by Aiden Bates
He gave me a reassuring smile and hugged back. There was usually no need to explain more to Mitch. “Anytime, Charlie. I mean it.”
Pedro and I hopped back into my car, but before I reversed down the driveway, Pedro reached over and took my hand.
“You okay? You’re smiling an awful lot,” Pedro said, a little smugly.
I shrugged. “Yeah. It was nice, really, really nice. I haven’t exactly interacted a lot over the last few years. Some of my friends just, well, couldn’t cope with the way I was. Not Bennet and Mitch and a few others, but enough for me to not even bother meeting up with them, and tonight was the first night in a long time where I’ve been able to relax and enjoy myself without feeling awkward or out of place. I like Marcos of course, I always have. And Mitch is a trip, and Oliver is really warm and inviting. It was…all just really, really nice.”
Pedro was quiet, letting my words stand out there on their own for a minute, letting me breathe.
“I’m glad, Charlie,” he finally said, his hand tightening a bit around mine. “They’re my family. It’s really important to me that you like them, that they like you. Really, really important. I want you to feel comfortable, you know, welcomed by them. I’m glad you felt like that. Because, in a way, if they’re my family, they’re your family, too.”
I let that sink in as I drove us back to our apartment. We didn’t live far, so was outside within minutes. That was one of the nice things about living in a small town I guess; that friends and family were always close by. Family. Pedro wanted his family to be mine. Just like Jason had wanted his family to be mine. My almost family I called them.
As we got out of the car I glanced at Pedro. “Almost my family. I mean…there’s not exactly a ring or anything,” I said trying to keep a straight face. It felt good to get a bit of my own back after Pedro made such a big deal about me going to the front door earlier.
Pedro flushed dark red, stopped in his tracks, and started sputtering. “Well, I mean, y-you know, it’s r-really early yet, and to be honest, I’m still looking for w-work, and that on top of a baby? Jesus, that w-would be a lot all at once, and—”
He narrowed his eyes and glared at me. “You were joking, weren’t you?”
I burst out laughing. It was too good, watching his face move through panic and confusion to anxiety, and then settle on an expression that said how done he was with me right now.
He dragged me close to his chest. “Dammit, Charlie. You’re going to give me a heart attack one day.”
“Well, we can’t have that. Just managed to get you healthy from your last journey into the hospital,” I said with a wry smirk.
“Ha. Ha.”
“Well, for the record, yes, I was joking,” I said before he shook his head and kissed me anyway. And I was joking, mostly. But it wasn’t a conversation we were anywhere near having. I couldn’t help but imagine how Pedro would do it. Family was so important to him. I could see him going and talking to my folks, asking me at his brother’s house in the backyard… It sounded kind of perfect.
“Charlie. I’ve loved you forever. I don’t want to go there without knowing whether I can call you my husband when I get back. I want that. With you. Forever.”
Christ. Breathe, Charlie. In, two, three. Out, two, three.
It was so hard to dream sometimes. Mainly because it was impossible to do without remembering.
Jason had murmured all of that in my ear. I could still remember his deep voice rumbling in his chest, and then he had sank to one knee, looked up at me with earnest eyes and asked me to marry him.
For some reason, his hands kept catching my attention. Jason had the steadiest hands I’d ever seen. He’d always been good at sports and those board games that tested how still and deliberately you could move. That had morphed to shooting when he’d joined the army. But those hands trembled when he’d pulled the ring from his pocket. As if I’d say no. As if I’d ever be anything other than always his.
So, when he’d asked, I’d said, “Always.” He’d laughed, but I’d never told him why I’d answered like that. When he put the ring on my finger, I’d never felt joy like that before. After I’d taken it off, I didn’t imagine I ever could again.
And now? Now didn’t feel like that. Of course it didn’t. Yet? There were times that made me think I could feel like that again.
