34. Three Years Later #2
Love pangs in my chest as I stroke the curve of my stomach, attempting to placate Mister Man from giving his father a heart attack. “Makes it all the more real, huh?”
For a man of many words, Sutton speaks his devotion through featherlight touches. This time, he caresses the side of my face, stroking his thumb affectionately over the tiny craters of acne that have popped up after years of being dormant.
“We’re going to meet him in a month,” he says in awe. “I’ll get to hold him in a month.”
I nod, and although this should be a celebratory milestone, my hormones experience some mainframe malfunction that heralds the unauthorized coming of tears.
My throat burns as if liquor has trickled down epithelium, a firestorm of a headache is encroaching on my once-peaceful plot of land, and I get this unimpeded hiccup that jolts my tender chest. I can feel tears string together on my lashes like Herkimer diamonds, and there’s no sense in trying to downplay my emotions. Not in front of Sutton.
He instantly plops himself down on the couch and pulls me into his arms. “Shit, baby. What’s wrong? Was it something I said?”
I blow my nose on his shirtfront unashamedly. Disgusting, I know, but I’ve given up trying to remain sophisticated after I asked him to shave my hairy hoo-ha because I couldn’t reach it anymore.
“N-no. I just…I’m not ready, Sutton. I’m not ready to have this baby, much less be a mother.
I don’t know the first thing about being a good caregiver.
I’m going to fuck up. I’m going to make mistakes.
And I know he won’t remember anything in the first twelve months, but what if, subconsciously, he does?
What if postpartum depression hits and it’s bad?
He deserves a good life—a better life than I had. I don’t…”
With my head resting on Sutton’s chest, I feel and hear him inhale, and the metered glug of his heart is the only thing keeping me grounded. I furl my hands in his shirt, clinging to him like he’s a lonely piece of driftwood floating in a gigantic ocean.
“Trouble, you’re ready. You’ve put in all the hard work.
And look at how amazing Max has turned out.
You stepped up when your mother couldn’t.
That’s the quality of a good caregiver. You’re going to make mistakes, but that’s just a part of life.
I’m going to make mistakes. There’s no manual to parenthood.
What matters most is that we learn from them, and above all else, love our child so much that he never has to question his worth. ”
My demure little sniffles turn into full-blown sobs, the flashy show of confidence that I swear by fracturing in multiple places like the breaking of a wishbone.
I’ve always been afraid to hold someone without hurting them.
And although I’ve come to terms with the night of Audie’s death being an accident, the impact it had on me will never fully go away.
It dwells in the dark cavern of my stomach—underneath layers upon stratified layers of earth—waiting for a dip in my mental health to lodge its claws through the prison door and re-puncture the thin barrier of my consciousness.
“I…can’t…do…it,” I wail, my mouth knotting into a frown, saltwater bleaching my vision and streaking harshly down my cheeks.
“You can. And on the days where you don’t think you can, I’ll be there to carry your burdens,” Sutton coos, rubbing circles on my back in a fashion I’ve grown familiar with.
The leaden weight on my chest lifts infinitesimally; my heart catches up enough to refill my oxygen deficit; the unbearable cramp in my stomach smooths over with his unlicensed therapy talk.
“I’m scared, Sutton,” I whisper, feeling my body sag against the sofa from the enervation, my mind bookmarking more parental perils to panic over at a later date.
“Do you know what the best part about being a father is?” he asks me out of nowhere.
I look up at him—tearstained and terrified—and shake my head.
“I’m going to love my son no matter what—that’s a given—but the best part will be watching you blossom into another version of yourself.
A version I’ve never seen before. A version where your patience is tested, where your strengths are heightened, where your love is magnified.
I fell in love with every other version so far—the conversationalist, the activist, the adrenaline seeker, the vulnerable side you hide behind bravado—and it won’t be any different when I watch you hold our baby for the first time. ”
My fingers pet the softness of his beard, and a watery laugh takes the place of my previous hiccups. My heart flowers like a calla lily in late spring. “You’ll still love me even when I have spit-up and breast milk on my shirt?”
When I stare into his mocha eyes, it transports me back to the night I first met him. Half-naked. Surrounded by crickets. Holding my burning pitchfork and waiting for the blaze to kill me in the process. A suicide mission where I found the one thing I wasn’t looking for—hope.
“Believe it or not, I’ll love you even more, and I hope the world will never have to witness the person I’d be without you.”