by Lainey Davis
“Maybe I want the baby to have a lame name,” she jokes. “Maybe I want to name it Prince. Prince Stag.”
“I was thinking more like Duke Stag,” I counter. We share a laugh for a few minutes and she curls toward me.
“I’m sorry I’ve been such a bitch,” she says. I kiss the top of her head.
“That’s not what you’ve been,” I assure her. “I came on way too strong at the court house,” I tell her, remembering how Tim basically did the same thing when Alice got pregnant. Tried to drag her up to his penthouse and plan everything out without consulting her. I think about the plan I had in place to try again to get Emma to marry me. I had had this whole elaborate scheme to ask her in front of my family at Tim’s house tonight, make a public display of my devotion to her. But that suddenly doesn’t feel right, either.
I’ve got the box with my mother’s ring on top of the dresser in my room, but I don’t want to break contact with Emma to go get it, scared the moment will slip away if I leave this couch for an instant. “Chezz,” I whisper, twirling her hair around my finger again, nervous.
“Hm,” she grunts, seeming to almost drift off in peaceful sleep now that we’ve chipped through the top layer of our baggage.
“I still want all those things I was muttering that day at the market,” I tell her. “I still very much want to be your in case of emergency person.”
“Thatcher, I changed the paper—“
I cut her off with a finger to her lips. “Let me finish. I want to be your partner. I want to make a life with you, no matter what. I want to figure out communication skills together and learn how to manage my temper with you and maybe even figure out your temper someday…”
I shift my weight around, pivoting my arm out from behind her shoulders so I can kneel on the floor between her legs. She inhales sharply and meets my eyes. “Emma Cheswick,” I say. “Will you marry me? For real and forever and preferably as soon as you feel comfortable?”
She giggles a bit and nods. “Not good enough, Chezz. I need you to say it. Please?”
“Yes,” she laughs. “I will marry you.” And then I kiss her, softly and deeply, trying to tell her all the words of my heart through my connection with her body. She groans and puts her hands on her stomach. “I guess it’ll have to be soon if I want to wear the dress I got.”
“What are you talking about?”
She stands up from the couch and walks down the hall to our room. I follow her as she starts chattering how Nicole took her to the mall for maternity pants, but Emma got too overwhelmed to buy any and was feeling like a jerk for shutting me out when everyone knew we were going to eventually work it all out and get “actually married.”
“Babe, you’re rambling,” I say, sitting on the edge of the bed. She rolls her eyes at me and opens the closet.
“As we were leaving, I saw this dress.” She pulls out a pale green dress. It’s frothy and layered, with some iridescent bits that catch the light and look like rainbows. “It reminds me of…you know, the sculpture you made.” I smile, remembering my Emma sculpture I’d made after I saw her standing in the sunlight once.
“A goddess,” I say. “Rising from the sea.”
She nods and gestures toward the dress. “I thought maybe I could wear this when we get married.”
I jump up from the bed and grab the ring box. I kneel in front of her again, holding it up. “Ems,” I tell her. “This belonged to my mother.”
She gasps, pulling out the emerald-cut sapphire set sideways in a platinum band. “It’s very important to my family, Emma, and so are you.” I pause to take a breath, overcome by the weight of what I’m asking her. “My brothers both decided they’d very much like for you to have it,” I tell her, “If you’d do me the honor.”
Tears start to creep down her cheeks as she lifts the ring from the box. “Oh, Thatcher,” she says, sliding it on her hand. I had it sized based on another one of her rings when Tim gave it to me the other week, so it fits her perfectly as she stares down at it. She whispers, “I’d be a real Stag.”
“You’re already a real Stag,” I tell her, standing up and pulling her into my chest. “You’ve been a Stag ever since you wouldn’t make out with me at the botanical gardens. You just didn’t know it yet.” I grin at her and she folds herself into my arms. “Come on,” I urge her. “Let’s go eat Christmas food with my brothers and you can show everyone your ring.”
Emma starts peeling off her leggings and shakes her head. She grabs hold of my belt and says, “Before we do that, you need to help me work up an appetite.” And then time stands still for a few hours.
