“Yes. And we were poor as two church mice. When nothing else was certain, I was one hundred percent sure that I loved her with everything in me. As long as you know that, you can get through anything.”
I heave out a sigh. “I wish it was that easy.”
“It is. It is that easy.”
He turns the pages until he finds the one he wants to hear next. “Read that one,” he says.
Dear Diary,
The bleeding didn’t start until after Henry left for work. I tried not to be too worried, but inside, I was terrified. What if something happened to this baby? When I first found out I was pregnant, I didn’t want it. What kind of a person has thoughts like that? Me, apparently. I had thoughts like that. Then I felt the first cramp.
I took the kids to Mrs. Barstow, and went to the doctor. It was too late. No matter how desperately I wanted to hold on to that life, it had already left me. I might not have wanted it when I first found out, but I wanted it more than anything in that moment. Sadly, it wasn’t meant to be, and our third child would never be held in our arms.
The doctor called Henry at work, and he came right over. My heart was in shreds when Henry walked into the room. The nurse spoke to him for a moment, and I saw him place his hand over his heart. His knees appeared to wobble, and he reached for a chair to steady himself. He held that pose with his eyes closed, taking deep breaths. Then he straightened his spine, walked over to me, and kissed me. He kissed me right there in front of the doctors and nurses. He kissed me until my toes curled and the hurt was replaced by love.
We might not have held that child in our arms, but we will always hold him in our hearts.
I look up, unable to speak.
Henry wipes a tear from his cheek. “Sometimes, life gives you lemons. All you can do when that happens is pucker up and kiss someone.”
I laugh a watery laugh. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You had to go through your own pain. You think you’re the first woman to be scared of a pregnancy?” He snorts. “I can assure you that you’re not. You’re also not the first one to lose a baby.” He rubs the back of my hand. “For years later, the rest of her life, even after the Alzheimer’s stole all the tiny little memories from her, you could ask my Nan how old that baby would be, and she could tell you the number. A mother never forgets. Never.” He pats the back of my hand. “You’ll never forget, either, but you have to forgive yourself.”
I nod. “I think I’m tired of all this crying.”
“So, stop it,” he says.
And just that simply, I stop it.
He yawns. “I think I’m going to take a nap. Why don’t you sit over there and read?” He pushes Nan’s diary toward me. “Just skip the juicy bits, or I won’t be able to look you in the face tomorrow.” He chuckles, but his eyes are already closing.
I go sit down in the chair Faith was using and lift my feet to rest on the edge of the bed. I begin to read about their epic love story. I say epic, because it didn’t end, not even when she died. It lasts even now. There were no “juicy bits.” There was only love and devotion, and a whole lot of kissing.
Wren
On the way home, my phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out and find a text from Friday.
Friday: I have your tattoo drawn up, if you’d like to come by and check it out.
Me: Are you there now?
Friday: I am. Come on by.
Me: Be there in a few minutes.
I hate to say it, but I kind of hope that Ryan won’t be there. I don’t want to talk to Mick’s brother. I love him, but I need a day or so to process, to come up with a plan. I don’t plan to let Mick walk away from me. That’s the only plan I have so far. I’m not going to lose him, even if I have to swallow my pride and ask him for a second chance. Henry and I had sat and talked for hours, and he gave me some wisdom as only Henry can do. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he’s been playing cupid all this time, with him getting Mick drunk, and then continually butting in while we were on our trip.
Now that I think about it, I probably should have told Friday that I don’t need the tattoo right now, since it’ll be a couple of weeks until I know how things are going to turn out. I don’t want to get a tattoo while I’m pregnant, or if I could be pregnant. But a tiny little part of me still wants to see what she came up with.
