadn’t done what it took to make him in the first place, but guilt nonetheless.
I pick him up from the bed, balancing him in my hands. “Thank you for not peeing on me this time,” I say.
He coos. Some sort of insult, I’m sure. He has beef with me, like he knows I blocked his mom on everything and wasn’t here for the first few weeks of his life. Maybe that’s all in my head.
Time has flown by, as quickly and violently as a storm.
Learning how to care for a newborn while barely sleeping makes the days bleed together.
Five days passed before Sai called me asking when I was coming back from overseas, and I realized I had never updated him.
I hadn’t picked up the phone at all other than to call Bri, but I then got sucked into the tornado.
I stretched the truth, saying I was still taking care of family, keeping me on paid family and medical leave.
Asking for paternity leave would have sent him over the edge.
Sleeping in Natalie’s guest room was too awkward.
We are never getting back together. The line we’ve drawn isn’t in sand but dried concrete, molded then cast in bronze.
Ironically, I finally returned the ring I bought for her and found a travel rental a few blocks away.
I can’t will myself to commit to a lease yet.
The front door closes. Natalie must be back from work. “Let’s go see the person you don’t hate, yeah?”
I take him with me to greet her. She looks like the Natalie I used to know, tired but calm after a day of endless productivity that contributed to the betterment of society.
She sees Vaughn. and her face melts into a smile. “There’s my little boy. Hello,” she sings, taking him from my hands. “Did you have a good day with Grandma and your daddy?”
The word makes me flinch. She seems to catch it as well, looking my way to gauge my response. If my face looks as dead as I feel inside, it’s not pretty.
“You can come see him tomorrow all day,” she says, shrugging her work bag off her shoulder. “My mom will be here to help.”
“Great.” My tone is more lackluster than I mean it to be, but how can I not be upset?
Nothing in my life feels like it’s for me—the exact way it felt when Natalie broke up with me, and the way she stated so poetically in the note she wrote. Then Bri came into my life and encouraged me to turn that all upside down. And now she’s gone too.
Like my grandmother always said, a parent’s love for a child should be unconditional.
Having Vaughn was Natalie’s decision, and I love him, but as Bri told me before, I’m allowed to have whatever feelings I have, and right now, I feel like I’ve gone backward, rewinding my life to the part of the story I hated most. I’m coming out of my chrysalis to find I’m still a fucking caterpillar.
Natalie steps closer to me. “Liem, I meant it when I said you don’t have to do this if you don’t want. This is a lot to take on when you didn’t have months to emotionally prepare for it like I did.”
“I’m not going to leave him, Nat.” When I get over the shock and the pain of losing Bri, I will realize how important this time is with him. It’s an adjustment. Whiplash, really. That’s my life.
“You don’t have to—”
“Please stop telling me to be a deadbeat dad. Seriously. I want to be here for Vaughn.”
I take him back, letting her shrug off her coat and shoes. Holding him again, my blood pressure calms. His baby scent soothes my mood, reminding me that I’m not upset about him, only the situation.
“Have you talked to Bri today?” Natalie asks.
Hearing her say Bri’s name feels as jarring as daddy. “No.”
“This week?”
I sigh. “Why does it matter?”
“Because you love her? And it’s weird for you to not talk to someone you love?” She poses both as a question, implying I’m an idiot for not piecing that together already.
“I’m not sure it’s going to work out between us now.”
“Why not?”
The desire to roll my eyes is fierce. “Because nothing’s more romantic than having a baby with someone else,” I quip. “Don’t be obtuse.”
She crosses her arms, forgiving me with a sigh. “You’re so different now. Less meek, more confident. Before, you would never have expressed yourself and your wants the way you have been,” she says. “You’re pissed at me, as you should be.”
“I’m not—Okay, I am pissed, but not because Vaughn exists.”
“I understand.” She strokes a finger over his curls. “I made the choice I did because having him made my life feel complete. You deserve to feel that too, not only with Vaughn. You deserve everything you want out of life.”
“Tell that to life.”
She laughs gently. “Vaughn is too young to remember if you were here two months or two days. Please go talk to her. Go see her. Something.”
“She doesn’t want to talk to me.”
“And did she tell you that, or are you being pessimistic and assuming the worst?”
No fucking shit I’m being pessimistic. There is no sunshine in my life without Bri. “She hasn’t called me in weeks.”
“Are you aware your phone also makes calls?”
I don’t want to answer her. I’m very much done with the conversation altogether.
“You were the one who told me I can’t be there for Vaughn if I can’t be here for myself. The same applies to you,” she says. “If you want to be here and be happy, what do you need?”
There is only one answer to that question. “Bri.”
“Uh-huh.” It’s good to see she’s getting back to her old self, pointing out my social shortcomings, laughing at her own jokes. “Go get her.”
~
I run back to my apartment and throw the basics into a bag, ready to figure out a flight when I get to the airport. When my Uber is two minutes away, I throw on my shoes and run outside, then stop right in my tracks.
The woman standing in front of my building takes my breath away. “Bri?”
“Thank fuck,” she says, steam leaving her mouth when she exhales. “I thought I had the wrong apartment again.”
“Again?”
“Not important. Hi.”
“Hi.”
I stare at her, drinking in her beauty. Her hair is pulled into a perfectly round ponytail, her nose a little red from the cold, all wrapped in a matching sweatsuit that is only appropriate for a Southern California winter.
