by Kelly Myers
Zack insisted on cleaning up after breakfast while I got Adam ready for a day out and about. I needed to pack snacks and juice boxes, and distractions including toy cars and crayons. Leaving for the park was never a case of ‘let’s go,’ and being out the door within a few minutes.
With my coaching, Zack got Adam into his car seat before buckling himself into the passenger seat. Zack asked Adam about all of his favorite colors, something Adam could go on about for a while. My little guy was an artist at heart, and he loved to look at colors and scribble with crayons.
Once we made it to the park, a small neighborhood playground, Adam dragged Zack off to the swings. I followed behind, content in the moment of watching the two loves of my life together.
I put the tote bag with our things down by the swing set and stepped next to Zack. I ran my hand up his firm back. Feeling the movement of his muscles as he pushed Adam in the swing; feeling the warmth of the sun on the fabric of his shirt, I opened my mouth to tell him how I felt when he turned and kissed me. I leaned into him.
“I love you,” he said. “I may have forgotten to tell you that four years ago. I didn’t want to forget to tell you now.”
I swallowed hard and smiled. “I was just going to say that. I love you, too. Now, what do we do?” I asked with a sigh.
“Fuck me, I love it when you do that. Sigh again.”
“Language!” I chastised him.
“Sorry, he didn’t hear anything. I don’t think.”
We both watched Adam enjoying the swing, waiting if he would parrot the bad word.
“I think we’re safe,” I said. “Now what, Zack? What do we do? Can I tell Adam you’re his father and not have you break his heart? I mean, if you aren’t going to be around, or we end up doing some long distance thing, I’d rather he not know than have to tell him why you aren’t here.”
“Who said I wasn’t going to be around Crystal?”
I shrugged. “I live here, you’re in California.”
“Come home with me. There’s a Project Manager position on my new solar team in need of someone with your skills.”
I shook my head and crossed my arms. I didn’t want that again.
“Out, out!” Adam demanded. I lifted him from the swing and set him loose to run and climb on the play structure.
Zack came up behind me and placed his hand on my hip. He turned me into his chest and wrapped his arms around me.
“I can’t just work for you again Zack. I bet that stupid company policy is still in place. Adam and I have a sort of family here.”
“I’ll have that policy changed by tonight,” his voice was thick with emotion. “I don’t want you to come back just to work for me. I want you to come home and marry me. Be my wife. Let me be Adam’s father. Do I have to adopt my own son?”
I swiped at tears and pushed out of his embrace. “Yes,” I nodded enthusiastically.
“Yes to what, you’ll marry me?”
“I’ll marry you, and you’re going to have to adopt Adam. I didn’t put your name on the birth certificate.”
Zack held my face and kissed me hard. It was a challenge to kiss him through the laughing and the tears, but I managed.
“Adam,” I called out. “Come here, baby.”
Adam ran over to us.
Zack knelt to be at the same level. Seeing them together, there was no denying they were a matched set.
“Adam, I want you to meet your Daddy.”
He looked up at me with big confused eyes. “Daddy? Zack Daddy?”
After a moment of looking back and forth between us, Adam launched himself into Zack’s arms. Zack held him tight and stood, wrapping an arm around me, bringing me into the hug.
I had been wrong earlier. I could be happier. I held them tight.
“I love you so much,” I whispered to them both.
31
Epilogue: Zack
“Honey, I’m home!” I would never get tired of saying that. It felt so cheesy and like a TV sitcom. It gave me the happiest feeling deep in my chest, to come home to my family.
“Deeeeee,” the first part of ‘dad’ was lost to Adam’s squeal as he ran and slammed into my legs. He held on and hugged me with everything in his tiny body.
“How’s my big boy?” I asked as I hefted him up to my hip. “Where’s Mommy?”
“She’s in the kitchen, cooking. It smells icky.”
I laughed. Everything was icky to Adam at this stage of being four. His once loved plain noodles were icky, chicken nuggets were icky. Everything was icky.
He couldn’t have been more wrong. Then again I wasn’t four, and as far as I was concerned, everything was wonderful. Maybe a bit messy, but wonderful. I dodged the landmines of his toys scattered throughout the living room and passed the table where Crystal had clearly been working earlier. Her laptop was open to a color coded spreadsheet, and the table had a large calendar covered with more sticky notes than I thought were necessary. Crystal had her methods and they involved all the sticky notes.
I carried him into the kitchen where my beautiful wife was surrounded by flour, open jars, and an open egg carton filled with broken egg shells. A deep fryer unit spit and sizzled on the counter. More mess, and yet, it would all be tidied away before we tucked Adam into bed for the night. She was amazing that way. It’s why she was so good at her job, and at being a mother. She knew things had to get messy and expand before they could come together, refined and ready to go.
She was speaking, if I hadn’t known better, I would have missed the ear piece and assumed she was talking to me. We tried to keep work at the office, otherwise, as she so wisely pointed out, it took over everything. She pressed her cheek in my direction so I could kiss her while she continued with her conversation. Her words reminded me of a time long ago when we were dating and thinking how business words made no sense. Why not just say ‘this is how it makes money?’
