We would love for you to meet him someday. Feel free to call us at the number below, or email us if you’d prefer. We would be honored to finally have the opportunity to thank you in person.
I’ve attached some photos of him. He’s the happiest little boy I know and I can’t wait for him to become a significant part of both of your lives.
Thank you for our miraculous gift.
Sincerely,
Quinn, Graham, and Matteo Wells
We hug.
We hug and we cry. So hard.
Chapter Six
I don’t even know how to describe this moment Six and I are sharing. It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I don’t know that I’ve ever cried tears of happiness. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen Six cry so hard while laughing. We’re just a big, stupid mess and it feels really, really phenomenal.
Every time I start to speak, we cry. Every time she starts to speak, we cry. We can’t even talk and it’s been five minutes since we finished the email.
We keep waiting for the attachments to load on my phone, but they’re taking forever, so Six grabs her laptop. I log in to my email and hit download.
When the first picture loads, there isn’t even enough air in the room to fill our collective gasps.
He looks just like me.
But he also looks just like her.
It’s so weird and amazing, seeing this life we created and it somehow makes me feel even closer to her.
“Oh my God,” she whispers. “He’s perfect.”
“Scroll down,” I say, too impatient to wait for more of him now that we got this small glimpse of him. We open up every picture. We zoom in on his features. He has Six’s mouth and my eyes and a headful of brown hair.
We even zoom in on his surroundings. It looks like he has a big backyard. A whole playset he’s still too little to use. There are five pictures total, and after we look at them each twenty times, I say, “We should call them.”
Six nods. “Yes.” She clenches her stomach. “I’m so nervous.”
“Me too. Me too, babe.”
She sits on the edge of her bed and I stand and pace while I dial the number Quinn listed in the email. I put it on speaker and when it starts ringing, I sit down next to Six.
“This is Graham.”
“Hi. Hey, it’s me. Daniel. We just got your wife’s email.” I feel like I should say more. Like thank you or we love you or can we come meet him tonight?
“Great,” Graham says. “Let me grab Quinn.”
The line goes quiet and Six and I look at each other nervously. Then a woman says, “Hi. This is Quinn. Is this Six and Daniel?”
“Yes,” we both say at once. “Thank you,” Six blurts out. She’s crying, but also smiling bigger than I’ve ever seen her smile. “Thank you so much. He’s so perfect. We’re so happy to see him so happy. Thank you.” She covers her own mouth so she’ll stop talking.
Quinn laughs. “Thank you,” she says softly. “I meant every word.”
“Where do you guys live?” I ask. “Are you still in Italy?”
“Oh. No, I forgot to mention that in the email. We moved back to Connecticut a few months ago. We wanted to be closer to Graham’s parents.”
“So Matteo is here? In the same country?”
“Yep.”
Six wipes at her eyes. “And you really don’t mind if we meet him?”
“We would love that. But we know very little about either of you. Could you tell us a little about yourselves first? Where do you live?”
“We both go to college in Dallas,” I say. “Six wants to be a psychologist.”
“Psychiatrist,” Six corrects between tears.
“Something that ends in ist,” I say. “I don’t know what I want to be yet. We’re both freshmen, so we’re figuring things out as we go.”
“And you’re a couple? Still?”
“Yes. Well, we weren’t technically a couple until after the baby was adopted. But we are now.”
“I love that,” Quinn says.
“Daniel is the best,” Six says. “You’ll love him.” She looks at me and smiles. I squeeze her hand.
“You’ll love Six more.”
“I already love you both because of what you’ve given us,” Quinn says. “Well, we know you guys are dying to meet him, but we don’t want you to miss too much college. We would say come next weekend, but we’d like you to be able to stay more than just a day or two. How does Christmas break sound? It’s just a few weeks away.”
That sounds like a lifetime.
I can see Six feels the same way because she deflates a little. But then she says, “That’s perfect. We’ll be there.”
“Yes. We’ll be there.”
Quinn says, “Do you need help with the cost of flights?”
“No, you guys have done enough,” Six says. “Truly.”
There’s a pause, and then Graham takes over the phone. “You have our number now. We’ll text you our address. Just let us know what days you want to come and we’ll work our schedules around it. We’re looking forward to it.”
“Thank you,” Six says again.
“Yes. Thank you.”
Six is squeezing my hand so hard, it kind of hurts. Graham and Quinn both tell us goodbye. When I hang up the phone, we sit in silence for a moment, letting it all sink in.
“Shit,” I mutter.
“What?”
I look at Six. “This means we have to tell our parents that they’re grandparents.”
Six looks worried, but only for a second. Then she grins. “My brothers are going to hate you.”
I would expect that to alarm me, but it doesn’t. “I don’t care. Nothing can bring me down from this high.”
Six laughs and then stands up, pulling my hands. “We have to go tell Sky and Holder!” Six crawls out her window and into Sky’s bedroom window. I’m right on her heels.
When we burst into the living room from the hallway, everyone looks up at us. They’re still playing Monopoly.
“We found him!” Six says.
I’m sure they can all tell we’ve been crying, which would explain why they seem so alarmed by the sight of us.