I push through the door of the tattoo shop and find all five Reed brothers staring at me. Logan has Emily in his lap, and they’re listening to Pete tell a story about a boy named Gonzo, while Sam peels a wrapper off a cupcake. Emily reaches over and tries to steal it from him, and he pretends to bite her fingers. Paul intervenes, taking the cupcake from Sam, holding his palm against Sam’s forehead as he pretends to thrash. Then Paul places it into Emily’s hand. She gives it an exaggerated sniff, and then opens her mouth to take a bite, and Matt swoops in and steals it from her. He shoves the whole thing in his mouth and talks around it. “Thanks,” he mutters around a mouthful of chocolate.
Emily jumps to her feet and Matt turns to run away. She leaps onto his back and he walks around with her clinging to him like a Velcro monkey. “Has anyone seen Emily?” he asks. “She was here just a second ago.” He spins and her feet fly out behind her. She swats his shoulder. “I think a fly just landed on me.”
Finally, he looks over his shoulder and says, “Oh, there you are. I almost didn’t know you were there.” She hugs him tightly and then drops to the floor.
“And you used to be my favorite,” she mutters.
He bends and kisses her cheek, leaving a smear of chocolate behind. She wipes it with the back of her hand. “Eww!”
Sam goes to the back of the room and comes back carrying a fresh cupcake. He has a whole box of them under his arm. “Want one, Wren?” he asks, as he opens the top. The Reed men all jump on the box like they haven’t eaten in days. Matt takes two, removes the wrapper from one of them, and leans like he’s going to hand one to Emily. At the last minute, though, he turns his head and shoves it into his mouth.
She pouts. “You suck so bad.”
He removes the wrapper from the remaining cupcake and holds it out to her. “Here,” he mutters around a mouthful of chocolate. “For you.”
She smiles and takes the cupcake, and goes back to Logan’s lap so she can share it with him.
“What can we do for you, Wren?” Paul asks.
“Friday called me. Is she here?”
He nods toward the office.
“Thanks.” On my way back, I look around for Ryan. Suddenly he pops his head out from behind a curtain. “What are you doing here?” he asks in sign language.
Well, hello to you too. “I just came to see Friday.”
He ducks back behind his curtain, pulling it tight at the corner, without saying another word. I guess I can assume what he thinks of me.
At that moment, Friday comes strutting around the corner. This time, she’s all glammed up. She’s wearing a short skirt and fishnet stockings, and she looks like a retro pinup model, with sass. Her hair is up in tight curls, and her lashes are long and dark. The heels she wears are sky high. Just seeing her makes me smile. “I’m glad you’re here,” she says.
“Can we talk for a second?” I ask quietly. I glance toward the front of the store where the Reeds are sitting. They’re not paying me any attention.
“Of course.” She motions for me to follow her to the back. Her high heels click across the floor with bursts of sound. “What’s up?” she asks when we’re alone.
“I can’t get a tattoo right now,” I blurt out.
“Oh…” Her head cocks to the side and her brow furrows. “Everything okay?”
“Oh, yeah, I just…” I look up at the ceiling. “I just need to wait a few weeks. Or nine months. Or something.”
“Oh!” Friday cries. The Reed men look back toward us and Friday spins us away. “Is this a good thing or a bad thing?” she whispers.
“A good thing, I think.”
She smiles. �
�Well, good. I’m glad. However it works out, I’m glad.”
“Can you hold on to it for me? For a couple of weeks, or until I know what’s happening?”
“Of course. Do you want to see it, anyway? You might not like it. You might want to change it. It’ll give me time to work on revisions.”
“I’d love to see it.”
Friday holds up one finger. “Just a moment.” She goes to Ryan’s curtain and shakes it, and then steps behind it. She comes back carrying a piece of paper. She lays it flat on the table in front of us. And my breath leaves my throat.
It’s perfect. It’s absolutely perfect. It’s everything I could have wanted.
“How did you know about the song?” I’m pretty sure I never told her about it. She never saw the wall in the nursery, either.
“I didn’t. I didn’t know about it at all.” She winces. “I didn’t draw this, Wren.”
I’m confused. “Who did?”