Adam squirmed in my arms, and I set him down with a kiss to his cheek. I was going to get as many of those in before he thought kisses from Daddy were icky too. I peered over at what Crystal was busy with.
She was patting pickles dry with paper towels. In front of her she had several bowls of flour and what looked like raw scrambled eggs waiting to be scrambled.
I watched her quizzically and rubbed my thumb into my eyebrow.
“Hi, Darling,” she said to me, her call finally over.
“What are you making? This hardly looks like Project Management.”
“I am managing this project, so shut up.” She gestured at the cooking set up in front of her. “I am allowed to cook and make phone calls. It’s called multitasking.”
“I see that, and what are you multitasking? Are those pickles?”
“The grocery store was out of those dill pickle potato chips. So I thought I’d try frying some pickles on my own.”
“I didn’t know we had a fryer. We have too many kitchen gadgets, I can’t keep up with them,” I teased. I leaned against the counter, and then stood quickly, thinking better of it. I didn’t need my clothes to get covered in flour and who knows what else.
“Well, we didn’t. I had to get one for the fried pickles. And every gadget we own is very useful,” she said defiantly. “I just got a crazy craving for them. And it turns out they aren’t that hard to make. At least not once you have a fryer. I’m really surprised it took me so long to get one of these.”
I went silent as she spoke. The last time she wanted to eat fried pickles she had been pregnant.
“Crystal, are you feeling okay?” She seemed vibrant, super healthy. With Adam, she had been so sick at the beginning. It was possible she was just hungry. She did have a thing for kitchen gadgets, so having an excuse to buy a new toy was not out of character. Even if she did say ‘craving,’ and she had never once randomly purchased those dill pickle potato chips since we got married and she moved in with me, this did not mean she was pregnant.
“I feel great why?”
“You’re cr
aving fried pickles, that’s why,” I carefully enunciated each word.
She nodded. “Yeah, I know. It’s weird like I’m pregnant or something.”
“Or something,” I muttered. I snuck another kiss on her cheek and turned to leave the kitchen.
“But it’s not or something, Zack.”
The tone of her voice stopped my feet. I turned to look at her standing there with her hands on her hips. The expression on her face made me think I had missed something, and she was judging me over it. I stared at her and rubbed at my eyebrow.
“We’re going to have another baby.” Her face split into a wide grin full of happiness.
I continued to stare at her, only this time I wasn’t wondering what I had or hadn’t done, this time I was shocked into place. We had stopped using any kind of protection with the intent of getting pregnant only a few weeks ago. I didn’t think it had been a month already.
“Are you sure? So soon? That’s fantastic!” I laughed and pulled her into my arms. She sighed into my embrace. I felt her head nod against my chest. “I know, that was really fast. I guess we are meant to be parents. We do make beautiful babies, look at Adam.”
I tilted my head and shifted so I could see her face. “I love you.”
She smiled up at me. “I love you, too.”
I peppered her face with kisses before our lips met. I slid my mouth across hers. Her lips parted against mine and her mouth tasted like heaven. This is what home was meant to feel like, Crystal in my arms and her kisses on my lips.
Excerpt: My Secret Daddy
He is everything I ever wanted.
But I can never have him.
It was just one night with William Hart.
He took my virginity, but I knew that had to be the end.
I’m too young for him.
And he’s too set in his bachelor ways.
I’m a shy country girl.
William is a powerful lawyer with an extravagant city life.
We could never work.
That doesn’t mean I don’t still want him though.
He may be old enough to be my father,
But that only makes me long for his touch.
One mistake leads to another.
And when I find out I’m pregnant,
I know I’m in trouble...
Olivia
I leaned back on my heels and surveyed the neat row of sugar snap peas behind me.
I had been weeding all morning. The sun was high in the sky, but I had barely noticed the time passing. I never did when I was out in the fields, elbow-deep in the rich soil of the organic farm in Connecticut.
I stood up and stretched, my tan arms cracking with relief. Then I dusted off some dirt on the legs of my jeans and turned back toward the barns. I needed lunch.
When I entered the canteen, only Bridget was around.
“Hiya, Liv,” she said.
Bridget was one of very few people in the world who called me by a nickname. I’d always been Olivia to my mom and my half-brother. I didn’t really remember what my dad called me since I didn’t see him very often before he died. But he wasn’t the type to use nicknames. I did remember that.
Bridget smiled as I grabbed my sandwich from the fridge and sat down at the wooden picnic table across from her. I never gave her express permission to use a nickname, Bridget was just that type of person to give everyone a nickname. She was already well into her forties when she started the organic farm a few years ago, and she’d lived a fast-paced life filled with adventures and travels before she got the idea to buy a plot of land and start producing high-quality fruits, vegetables, butter and other products.
“Hey, Bridget,” I said. “The sugar snaps are gorgeous.”
“It’s been a good summer,” Bridget said.
I settled down and dug into the lunch I had brought from home. I rented a small place just a few miles down the road from the farm. It was cheap this far out in the country, and I enjoyed the quiet.