“Found who?” Karen asks.
Sky immediately knows what we’re talking about and why we look so disheveled and elated. She stands up slowly and covers her mouth. Then says, “No.”
Six nods. “Yes. We just got off the phone with them. We get to meet him next month.”
“Meet who?” Breckin says.
“The baby?” Holder says.
I nod. “Yes. His name is Matteo. And he’s adorable. He looks just like us.”
“Who is Matteo?” Karen asks.
“What is everyone talking about?” Jack asks.
Holder and Sky are rushing across the room. Holder must not even care that I lost my cool with him earlier, because he pulls me in for a hug. Six and Sky are hugging and squealing. Then all four of us are hugging. God, I’ve done a lot of hugging this week.
When we all let go, Jack and Karen and Breckin are still staring at us. More than annoyed. “What’s going on?” Karen asks Sky.
Sky answers for us. “Daniel got Six pregnant and she had the baby in Italy and put it up for adoption and they found him!”
“I didn’t know I got her pregnant,” I say. I don’t know why I say that.
“I didn’t know it was him who got me pregnant,” Six says.
“It’s complicated,” Holder adds.
Karen’s eyes are wide. She’s staring at Six. “You...you had a baby?”
Six nods. “Yeah, and no offense, but we don’t have time to explain right now. We’ve got to go tell our parents that they’re grandparents now.”
“Your parents don’t know?” Jack says. For some reason, he looks at Holder and glares at him. “Anything you and Sky want to share with us now that this is all out in the open?”
Holder shakes his head. “No. No, sir. No babies here. Not yet. I mean, not for a lon
g time. Years.”
As much as I like seeing Holder nervous, Six and I have stuff to do. People to inform. Parents to piss off. I grab her hand and lead her to the front door. “Sorry I was a dick earlier!” I yell back to everyone. Then I look at Breckin. “I’ll never call you Powder Puff again. I’m a dad now, I have to set a good example.”
Breckin nods. “Thanks. I think.”
Six pushes me out the door. “Let’s tell your parents first,” she says. “We’ll tell mine in the morning. They’re already in bed.”
Chapter Seven
Six and I are seated on the loveseat together. She’s clutching my hand. Hannah and Chunk are on the couch. My parents are too worried to sit down, so they’re pacing the living room.
“You’re scaring us, Daniel,” my mother says.
“What is this about?” My father asks me. “You never call Wesley family meetings.” He looks at Six. “Oh my God. Are you pregnant? Did Daniel get you pregnant?”
We glance at each other and then Six says, “No. Well...not…technically.”
“You want to get pregnant?” he asks, still throwing out guesses.
“No,” Six says.
“You’re engaged?” my mother asks me.
“No,” I say.
“Sick?” she asks.
I wish they’d just shut up and let me form my thoughts. This is a tough thing to blurt out.
“You’re breaking up?” my father asks.
“You dropped out of college?” my mother asks.
“For Pete’s sake, they had a baby!” Chunk yells, annoyed. Then she immediately slaps her hand over her mouth and looks at me with eyes as wide as saucers. “Sorry, Daniel. I was getting really irritated with all the guessing.”
“It’s fine,” I assure her.
My parents look at me in dumbfounded silence. And confusion. “You…what?”
“Six and I…we um…” I struggle to find my words.
“We had sex in a dark closet about a year before we formally met,” Six says. “I got pregnant. Found out on a foreign exchange in Italy. I didn’t know who I had sex with, which meant I didn’t know who the father was, so I gave the baby up for adoption. But when I moved back and started dating Daniel, we figured it out. And now we know where our baby is and we’re going to meet him over Christmas break.”
That wasn’t as delicate as I was hoping it would come out, but it’s out there now.
And my parents are still silent.
“Sorry,” I mutter. “We used a condom.”
I expect them to be angry or sad, but instead, my father begins to laugh.
So does my mother.
“Good one,” my father says. “But we aren’t falling for it.”
“It’s not a prank,” I say.
I look to Hannah and Chunk for backup, but their jaws are practically dragging the floor. “Wait,” Hannah says. “You found him? You actually found him?”
Oh yeah. I forgot Hannah and Chunk didn’t know that part.
Six nods and pulls out her phone to show Hannah. “They emailed us today.”
Hannah grabs the phone from Six.
My mother looks at Chunk like she’s the only one who will be honest with her. “It’s true,” Chunk says. “Daniel told us a couple days ago. It really happened.”
“We have pictures,” I say, pulling out my phone.
My mother shakes her head and starts pacing again. “Daniel, if this is a joke, I will never forgive you.”
“It isn’t a joke, Mrs. Wesley,” Six says. “I would never joke about something like this.”
“Look, I know it’s a shock.”
My father holds his hand up to shut me up. “You had a baby and put him up for adoption and didn’t tell us?”
“He didn’t know until after it happened,” Six says in my defense. “I didn’t know who the father was.”
My father is standing next to my mother, still glaring down at me. “How could you not—”
My mother puts a hand on my father’s shoulder so he won’t finish that sentence. “We need a minute,” my mother says to us.