Thoughts of Jason didn’t hit me hard like this often anymore. At one point, every minute I’d not think about him was a miracle. Now, full days, full weeks could go by without me reliving a memory. But it was just like Jason to come out of nowhere and knock me off my feet.
I felt the tears track down my face before I’d even realized I was crying.
“Hey, what’s all this?” Pedro asked, wiping off my tears. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, just hormones.”
Pedro’s hands trembled. They always did. And they weren’t boy soft. They were hardened with work and time, but, all the same, he wiped away my tears like they were something precious.
“Mi amor.” And then Pedro covered my mouth with his and kissed me like I was something precious.
And that was perfect.
22
Pedro
“It’s early,” Charlie said, reassuringly. “We don’t have to go in just yet.”
We were parked outside of Arlington General, ready for our twelve o’clock ultrasound check-up that was going to be the first look at our baby. It felt like an enormous deal, and I’d been kind of low-key nervous about it throughout the days leading up to it.
“Most people are nervous about it,” Marcos had said reassuringly when I’d asked him if it was normal.
“Really? How would you know?” Oliver had said teasing him. “You didn’t go to Juan’s first ultrasound.”
“Ooh. Badly played, dude,” I’d said, laughing and joining in. My favorite family moment these days were when all of us—Mitch, Oliver, and me—would join forces to pick on Marcos.
“How is that my fault?” Marcos had asked in protest as he tried to wrestle Juan’s sweater off of him. “You’d just thrown a clot and nearly died!”
“Really?” Charlie had asked, looking over at me, maybe concerned that he hadn’t heard this before. But Mitch interrupted whatever conversation we might have had with another joke at Marcos’s expense and the whole thing was kind of forgotten between Charlie and me.
So, at least I knew it was normal to be this nervous about it.
“We could go ahead and check in!” I suggested. “Maybe they would call us up a little early.”
“By like…a minute, maybe,” Charlie said, both amused and confused at me. “It’s fine. Let’s just…chill.”
In the month that had followed after Charlie and I had gone public about our changing relationship and the baby, I had had absolutely no ability to “chill.”
Charlie was pregnant, Charlie was going to have our baby, and for the first time since I’d woken up—maybe for the first time in my entire life, actually—I wasn’t the one who needed to be taken care of. I wasn’t Mami’s baby, or Marcos’s little brother, or anyone’s patient, or anyone’s weird friend with a whole host of physical and mental complications. I was the one who needed to be dependable. I was going to be the one taking care of people for a change. I was going to be a dad, and I was going to do my bit to help out in any way I could.
Just the other day I’d sat on the couch, rubbing Charlie’s feet.
“Nothing is swollen yet, you know. You really don’t have to— Ooh. That…actually…feels nice.”
“I know I don’t have to. I just want to,” I had answered, and did that thing with my thumbs at the very beginning of his arches that he liked so much.
“Well, I guess I won’t complain,” Charlie had said, with an almost inappropriate little gasp of pleasure.
Once, when we were all over at Mitch’s house, Mami had made flan and had served us all without asking us, operating under the assumption that we all definitely wanted some.
“Mijo?” Mami had asked, with even more overbearing, overdone concern than she used for me. “Que pasa? Don’t you want any of your flan?”
Marcos and I rolled our eyes behind Mami, so she couldn’t see. It was very clear she loved all of us. She just happened to love Oliver more.
“It’s delicious, suegra. Really. I’m just not feeling sweet things recently. I’ll have another red tamale, though. That hit the spot.”
Mami gasped and clapped her hands together before running over to embrace Oliver. “Mijo! Cravings for spicy food means a little alpha. My grandmother used to say that! Picante, un alfa. Azucar, un omega. Limon, una mujercita!”
Mitch and Charlie looked down suspiciously at their clean, now flan-less plates and exchanged glances.
“I craved sweet things with Juan…” Mitch had said, like he was about to agree with Mami.
“But you always crave sweet things,” Marcos had pointed out.