Bridget cast an appraising eye over me.
“You get up to anything last weekend?” she asked.
“Not really,” I said. “Just stayed in and did laundry, that kind of thing.”
Bridget raised her eyebrows. It killed her that I was twenty-two, supposedly in the prime of my life, and I spent all my time farming and doing home crafts.
She didn’t understand that I wasn’t like her. I didn’t crave a spontaneous life or wild adventures. I liked to be in the peace and quiet of my own home.
Alright, I supposed I craved some wild nights. Who didn’t?
They just always seemed like more trouble than they were worth.
“I’ll need you to go into the city this week to meet with some of the restaurants,” Bridget said.
I looked up in surprise. Bridget knew that I didn’t love going into New York. The bustle and noise of the city overwhelmed me, and the restaurant managers were always yapping about how much produce they needed without the slightest understanding of how farming actually worked.
“I know, babe, but I’ve got to go meet with my manure guy,” Bridget said. “You’ll be fine. Danny at Giovanni’s says he likes you, and you always get the orders right.”
“Ok, should I catch the train down tomorrow?” I asked. “I can ask my friend if I can crash.”
“Perfect,” Bridget said.
She stood up and plopped her blue baseball cap over her messy blonde braid.
“And who knows, if you and Danny hit it off again, maybe he’ll show you around town,” Bridget said with a wink.
I let out a weak laugh and looked back down at my sandwich. That was the thing about working on a farm with only a handful of colleagues and a hippie boss. All semblance of professionalism went right out the window.
It wasn’t that I was shy; it was just that Bridget’s jokes and ribbing constantly made me wonder what I was missing out on.
Was I supposed to be able to get a guy to ask me out to dinner with just a coy smile and a wink? Was there something wrong with me if the thought of walking into a bar and getting some rich corporate guy to buy me a cocktail made me break out in hives?
It wasn’t that I was shy. When I was around people I knew well, I could be comfortable and talk a lot. I just found meeting new people overwhelming. And when it came to men, I was hopeless. It was as if I had missed some critical class on how to date.
I watched Bridget stroll out toward the fields with her long-legged and confident stride. Somehow she found dates even at her age and out in the country.
I wondered what Bridget would say if she ever found out I was a virgin. She would probably command me to grab the closest farmer and find a hay loft. Bridget was all about sexual freedom, and she was always gabbing with the other girls about birth control and new-age sex therapists.
I could never join in. Whenever the conversation turned in that direction, I would suddenly remember a patch of vegetables that needed immediate weeding.
I still liked working on the farm though. After graduating college, my half-brother Richard told me I should get a reasonable and respectable job with a salary and a 401k. I had looked for that kind of thing, but when I saw the job posting to work at the farm in Connecticut, I was intrigued.
Richard had scoffed, and my mom had told me it seemed a little strange, but she was at least glad that I would only be a thirty-minute drive away.
I was a year into the job and I knew I had made the right choice. The farm was interesting, and there was never a dull day. I enjoyed being outdoors, and I liked feeling exhausted at the end of the day.
I finished my sandwich and sighed. Bri had mentioned needing help with the chicken coop today. I much preferred planting to dealing with the livestock, but I had done enough for the sugar snap peas today.
I stood up and adjusted my ponytail. When I first started at the farm, I thought the time outdoors in the sun might bleach my hair a lighter brown or at least give me highlights. Instead, my hair had insisted on remaining so dar
k it was almost black. My skin, however, had gotten quite tan, even though I wore sunscreen.
I strode out of the barn and crossed the fields toward where we kept the chickens. I could see Bri in the distance, the toolbox by her side. She was the go-to person when it came to repairs.
Even though it was still early August, I was already mourning the end of the summer. The autumn would stay busy, but then activity at the farm would drop off for the winter. We still had to tend to the animals and sell a few products and make connections with the restaurant, but there was much more free time.
Last winter, Bridget had dropped many hints about how winter was a good time to “put myself out there”. This winter, I had a feeling she was going to do more than hint.
The solution was obvious. If I wanted to avoid Bridget’s not-so-subtle matchmaking, I was going to have to take action. I needed to at least try dating. Make friends.
Maybe even lose my virginity.
My stomach clenched at the thought.
I couldn’t quite explain why it had become such an issue for me.
My mother was religious, and she had raised me Christian, but I had never taken a vow of purity or decided to save myself for marriage. I saw nothing wrong with that, and I respected the women who did.
My question had always been: why marriage? What can marriage guarantee?
As far as I could see, marriage didn’t mean anything.
My mom was my father’s third wife, and their marriage only lasted four years. My mom never recovered. My dad meanwhile dated around and probably would have settled down with a Wife Number Four if he hadn’t died in a car crash when I was eight.
So I wasn’t saving myself for marriage, because I wasn’t exactly impressed by the institution. But I was saving myself for something. Or someone rather.
I wanted someone I could trust. Someone who was responsible and respectful. So many of the guys I had met were childish and rude and immature. I couldn’t even imagine trusting them with my purse, much less my body.