“Ryan drew it for another client.”
“Wait,” I say. Surely, she wasn’t going to give me a tattoo meant for someone else. “What?”
“Ryan drew it based on things Mick told him.”
My knees go weak and I sink into a nearby chair. “Mick did this.” Of course, Mick did this. The lyric is wrong in the tattoo. He made it read the way I sing it. The wrong way. I place my finger on the design and trace the heart and the words. No one else knows me well enough to come up with something like this. I look up. “Can I talk to Ryan really quickly?”
With a gleam in her eye, she says, “I don’t see why not. Go shake the curtain and see if he lets you in.”
With one hand on each of my shoulders, she spins me around and gives me a little shove toward the curtain. That’s when I notice that all the Reed brothers are watching, with goofy grins on their faces. Emily gives me a huge smile and a “go ahead” motion with her hand.
And suddenly, I know who Ryan’s client is. I don’t shake the curtain. I jerk it back. That was a dick move, because Ryan startles. Mick does too. Mick is sitting in the chair, and Ryan stands behind him with his tattoo machine pressed against Mick’s shoulder. Ryan lifts the machine and signs, “You’re right on time. We just finished.”
Mick has his shirt off and he looks up at me, confusion clouding his face.
“Wren?” he asks. “What are you doing here?” He looks back to see what Ryan is doing.
“When did you do this?” I hold up the piece of paper with the tattoo on it.
He heaves a sigh. “As soon as you told me you wanted one. I asked Ryan to draw it up for you.” He looks over my shoulder at Friday. “No offense, Friday.”
“None taken,” she calls back.
“I didn’t mean to run into you like this,” he says. “I wanted to…” He stops and shakes his head.
“You wanted to what?”
“I was going to get Ryan to give you the tattoo, so you wouldn’t have to see me.” He looks everywhere but at me, again.
“You think I don’t want to see you?” I ask.
“Do you want to see me?” he asks, his voice quiet.
“I sent you a message to tell you I miss you.”
He nods. It’s a quick, jerky movement.
“So, you got this tattooed on your shoulder?” I ask.
He nods. “I know the song is personal to you, but it’s personal to me now too. I’ll never look at another baby again without hearing you sing that song in my head. So, I figured, why not.”
“Well, it’s good someone is getting it,” I say.
“What?” he asks.
“I absolutely love it, but I can’t get it yet. Not until I find out.”
“Find out what?”
“Find out if I’m pregnant or not.”
Friday walks over and pulls Ryan from the room, and then closes the curtain behind him. He pretends to protest, but in the end, she threatens him with the heel of her shoe. He holds up his hands and walks backward out of the area.
“I didn’t take the pill,” I blurt out.
Mick freezes. “What?”
“That day on the bus, I didn’t take the pill. I flushed it. I tried to tell you, but you were mad at me.” I take a deep shaky breath. “That is why…why you were mad, isn’t it? You thought I took the pill.”
He shakes his head. “I wasn’t mad at you. I was hurt. I felt like someone had let me build this wonderful house and then smashed it to the ground.”
“I know about Nicky,” I say. “About what happened.”
“One thing I want to be very clear about is that I believe in a woman’s right to choose. It’s your body. It was her body. It’s just that I would have liked to be in the conversation. But I wasn’t involved, I wasn’t even invited to be involved, and at that point I knew Nicky and I would never succeed. If we couldn’t make a big decision like that together, we’d never get anywhere. That was a bitter pill to swallow.”
“I didn’t take the pill, Mick.”
He chuckles nervously. “I don’t know if that should scare me or make me happy.”
“A little bit of both, maybe.” I shrug. “Or at least that’s how I feel.”
“Why didn’t you take it?”
“Honestly? Because I wanted whatever was meant to be, as long as you were going to do it with me. I still do.”
“And if you’re not pregnant? What then?”
I take a step toward him. “Then I’m not. And I’ll be okay with that.”