“No, there’s actually no medical research to really show that what you’re craving is tied to what the baby’s gender is going to be,” I had said casually before everyone at the table turned to look at me with their mouths open. It was a satisfying moment, and well worth all the hours I’d been reading through piles and piles of baby books.
“How’s the job search going?” Charlie asked me, shaking me out of my train of thoughts. Parked outside of Arlington. Right. Job search. Sure. Wait. Job search?
“Job search? Why would I be looking for a job?”
“Um?”
“I mean, not that I don’t want to work or anything,” I said, quickly trying to fix how that had sounded. “I just mean… Well, the retirement check is enough for us for the time being, right? And, I was thinking that if I started working right now, well, I couldn’t be around to take care of you. I’ll start looking again once the baby’s here.”
Charlie winced and bared his teeth at me, halfway like he was cringing and halfway like he was apologizing for something.
“What?” I asked, confused and more than a little concerned. “What is that face? What’s wrong?”
“I…” Charlie’s voice came out high-pitched like he wasn’t sure of what he was saying or how to say it. He cleared his throat. “Okay. Listen. You’ve been really, really attentive lately. Foot rubs, hand rubs, back rubs—”
“Other kinds of rubs,” I said, helpfully.
“Yep. And you’ve been reading, and you’ve been fetching everything for me, and checking in. But…”
“But?”
“I’m not dead. I’m just pregnant. Pregnant people work. You never leave the house unless I do. You’re acting like Marcos was acting when you were—”
“It’s eleven forty-five,” I said once again, helpfully.
“Yes, it is,” Charlie said. “And, you’re not fooling me one bit. I can tell what you’re doing. We’ll table it for now, but once the appointment is done, we’re talking about this.”
We got out of the car, and I grumbled something about him not having a job right now, either, which made Charlie grumble something back about being an artist and being unable to work in these conditions, but by the time we’d actually entered the exam room, it seemed we were both too happy to even fake-grumble at each other. We were just that excited about meeting ‘the nugget’ as Charlie had started calling it.
“Does that feel weird?” I asked as Dr. Lemon stood by as the ultrasound tech started pressing the probe around on Charlie’s abdomen, causing him to hiss slightly.
“Yeah, it’s weird,” answered the ultrasound tech, Dr. Lemon and Charlie at the same time. Dr. Lemon—OB to Charlie, Mitch, Oliver, and pretty much everyone we knew—laughed and winked down at Charlie.
“Alphas always ask that. I don’t know why. Leland really hated my asking him, too.”
Charlie smiled knowingly at Dr. Lemon and then turned his head to the side to watch the TV monitor.
“Alright,” the tech said, as Dr. Lemon supervised her from across Charlie and the exam table. “There we go. Okay. Looking good! You can kind of see her lying on her back there with her head this way. I’m just using ‘her’ generically, right? It’s still too early to tell. Those right there are going to be her legs, those right there are going to be her arms. There’s the cord and all this darkness is the sac and—” The tech stopped and wrinkled her forehead at the screen, looking between the screen, the probe, Charlie, and then Dr. Lemon.
“What?” I asked, locking eyes with Charlie. “What is it?”
“Is that—” Dr. Lemon asked as he squinted, walked around the table, and peered into the TV monitor. “Yep. That’s another sac,” he said pointing to another area of darkness visible on screen. I guessed, anyway. If you knew what you were looking at, maybe. I didn’t.
“Is something wrong?” I started feeling clammy, flushed, and a hair away from raising Cain if someone didn’t explain what was wrong immediately.
“Well, son, looks like you’re in for a treat. You see that?” Dr. Lemon pointed out the second path of darkness to Charlie. “That’s an extra sac. This little nugget was hiding behind this little nugget. Congratulations! Looks like you’re having twins!”
Charlie and I glanced at each other, terrified. Charlie looked as panicked as I did but had enough sense to ask what we both wanted to know.
“Are you sure?”
