The First Noelle #2
He arrived home to find Allegra facedown on the couch, her hand draped over the end to rest on the baby’s stomach, while lights from the Christmas tree twinkled in the background.
The original glass ornaments had all been destroyed in the first week—Euclid had been unmerciful in his takedown of the shiny silver things.
In their place was a sparce peppering of emergency wooden and stuffed ornaments that could be knocked off (and some of them were on the ground already) but not defeated.
The baby, awake in her infant carrier, was facing the twinkling lights, but her actual focus was up, into the face of Isaac’s contented, drooling cat, who kept licking her downy little head like she was the bald kitten of his dreams.
“Uhm…,” Isaac started, but Allegra raised her hand to shush him.
“Don’t jinx it,” she mumbled. “They’ve been staring at each other for an hour. It’s been blissful.”
Okay, then.
Isaac quietly set his briefcase down by the entryway and slid off his loafers. Then he hit the head, grabbed a handful of grapes from the fridge, and came back into the living room, silent as a, well, cat.
“Okay, honey,” he murmured. “You go to bed now. It’s Uncle Isaac’s turn.”
Allegra didn’t argue, just shuffled off to get some uninterrupted sleep. Isaac peered at the baby again, who was now blowing bubbles at the cat, who purred back.
Well, alrighty. With a burst of optimism, Isaac picked up his knitting and grabbed the remote, turning on Christmas music while he worked.
While it was much too early for real smiles or actual laughing from a creature that was basically a boiled potato for another few weeks, Isaac watched as Blessing Noelle’s eyes fluttered shut and she began to sleep, right there, in the middle of the living room, under the cat’s watchful eye.
It was literally a Christmas miracle.
AND IT lasted. When Luca got home that night, Isaac was in the kitchen, cooking, while Blessing sat in her car carrier on the kitchen island and Euclid stared at her some more.
“Oh my God!” Luca said, taking in the scene. “And seriously—what are we having for dinner? It smells amazing!”
“Baked chicken,” Isaac told him promptly. “With a butternut squash soup.”
“Oh wow, what’s the occasion?”
“This,” Isaac said, giving him a happy buss on the cheek. “My boyfriend, a happy baby, a sleeping mom, and my idiot karma kitten, who apparently has magic baby powers that I’m not going to question.”
Luca put his hands on Isaac’s hips and stopped him for a better kiss, which Isaac didn’t object to at all.
“Mmm…,” Luca murmured. “I missed those. We need more of those. When does that happen?”
Isaac chuckled. “I seem to recall that Christmas vacation was like a sex oasis in the desert of the school year. Since we did pretty good in that department before the baby came, I’m going to hope we get a little bit of that mojo back.”
“Ooh….” Luca waggled his eyebrows. “Sometimes it’s just knowing you want it as much as I do that makes the wait worth it.”
Isaac felt his face—hell, his entire body—light up. “You have no idea,” he said seriously. “I-I mean, not to speak ill of the dead, but I swear his cock’s stiffer now that he’s a corpse than it ever was when he was a living human.”
Luca’s jaw dropped open in amused horror, and Isaac clapped his hand over his own mouth.
“I can’t believe I….”
“Oh my God, did you really…?”
And then, whether it was the exhaustion (which probably prompted the comment in the first place!), or the end-of-the-semester celebration, or that giddy, brilliant happiness that came with Christmas and a baby and a stoned miracle in orange-boi fur, but the two of them burst into muffled giggles.
They couldn’t howl with laughter—they couldn’t—because the baby was happy and content and adorable, and the cat was still buzzing off whatever high he was riding that had prompted this glorious little reprieve from the colic gods, and it was absolutely imperative that nobody wake the baby.
But they couldn’t hold it in either. Luca buried his face against Isaac’s shoulder, and Isaac bit his own fist as they giggled, snorted, and sputtered as quietly as possible.
Which of course made the giggles last longer.
Finally, they slid exhaustedly down to the floor, their backs to the kitchen island, their breath still coming in bursts as the wave that had crashed so hard receded, leaving them tired and happy and the teensiest bit high from the endorphin burst of a really good laugh.
“I’m sorry,” Isaac said in all sincerity.
“That was unforgivable of me. I just… I had a really good day today, and I’ve, you know, put some of the bad stuff in my heart away in the appropriate cupboard.