“You’re here?” I ask, making sure I didn’t fall down my stairs and I’m dreaming while unconscious in a hospital bed.
“I am.”
I wrap her into a hug. Her body against mine is exactly as I remember, every curve fitting perfectly into my hands. She hugs me back, her grasp as tight as mine. “I’m sorry I came without calling. I wasn’t sure if you wanted to see me.”
“What?” I pull away just enough to look her in the face. I cup her cheek, confused by her words and the tears welling in her eyes. “Why would I not want to see you? I thought you wouldn’t want to see me.”
She places her hand over mine, a tear slipping from her eye. “A phone call probably would have cleared all that up, but I was so busy packing, I didn’t think to call and tell you I was moving.”
“Tell me? Moving?”
“I transferred to the Brooklyn office. I live here now.”
Her presence and her words overstimulate me in the best way. It takes me an awkward length of time to process it all. “You live here,” is all that comes out. Not the most coherent response, but she gets it.
“I do. And I want to know if I’m here, or if I’m here with you.”
It’s a struggle to get air into my lungs, a struggle to believe she’s saying everything I planned to say to her. “You still want to be with me?”
“Yes,” she says, her voice pinched with emotion. “I’m in love with you, Liem. Stupid, fly across the country without telling you, show up on your doorstep in love with you. I want this new part of my life to be my choice, I want to be happy, and I can’t have either without you.”
She goes blurry, and I realize we’re both crying.
I kiss her, and it feels like the first deep breath I’ve taken after weeks of drowning. We kiss for seconds, minutes, hours, I don’t know, and it’s still too soon when it ends.
“You haven’t answered me,” she says against my lips with a tearful laugh. Happy tears.
“Of course I want to be with you,” I say. “Where do you think I was going?” I gesture to my suitcase lying haphazardly on the steps behind me.
She looks around as if she hasn’t seen anything but me this whole time. “Were you coming to get me?”
“Yeah.”
“Twinning again?”
“Twinning hard.”
I kiss her again and again, her passion matching mine until she shivers in my arms. “Can we go inside? It’s really cold.”
“Fuck. My bad. Let’s go.”
~
I’m not sure I showed Bri my apartment at all. We’ve been like Velcro since the second I saw her. Hugging, kissing, and now cuddling on the couch under a blanket, downloading about what has happened since we last spoke. It’s been too long.
She tells me about her new job, getting a promotion straight out of the gate, the apartment she almost got before she found out about the office here.
I couldn’t be more proud of her. Not only for getting her dream job but for not compromising until she found one that appreciates her natural talent and doesn’t shame her for her pain.
I tell her about my grandma, about Vaughn, realizing how monumental both were to my life, how greatly they made me cherish what Bri and I have together. A life lost and a life created.
A quiet settles between us. “Be completely honest,” she says.
“With you? Always.”
“Do you have any feelings for Natalie now that you have Vaughn?”
A valid question. “No. Not at all,” I answer truthfully. While contempt is a feeling, I’m learning to let that go. “I’m here to be a good dad, not to be with her.”
She nods, choosing to believe me even if the worry remains. The shadows of our past returned to do the opposite of before, David ending his attempts to get back with her, Natalie unintentionally forcing me to stay.
“Are you sure you’re okay with everything? I have a kid. With my ex. That’s heavy.”
“It is,” she agrees. “But this isn’t the same as what I went through before.
You didn’t know me when you made him, and the moment you found out, you stepped up.
That’s not a betrayal, that’s . . . life.
And as we’ve learned time and time again, life is never going to stop life-ing.
” Bri is always right. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to be part of your life, perfect or not. ”
“You don’t want kids, though.”
“I don’t want to have kids. My choice is to put myself first when it comes to my health, not be in pain and go through hell for a chance to get pregnant, especially when I’m not a person who believes blood is thicker than water,” she reminds me.
The family we choose. The love we choose. “You’re sure?”
She nods. “This wasn’t your choice and this wasn’t our plan. But my dream—the life I want for myself—isn’t complete without you. If we have to make new plans, new dreams to chase . . . I want to do that here. Together. If that’s what you want too.”
I love her so much it hurts. “I do. More than anything.”
“Good.” She presses her lips to mine. “And who knows? I love being an auntie. Maybe I’ll love being a stepmom too.”
She wants to marry me? She’s joking, but not really.
“Maybe there’s not a way to make it work, but I want to try. You’re worth it.”
I’m worth it.
I grip the hand she lays against my chest. “So, you’ll stay?”
She nods, her smile fighting against her tears. “I’m staying.”
Relief rushes from me. No longer will our paths clash or will we deny what we want. The start of a new chapter, no outline to follow, both of us on the same page. “Fucking finally.”
Our lips meet, and her sunlight fills me, burning into my chest, pulling me toward her like gravity. I kiss her again, deeper this time, more passionately than before. She welcomes me, matching my energy, humming her enjoyment against my lips.
“Come closer,” she breathes, tugging at me. We’re already pressed against each other. Closer can only mean one thing.
I roll her to her back, taking my place on top of her. She widens her legs, letting me in. The fire between us burns hotter, begging for our clothes to come off.
Then her stomach growls loudly, interrupting the moment. Our lips part with a laugh.
“Will you cook for me?” she asks.
There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her. “Always.”