Six and I look at each other. We’ve been so excited, I don’t think we really thought about how this would go down with our parents. We go to my bedroom, but we wait with the door open so we can listen to what they have to say. But nothing is said. Just sighs. Lots of sighs.
My father is the first to speak. “Do we ground him?” he asks my mother.
“He’s nineteen.”
Another pause. Then, “We’re grandparents?” my mother says.
“We aren’t old enough to be grandparents.”
“Obviously, we are. And they said it was a boy?” she asks.
“Yeah. A boy. Our boy had a boy. Our son has a son. My son has his own son. I have a grandson.”
“So do I,” my mother mutters disbelievingly.
Six and I just wait patiently and listen as they work it out.
“I’m not ready to be a grandmother,” my mother says.
“Well, you are.”
“I wonder what his name is?” she asks my father.
I take it upon myself to answer this one. “Matteo!” I yell down the hallway.
My father peeks down the hallway from the living room. When I see him, I open my door all the way. We stare at each other for a moment. He looks disappointed. I’d almost rather him look angry. “Well,” he says, motioning for us to come back to the living room. “Let’s see the pictures.”
We take a seat at our table and they all pass my phone around taking turns looking at the pictures. It takes a good ten minutes to sink in before my mother starts crying. “He’s so beautiful,” she says.
Six is squeezing my hand again. Then she starts to cry, because when Six sees anyone else cry, it makes her cry. “I’m sorry I let someone adopt him,” she says to my parents. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
My mother’s eyes swing to Six and she’s immediately out of her chair. She takes Six’s hands and locks eyes with her. “You have nothing to apologize for. Nothing at all. We love you so much, Six.”
They hug, and dammit if it doesn’t make me tear up. As much as they embarrass me, I really did get lucky when it comes to the parents I got.
Hell. I might have even gotten lucky when it comes to the sisters I got, too.
“I want to meet him,” Chunk says. “When can we meet him?”
“Hopefully you all will. But we think it should just be the two of us this first trip.”
Everyone seems to be in agreement with that.
“Oh, and one more thing,” I add, turning to my parents. “Could you buy us plane tickets to Connecticut?”
Chapter Eight
Three weeks later
We agreed to take an Uber to their house from the airport. Meeting our child for the first time in an airport seemed too stale.
We don’t speak much on the way there. It’s been the longest three weeks of both of our lives, and as much as we wanted to call them every day, we held off. We didn’t want to scare them away.
“Neighborhood seems nice,” I say as we grow closer. All the houses are decorated for Christmas. I look over at Six and she looks so nervous. Her skin is pale.
When we pull up to the address, we stare out the window for a moment. It’s a nice house. Bigger than anything Six and I would be raising him in. Not that the size of the house matters, but I can’t help but want the best for him.
“You ready?” I ask Six.
She shakes her head. Her eyes are red, and I can tell she’s trying not to cry.
This is a huge moment for us. It’s terrifying. But our Uber driver doesn’t get that because he says, “Hey, I don’t get paid for you guys to sit in my back seat and cry.”
That irritates the hell out of me. I bump the back of his headrest. “She’s about to meet her child for the first time, Dickprick! Give us a minute! Also, it smells like tacos in here. Get an air freshener.”
The Uber driver meets my glare in the rearv
iew mirror and then mutters, “Sorry. Take your time. Didn’t know this was a big moment.”
“Well, it is,” I mutter.
Six rolls her eyes at me. “It’s fine,” she says, sniffling. “I’m ready. Let’s do this.”
We get out of the car and I go around to the trunk to grab our suitcases. One of them is filled with a week’s worth of our clothes. The other one is filled with toys and clothes from everyone. Sky and Holder, Karen and Jack, Breckin, both sets of our parents. Even Six’s brothers, who really did give me a hard time after they found out, pitched in a few presents before we left.
The Uber driver actually makes himself useful and helps me with one of the suitcases. When he shuts his trunk, he looks at me. “Does it really smell like tacos in my car?”
I shrug. “Yeah. But the good kind.”
“I had tacos for lunch. You have a good nose.”
I kind of feel bad for snapping at the guy now, but he shouldn’t rush his passengers like that. “I wasn’t trying to insult you. I love tacos.”
The driver shrugs it off. “It’s cool. And hey, I’m also an Uber Eats driver. I can actually go get you tacos if you want some. There’s this really great taco stand over on Jackson Street.”
I am hungry. “How good? I’m from Texas and we have really good tacos in Texas.”
“Dude, they’re the best tacos you’ll ever—”
“Daniel?” Six interrupts our conversation. She lifts a hand and waves it at the house behind her. “We’re about to meet our son in a matter of seconds and you’re seriously going to sit here and make me wait while you have a full-on conversation about tacos?”
“I... Sorry. I just love tacos.”
“Tacos are great,” the driver mutters. “Good luck with your kid and stuff.” He gets back in the car and cranks it. We look up at the house, just as the front door opens. A man walks out. I guess this is Graham.
“Shit,” I whisper. “He’s good looking. I don’t know why that makes me even more nervous.”
Finding Perfect Page 5