21
TIM
“We’re here,” Ty hollers as he kicks open the front door to my house, startling all the kids into silence for a moment. They’d been wrestling on the rug, making me nervous about knocking down the Christmas tree, so even though I want to be annoyed with Ty, I’m grateful he at least got the rascals to sit still.
“We can see that, Ty,” I tell him, shaking my head as he takes off Juniper’s coat and hangs it on the hook above the radiator.
He practically skips into the living room, though, looking like he’s about to burst with some sort of news. “Out with it,” I tell him. “What have you got for us?”
He plunks down a stack of gifts on the end table and Juniper rubs his arm. “We heard the baby’s heartbeat today,” she says. “And we got my bloodwork back.”
Alice claps her hands. “That’s so exciting! Which bloodwork was this?”
Juniper dances over to Alice. “The bloodwork that tells me this little Stag is a BOY!”
I grin and jump up, clapping my brother on the back and then looking down at the four little boys sprawled on the rug already. Next Christmas will be brutal. There will be at least six kids here. I make a mental note not to let Alice get any glass ornaments for the tree. “Dude, JJ,” Ty bellows. “That’s not even the exciting part.” He touches my arm. “She’s leaving out the exciting part.”
I lift one eyebrow and look at them. Juniper smiles at Ty and nods, and he says, “I’m retiring from hockey. I’m going to be a stay at home dad with this little dude. Isn’t that awesome?”
The room is silent. My grandmother’s jaw drops. My father stands from his seat in the armchair near the fire. All I can think about is the work I went through to secure Ty’s contract when nobody else in the NHL would sign him since he was such a hothead. “You’re quitting hockey?”
He nods. He opens his mouth to start speaking, when the front door flies open again.
Thatcher and Emma burst into the entryway. I grit my teeth. With those two, you never know if they’re going to be screaming or fucking behind my curtains. Based on the look on Emma’s face, they took care of that second part recently. Thatcher dusts some snow out of her hair and kisses her on the cheek. “Were you all standing around waiting for us?” he asks, confused.
I shake my head no. The room is still silent as we wait for Ty to finish what he was going to say, but I notice Emma is dressed to the nines while the rest of us are sitting around in candy cane pajama pants and reindeer sweaters—Gram’s idea of a Stag family holiday uniform. “Good,” Thatcher says, cutting me off before I can talk. “Because we need Juniper to notarize our marriage certificate and then marry us.”
There’s a long moment where nobody says a word, and then Ty starts laughing sort of maniacally. “Good one, Thatch. Heh heh. So anyway, back to me retiring…”
“I’m not kidding,” Thatcher says. He lifts up Emma’s hand, and I see she’s wearing Mom’s ring. “Emma is on board to marry me. And she wants to do it while she can still fit in her amazing fucking dress, because if you hadn’t noticed she’s growing my baby. Our baby.”
He puts one hand on her stomach and Emma smiles shyly. Everyone looks back and forth between Ty and Thatcher and their pregnant wives. Then Gram starts cackling. “What the hell is in the water that’s got you boys losing your damn minds?”
“Gram, did yo
u just do a swear?” One of Alice’s nephews is stuffing popcorn in his mouth watching while all the adults come unhinged. Everyone titters, realizing the magnitude of Gram using a curse word. And then they all look to me, waiting for direction on how to proceed I guess.
I clear my throat. “Ok, so, maybe we should all sit down and talk about all of this? Ty and Juniper, you were here first, so you can begin.”
And then instead of passing out gifts, my brothers tell us about their plans, that turn out to be not so hasty after all. Ty has been feeling misplaced for a long time, sore after games and practices, and badly missing his family. “I could barely get to the hospital when Emma had that seizure,” he says. “Ems, I’m real sorry I blurted that news to you like that.”
“No harm done, Ty,” she says, her arms crossed over her bump. I smile, seeing the round protrusion. She’s not very tall, short like Alice, so I know it won’t be long before she blooms into a fully pregnant-looking person. I wonder if she and Thatcher know the sex of their baby yet…and then I remember that we are mid-trial, with my brothers each outlining their major life events.
