16. James
JAMES
I switch the bottle of nonalcoholic wine from hand to hand as Cole knocks on the door. I don’t know why, but I’m nervous.
Ross seems to notice, shooting me a look and cocking an eyebrow. “That better be alcohol-free,” he remarks, nodding to the bottle in my hand.
“Ross, I work in fertility,” I remind him. “I’m not going to give a pregnant woman alcohol. See?” I tap the label, which shows that it is zero alcohol, just as the door opens in front of us.
Millie is standing there, a smile on her face, looking slightly frazzled as she glances back toward the kitchen.
“There you are!” she exclaims. “Thank God. Ross, can I borrow you for a second, I just want you to have a look at this curry and see if you think it’s done. I don’t trust myself…”
“Sure thing,” Ross agrees, as I hand her the bottle of wine.
She glances down at it, a little surprised, but then she smiles when she sees the label.
“Oh, that’s so thoughtful, thank you,” she gushes, dropping a kiss on my cheek. “I have the dining room set up, if you want to head through I’ll get some glasses and we can open this…”
“Where’s Lewis?” Cole asks, glancing around.
Out of the three of us, I think he’s the one who has grown most attached to that little boy already, and I can’t say I blame him.
He’s been living right upstairs, after all, and by the sounds of it, they’ve been spending a lot of time together.
Millie has tapped Cole in to help out a couple of times when she’s been dealing with morning sickness, according to him, and he’s been around to help with Lewis’s morning routine.
He told me about it at the clinic later that same day, and I’d by lying if I said I didn’t feel a twinge of jealousy, knowing that he got to spend time with the kid who must belong to one of us.
“He’s in the dining room,” Millie calls from the kitchen. “He wanted to decorate it before you got here…”
I follow Cole through to the dining room, and there he is—Lewis.
I’ve met him a few times now, generally in passing, when I’ve stopped by to drop off some groceries or medication to Millie after a long day, and I’m still wrapping my head around the fact that this boy might be mine.
His face lights up when he sees us, and I can’t help but notice how much better he looks already. There is a brightness to him that was lacking when I first met him, and I hope that the changes she made to his diet have started to settle in.
“Hey,” he greets us both.
Cole stoops down, grinning as he locks eyes with him. “Hey, little buddy,” he replies. “How was school? You had that book reading, right?”
Lewis nods, hopping up into one of the seats, and I take one myself, watching as he fills Cole in on everything he’s been up to. There’s something oddly…domestic about it, coming to Millie’s place after a day of work.
I have to admit, I was a little surprised when Ross came to us to let us know that she had invited us for dinner, but there was no way I would turn it down.
She’s carrying our children, after all. I mean, we haven’t been able to confirm the multiples yet, but I just know at the bottom of my heart that we’re going to have the triplets that we are hoping for.
I know that the kind of person Millie is won’t have much impact on the kind of surrogate she will be for our kids, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to see a little more of her.
Especially after what happened between us on the day she moved in.
Sure, there’s a part of me that would like nothing more than to pick up where we left off, before we got interrupted by Ross, but I’m not sure I’ll get away with that, not without causing more drama than it’s worth.
Ross and I haven’t even discussed it yet, let alone me and Millie, and I know that the best thing I can do is pretend like none of it happened and move on with my life.
Everything is too complicated to let things take that turn, no matter how much I might want to.
“Well, that sounds like a lot of fun,” Cole remarks, as Millie appears in the doorway once more, carrying a few glasses of wine and distributing them between us at the table.
She’s wearing a dress, a floaty fabric that skims over her body, but I’m sure I can already see some of the changes starting to form in her.
Not a bump, exactly, but when you have worked in this area for as long as I have, you start to spot the other little giveaways that tell when someone is a month into a pregnancy—the softness in the face, the way they move, the way they carry themselves.
Of course, it’s a little different this time around, given that she’s carrying my child, but I can’t let my mind linger too long on that or I’ll get distracted.
“There you go,” she murmurs, as she plants a glass of wine down in front of me, her eyes locking onto mine for just a moment.
It’s dim in the dining room, but I’m still sure that I can see a flush of pink to her cheeks, and I wonder if she’s flashing back to the first time we stepped into this place together.
When we were last alone together, the way she felt under my tongue…
But before I can let my mind drift too far in that direction, Ross appears in the doorway with a pair of plates.
“Smells good,” Cole remarks, as he hands them out to everyone, and Millie pulls a face.
“Ugh, I don’t think I would have been able to pull it off without Ross,” she admits. “I totally under-spiced it—”
“It wasn’t that bad,” Ross replies, shaking his head.
“You don’t have to be modest,” Millie protests. “I made a mess of it—”
“You really didn’t,” he assures her, and he plants a plate down in front of Lewis, who grabs his fork and tucks in at once.
It’s good to see him with such an appetite—I know the shit he’s suffering with can make it hard to enjoy food without worrying about what might happen if their body rebels against them, but clearly, he hasn’t had much reason to concern himself with that lately.
I hope it carries on that way for a long time. He deserves it.
“Hey, Lewis, you have to wait for everyone else to have their food before you start,” Millie scolds him lightly, though there’s no real tone of malice in her voice.