Dr. Lemon responded by guiding the tech’s hand over to the side of Charlie’s stomach and pushing it down deeper. Charlie winced, but Dr. Lemon nodded quickly. “Two sacs, two fetuses. Yep. Sure as my name is Stan Lemon. It’s twins.”
“Been a lot of that here lately, hasn’t there, Shelby?” he asked the tech who nodded quickly in response. “And triplets. Were you hoping for triplets?”
“No!” The omega on the exam table said, laughing nervously. “No, we’ll take it! Twins are fine! We’ll take twins!” His laugh faded a little, and his lips slowly spread into a softer smile as he looked up at me. “Right?”
The omega on the exam table was smiling. At me. And there was a doctor? In the room? Doing a kind of pregnancy thing? And now, there were twins? What the fuck?
Everyone in the room was looking at me, but nobody was helping me clarify just what the fuck was going on here, who the hell the man on the table was, or why the fuck I was standing in someone’s…baby appointment…or something.
“Pedro?” The omega said. “It’s fine. We’ll figure it out. Right?”
I blinked quickly, and then looked down at Charlie.
Charlie.
“Y-y-y-ugh-y-ye-y-yes!” I said after a moment. “Yes, of course. ‘If one fits, two can, too’ as Mami says. Yes.” I glanced at Charlie. Charlie. Charlie and Dr. Lemon and—did I know her name? Shelby! Yeah, Shelby—all seemed relieved I didn’t hate the idea of twins or anything.
“I thought you were fixing to pass right out on us, Pedro. Welcome back!” Dr. Lemon said, reaching over the exam table to slap me on the shoulder.
Yep. Welcome back. Welcome back is right.
If I seemed dazed and kind of out of it for the rest of the appointment and on the way back out of the hospital, it didn’t seem strange to Charlie. But I either didn’t remember or couldn’t think of how to exit the hospital or where we were parked. I just numbly followed Charlie, feeling nothing but dread in my chest as I internally reviewed details to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything important.
That was Charlie Zimmerman. He was pregnant with my baby. My babies. We were roommates. We lived together. He wasn’t with Jason anymore. Jason was gone. My social security number was this, my address was that, this was my phone number, that was Charlie’s.
It was
fine. It was going to be fine. I could remember everything. I was okay.
When I genuinely started feeling okay, when I had gone over everything in my head enough to make sure I had a handle on things, I found myself gradually tuning back into what Charlie was talking about rather than hearing him as background noise.
I shut the car door behind me as Charlie started the car before pulling out of the parking garage.
“Oliver was right. The apartment isn’t going to work,” Charlie said, chattering excitedly on the drive home. “It was barely going to work before, but now we definitely need a bigger apartment, right? If not a house, altogether? Could we do that? Could we afford a house? I mean, not before the baby comes, right? Babies. That’s too soon. We couldn’t get it together in time. No way.”
“This solves the issue from earlier,” I said, quietly. “I should definitely find a job.”
Charlie nodded as he continued driving. “And I should start hunting for commissions more aggressively? Maybe I can start taking individual requests? Seeking out personal patrons instead of series to work on?”
I nodded to show I was listening and on the same page as Charlie was about the need to save money. At least, most of my brain was on the same page Charlie was on. The rest… Well, the rest of my brain was…worried.
“We’ll at least have plenty of hand-me-downs, so no worries on that. Girls, boys or one of each, somebody in our friend group will have had one before so we can definitely hit them up,” said Charlie.
“Marcos better watch out, too,” Charlie said, too excited to wait for an acknowledgement from me. “Because you know what this means?”
“Mm?” I shook myself out of my own thoughts long enough to look at him. “No, I don’t. I don’t know what it means.”
While Charlie launched into an explanation of what Dr. Lemon had said about twins and triplets, and how that meant that Mitch and Oliver could each have triplets, and how that would mean they’d have six babies and a toddler, I nodded, but I wasn’t thinking of what it would mean for them.