Ty continues, explaining how he had an epiphany while listening to the baby’s heartbeat and doesn’t want to miss a single minute, not for hockey, which he calls “Just a dumb-ass game in the end. Besides,” he says. “Even if we make the playoffs, JJ isn’t due until late June. This guy will stay in there until I’m back to take care of him while Mommy goes out and dispenses justice and shit.”
Juniper rolls her eyes at this. “Ty, come on,” she squeezes his hand. “You can’t swear like that around our son.” I try very hard not to bring up Ty’s contract with the Fury. This isn’t about work tonight. This is Christmas Eve and we are supposed to be gathered up to celebrate family. Juniper looks over at Emma and Thatcher and asks, “Care to tell us how you two made peace with one another?”
Before Ty can crack a sex joke, Thatcher dives into his side of the story, talking about how Emma is going to be able to take things easy while she works on her book, which should give her a lot of flexibility in case her pregnancy and her epilepsy get dicey. “And you all know I don’t do anything but sit around and play with glass all day,” he says. “Seriously, though, it sounds like Ty can just watch our kid along with his and we don’t need to worry about daycare.”
Emma tells us a bit more about how she eventually calmed down and stopped being angry with Thatcher for dragging her into the courthouse so hastily. I scratch my chin and wonder if everyone is just drunk on eggnog or if there really is something to the idea of Christmas spirit driving people to make rash choices. I must be caught up in it all, too, because soon enough, a Christmas wedding sounds like a fine idea.
“Hey,” I interject. “Emma, would you like me to call Nicole? I mean, if you’re going to get married right now. Do you want her to be here?”
“Oh!” she claps her hands. “That’s such a great idea. I guess I should call my family, too. They probably won’t come. They’re at the country club Christmas dinner…”
I’ve already texted Nicole by the time Emma’s done talking and received back a string of profanity, followed by an emoji of a lightning bolt and a car. I look over at Thatcher, who is grinning like a fool, and ask him if he plans to get married in his Christmas pajamas or if he wants to borrow a suit. “Fuck no, I don’t want a suit,” he says. “Sorry, Gram. But when do I ever wear a suit?”
“Apparently you wore one to go talk to my dad,” Emma teases, hanging up the phone. Her mother’s hysterical shrieks echo through the room as Emma slides her phone into a pocket in her dress. “My parents are on their way. Alice, Tim, thank you so much for letting us barge in your house with my family.”
“Barge? Are you kidding?” Alice is crying again, wearing an apron, and frantically whisking a bunch of things at the kitchen island. “This is amazing. It’s fine. It’s all fine. I’m going to make a wedding cake in my new pressure cooker!”
My family looks at me, wide-eyed, and I chew the insides of my cheeks, remembering Alice crying earlier. I suggest that they all break into groups to make wedding arrangements while I see what Alice needs.
When I walk into the kitchen, she’s leaning over the pressure cooker, which keeps beeping as she struggles to fit on the lid. “Damn it,” she swears, slapping the device. “Come on!”
“Babe,” I walk up behind her, placing my hands on top of hers. “Can I help?” She shakes her head, curls sticking to her tear-soaked cheeks. “Is there a recipe I can read over with you, Al? Or maybe you can let me help you with the lid for this thing?”
Alice throws the heavy lid down on the kitchen floor and I step back so it won’t land on my toes. “Hey,” I try to soothe her. Her nostrils flare out and I place my hands on her shoulders. “We are a team, Alice Stag. Now tell me what’s going on.”
She puffs out her breath, blowing a few curls out of her eyes. “I’m pregnant, that’s what.”
I feel my heart actually stop beating for a moment and wonder if I maybe heard her incorrectly. “Come again?”
“I said I’m pregnant. And now they’re all going to think I did it on purpose to steal their thunder and this was going to be your Christmas news tomorrow morning because I just don’t want to take away from anyone else—”
“ALICE!” I place a finger on her lips for a minute. “Baby, let me have a second.” I breathe slowly in and then out again, remembering how it felt to become a father. Remembering, too, how it felt to have my world ripped into chaos and uncertainty, and how that all turned out to be so fulfilling in the end. “I thought I had everything figured out,” I said, looking up as Nicole bursts into the house and storms over to Emma. “And really, I have nothing figured out.” Alice starts to cry again. But I continue, saying, “That’s so fantastic, Alice.”