“It’s fine,” Cole assures her. “Let him eat. We’ll all catch up soon enough, right, Lewis?”
Soon, we’re all eating, and Millie is right—Ross really did manage to pull this one out of the bag. It tastes delicious, even by my standards, and it goes perfectly with the wine that I picked out for the occasion.
As I glance around the table, I let my mind wander a little. Wander toward the possibility of something like this happening even after she has given birth.
I mean, I know that she will likely want to move back to a place of her own, when this is all done, with the money that she made from the surrogacy.
She’ll want to focus on her own life and making sure that she can take care of Lewis.
But it’s been a long time since I’ve sat down and had a meal like this with other people, at least a home-cooked one at someone’s house, and there’s a pleasant domesticity to it that I can’t seem to shake.
It’s the kind of thing that I thought Caroline and I were going to have one day, in that way you do when you’re young and it seems like everyone is going to be in your life forever.
I still don’t know if we would have made it work, but shit, she deserved to have this with someone, even if it wasn’t me.
A pang tears at my chest, and I focus on the glass of wine in front of me, wishing all of a sudden that it was alcoholic so I had something to distract from what’s going on inside my head.
“Lewis was telling me about the book reading he had to do at school,” Cole remarks, as he pauses for a moment, leaning back from the table to take a sip of his wine.
“Oh, yeah, he did so well,” Millie gushes proudly, looking over at her son with a beaming smile. “He got up in front of the whole school and did a reading at the assembly. I don’t think I could have pulled something like that off, you know?”
“Nah, I would have been way too nervous,” Ross agrees, flashing him a grin. “Well done, Lewis. You should be proud of yourself.”
Lewis doesn’t reply, shifting in his seat slightly as though he’s not sure what to do with all of this praise, but I can tell he’s pleased to be the center of attention like this—and for a good reason, for a change, not just because of his illness.
We chat over dinner, nothing heavy, just about work and school and everything that they have been up to since they moved into the apartment.
It’s clear that they like it here—Lewis has already decorated a few of the walls with drawings, and there are books scattered across the living room floor that I can see even from where I sit.
The entire place feels like a family home, somewhere that couldn’t be more suited for a pair like them.
Well. And the children that are growing in her womb right now too.
“That,” Cole announces, when he has finished his food, “was amazing.”
“It really was,” I agree.
“Well, you have Ross to thank for it,” Millie replies with a slight giggle. “I’m going to try and learn how to cook a bit better now that I have the time, but I might need a little supervision.”
She glances at me, and I could swear I see a hint of flirtatiousness in her face. Whatever it is, though, she looks away just as soon as she’s found my gaze, and I wonder if it’s nothing more than wishful thinking on my part.
“I’ll clear up,” she remarks, and she goes to rise to her feet. But before she can, Ross lifts a hand, stopping her dead in her tracks.
“We can handle that.”
“You sure?” she replies, looking between us, clearly not entirely convinced by the idea. “You’re meant to be my guests—”
“Yes, I’m sure,” Ross replies.
“Well, I guess it’s getting close to Lewis’s bedtime, anyway,” Millie concedes. “Maybe I should be getting you ready to sleep, huh, buddy?”
“Can I stay up a bit longer?” he asks her, his eyebrows raising hopefully, but she shakes her head.
“You have school tomorrow, Lewis,” she reminds him, as she stoops down to lift him into her arms. “Come on—let’s get you washed up and in bed. Say goodnight to everyone!”
He raises his hand and waves at us, and we wave back.
And as he looks between us, I wonder if he has any idea of the truth of why the three of us are so intent on getting to know him, at least at whatever rate she will let us.
Is there some part of him, deep down, that knows that there’s some kind of connection between the four of us, or has he just accepted it, in that blunt way that kids do, that we have all started hanging around here all of a sudden?
I don’t know, but truthfully, I don’t think it makes much of a difference.
I’m just glad to have the chance to get to know him, as weird as this situation might be.
He’s already a fully formed little person, and to get a glimpse of the kid that Millie and the three of us made on that night—it’s more than I ever could have imagined.
We all watch as she carries him through, and I have no doubt that Ross’s and Cole’s minds are in the exact same place mine is right now, even if none of us will say it out loud.
We haven’t exactly gone out of our way to discuss the matter of Lewis’s paternity, because truthfully, I don’t think it matters to any of us.
What happened that night, it happened to all of us, and all of us have a hand in what came of it.
As soon as Millie is out of sight, Ross gets to his feet. “Come on, let’s get to work,” he announces. “I’ll wash, you dry, James. Cole, you put away. How about that?”
“Damn, you run a tight ship.” Cole laughs, but he gets up to help out anyway.
He knows that Ross is not one to turn down when he has an idea in his head, and besides, all of us want to do what we can to help Millie out.
I could tell myself that it’s because she’s pregnant, and there’s nothing more to it than that—but if I’m being honest, it’s because I don’t want her to think that I won’t pull my weight given the chance.
I don’t know what happens when this contract is up. But I know I want to make the very most of her presence while I still can.
In every way that I’m able.