“And if you are?”
“Then I’ll be okay with that, too.”
“Do you love me?” he asks. “Because I love the fuck out of you.”
Finally, he stands up and crosses the room to come to me. He looks down at me.
“I love the fuck out of you too,” I say.
“So, there’s a chance you could have gotten pregnant that day.”
I nod, and I step closer to him. “And there’s a chance I didn’t.”
He brushes my hair back from my forehead.
“I think I’m supposed to kiss you now,” I say.
He pulls his head back and looks down his nose at me. “Says who?”
“Says Henry. He told me that when life gives me lemons, I should pucker up and kiss somebody. My somebody is you. I plan on kissing you for the rest of my life, particularly when life gives me lemons.”
He touches his hand to his forehead. “It makes so much more sense now.”
“What does?”
“Henry called me a little while ago and said, ‘When life gives you lemons, pucker up and kiss someone.’ Am I your lemon? Or your someone?”
“My someone. Always. And the only person I want to share my lemons with.” And finally, I step up onto my tiptoes and press my lips to his. He holds me tight and close, his hand in my hair at the base of my head as he gives my hair a little tug. His tongue sweeps across mine. “You want to come home with me?” I ask.
He nods. “Ryan just finished my tattoo. Tell me how it looks.” He turns so I can see his shoulder, and that lyric written right there, and it’s perfect.
“I love it.”
“Let me get Ryan to finish me up, and then we can go.” He kisses me again, and this time, it’s a little hotter.
Mick pulls the curtain back, and all the Reeds scramble to look like they weren’t listening in. Ryan goes to apply ointment to Mick’s tattoo and Friday pulls me into a hug. “You okay?” she asks.
“Yeah. I think it’s going to work out.”
“All it takes is a little love.”
“And a little bit of Henry.”
We both laugh, and then Mick and I leave the tattoo shop hand in hand.
Mick
Ryan had a shit-eating grin on his face. I knew something was up; I just didn’t know what. Then Wren pulled back the curtain, and I felt like all my hopes and dreams had just been delivered to me on a silver platter. There was no way I was letting her get out of there unless she took me with her. I knew that immediately.
I was planning on
going straight to her apartment when I left the shop. I needed to work this thing out between us. I couldn’t just leave it hanging.
And, man…when she told me that she didn’t take that pill, my love for her grew even bigger. It’s not because she didn’t take the pill. It’s because she wanted to talk to me about taking the pill. That’s what I want, the give and take of a respectful relationship. I imagine that if she’ll pull, I’ll push, and if she pushes, I’ll pull, but as long as we meet in the middle, we should be all right.
She holds my hand on the short walk to her apartment. She doesn’t say a word; she just looks up at me every so often and her cheeks go rosy.
I tug on her hand. “What are you thinking about?”
She shakes her head. “Nothing, really.”
I laugh and tug her hand again. “Yes, you are. What is it?”
“I was thinking about that one time…” She stops and shakes her head again.
“That one time, what?”
“Stop. Nothing.” She lays her hands on her cheeks and looks away.
I lean close to her ear. “You’re thinking about the time we fucked.” I hold up my hands when she glares at me. “It’s okay. I was thinking about it too.”
“You were?” She blinks her pretty eyes at me.
“I think about it all the time. Every minute, it seems like.” I reach down and adjust my junk, because just talking about it is getting me hard. “Can we finish this conversation when we get to your apartment?”
She nods. “I was just thinking…it was amazing.”
Oh, God. “It was.” I clear my throat, because I suddenly feel like I can’t speak without a growl in my voice.
“I was thinking maybe we should do that again, and go a little slower this time.” She licks her lips and looks down toward my zipper.
“Do you think that we should…maybe…talk a little? First?” I ask. I just said that to be nice. It’s the last thing I want to do right now.
“We could. If you want to.” She gives me a side eye.
A grin tugs at the corners of my lips. “Or we could wait…to talk.”
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