I pull her into my arms, enveloping her in my body. I start kissing her head, rubbing my hands up and down her back. “Are you really happy about it,” she asks, her voice muffled in my sweater.
“I’m terrified! And overjoyed! I feel so many things at once, Alice.”
She sighs. “Me, too,” I hear her say. And we bend down together to pick up the lid so I can help her finish making a wedding cake.
22
THATCHER
I can’t believe I finally get to marry Emma. It feels like we’ve done absolutely everything backwards. Pretending to be engaged when we barely knew each other. Getting pregnant. Hauling her into the courthouse. But this? As we stand around Tim and Alice’s backyard, this feels absolutely perfect. A light snow falls as Ty lights tiki torches around the perimeter of the yard. Alice’s brothers brought over the some leftover strands of twinkle lights from the Peterson house and sort of draped them over the apple tree, so everything looks really pretty.
Nicole is inside fixing Emma’s hair and finding her a warm wrap to wear with her dress while I work on getting Amy’s sons to stop digging holes in the yard where Emma will walk up to meet me at the makeshift archway we made from a bunch of old hockey sticks and some zip ties. Ty, smirking, hangs a sprig of mistletoe from the middle of the arch and claps me on the back. “Let’s get this moving. I’m freezing my nuts off out here.”
He jogs inside and shouts for everyone to come out in the back yard, and Emma’s mother and sister bustle out, chirping about how unconventional all of this is and wondering how they will ever look their country club friends in the eye again. My father helps my grandmother into a lawn chair near the archway and walks over to me. “Thatcher,” he says, setting a hand on my shoulder. I don’t flinch or brush him aside, which feels like progress. “I want to thank you for letting me be here to see you married,” he says and bites back a sob. I realize I’m the only Stag brother who will have a parent present at his wedding, and that makes me choke up a bit, too.
All I can do is nod at him, but I’m seized by a strong emotion looking up at the mistletoe and I grab his arm. “Will you stand up here? With me and Ty and Tim?”
His mouth works up
and down like he’s searching for words, and he nods, standing behind me, but not too close to the precarious archway. It feels right to have him there, like this new chapter of all of our lives, all these changes, circle back to include him, too. Family looks and feels so different than I ever thought, and today it all feels welcome for the first time I can remember.
Amy and Doug, holding up a set of speakers from inside, start playing some music from Doug’s phone and everyone quiets down. This is what I’ve been waiting for—my chance to seal my commitment to Emma. To our family.
Juniper walks out the back door toward the arch, wearing a flowing black robe and carrying a few sheets of paper. “Where did you get a judge robe?” I ask her, wide-eyed.
Tim and Ty take their place beside me and Tim winks. “It’s my graduation gown from law school,” he says. “Close enough.”
I don’t hear anything else, then, because I look up and Emma is walking toward me, her arm linked with her father’s. Nicole has her phone out, taking a thousand pictures as my Emma glides through the yard. I think about how different I am from when I met her a few years ago. How much I work to be a better person, to be honest with my family, and make myself vulnerable to Emma.
“All rise for the honorable Judge Juniper Jones,” Ty shouts, crushing the mood.
“Knock it off, Tyrion,” Tim says in his sternest dad-voice.
Juniper clears her throat and says, “Well, thank you all for hanging out back here with us in the snow and freezing cold. I’ve never actually performed a wedding yet, so this is exciting for me.” She flashes a huge smile at me as Emma shivers a bit from where she’s facing me. Juniper looks at Ed and says, “I think you can hand her off to Thatcher now, Senator,” and she gives him a wink that makes him laugh. He pats Emma on the hand and steps back with her mom and sister.
I reach for Emma and see she’s carrying a bouquet of poinsettias she must have gotten from in the house somewhere. I love how the red petals play off the red and gold highlights in her hair, the green of her dress. It’s all I can do not to run off and immortalize this moment in my glass studio. But I need to focus, to be here. Present with my family this Christmas Eve, where I’m receiving so much more than I could ever wish for.