It’ll still come out sometimes, because it’s there, but it’ll also get dusty and forgotten a lot because…
time.” He turned to smile at this glorious gift of a man.
“And better memories blocking the cupboard.”
Luca took his hand, lying limply on his own thigh, and kissed the back of it.
“Isaac,” he said, “I know this is sort of a weird question, but what was your wedding like? I’ve only seen one picture of the two of you—it’s on the tchotchke shelf by the TV.”
“That’s the wedding photo,” Isaac said, thinking about the two of them, looking sober and awkward in their best suits.
Isaac only wore that suit for other people’s weddings and funerals.
Todd wore them all the time, since he worked in banking.
For Todd, it had been another Tuesday. “We made an appointment with the justice of the peace, and he brought his friend from work as a witness. Roxy and I weren’t tight yet—friends, you know, but not ‘Hey, come witness my wedding’ level tight, so that was it.
We had a wedding, went out to lunch, and then he went to work, and I came home because it was summer vacation. ”
Luca was frowning, his eyes a little glossy. “I want ours to be big,” he said simply. “Not formal—not suits—but I want everybody. Like Allegra’s birthday.”
“It should be in early June,” Isaac said dreamily. “And Allegra and I can learn to sew. We can make you and me matching Hawaiian shirts, and the kids, Roxy’s too, can wear the same thing. Summer dresses for the little girls—”
“Hell, summer dresses for Allegra and Roxy!” Luca said, getting excited too.
“And we can have some sort of kiddie pool in the back so Roxy’s kids can splash and get wet when it’s over.”
“I’ll get us a barbecue as a gift,” Luca said, “and we can roast dogs and burgers—”
“And guests can bring salads and potluck stuff instead of gifts!” Isaac added.
“And the guys from the shop—”
“And other teachers. I can invite Paula, because she’s a friend now—”
“And we can have a party,” Luca finished, nodding. “And we can celebrate it like we’ve been celebrating birthdays and babies and cats and people, like, from the beginning.”
Isaac smiled, feeling boneless and hollowed out and filled with light. “It will be amazing,” he said simply. “God, Luca. I love you.”
“You’ll marry me, right?” Luca said softly, like there was any doubt.
“In the sunshine with the kids and the sprinklers and the babies—”
“And a dog,” Luca said.
“A dog?” Isaac asked, surprised.
“That cat is way too sure of himself,” Luca said, nodding. “We need to get a dog.”
And Isaac could see it, a big ugly brute of a dog with sweet eyes and a heart of mush and gold. “Of course we do,” he said. “A big good dog.”
“Yeah.” Luca smiled and kissed the back of his hand again.
“And you and me and cats and babies and dogs. It’ll be a good life, Isaac.
I swear. We’ll have fun, and we’ll have family, and we’ll laugh and smile and make love.
I promise. We’ll put a whole lot of boxes in front of that cupboard, because I want to fill us both up with memories. ”
“Oh, honey.” Isaac leaned his head against Luca’s shoulder. “You already have.”
At that moment, the stove timer beeped, and Isaac hurried to his feet to finish dinner while Luca set the table and roused his sister so her days and nights didn’t get all topsy-turvy. But when they all sat around the table and chatted about their day, he didn’t mention the wedding to his sister.
Isaac thought maybe he was waiting until they could start planning for it, or until Allegra looked a little more awake and the new-baby exhaustion was a little less weighty in everybody’s bones.
That was okay, though, because Luca hadn’t broken any promises to Isaac, not in six months, not even when they weren’t dating and were just… hopeful friends.
Isaac would trust that he would bring it up, and he had no doubts they would be happy.
Noelle ate after Allegra ate, and then her nightly fuss began.
It was Luca’s turn on the walking the baby up and down the floor, and Isaac was somewhat surprised when Luca climbed into bed next to him after a mere hour.
He set the baby monitor up next to their bed, and Isaac asked, “What happened? Please tell me you didn’t abandon the kid at a fire station. ”
“Naw,” Luca murmured, running his hand over Isaac’s stomach under his sleep T-shirt. “Kid fell asleep after an hour. I put her in the crib and came up here.”
“To molest me,” Isaac said, arching his back and asking for more touching.
“Wanted to prove your future husband has his priorities straight,” Luca told him, and then they were kissing and sliding their clothes off and falling into each other’s arms, but Isaac had heard the part about the “future husband,” and he knew he’d been right not to panic.
Trusting Luca was so very easy to do.