by Emerson Rose
Lourdes
The beach is virtually abandoned today. I wonder if it’s always this way? Did Liam buy a stretch of private beach with the house? It doesn’t seem right that no one else is out here on such a gorgeous Sunday afternoon.
“Toby, baby, don’t get too far into the water. Come make a sand castle with me.”
“Cas-ow?”
“Yes, let me show you.” I pick up the one of the plastic bowls I found in the kitchen and show him how to pack the sand in and flip it over. He squeals and claps his hands.
“Agin agin, mommy do gin,” he chants, clapping his hands.
I’m doing my best to keep my mind off what’s going on with Amira and Liam today, but it’s pretty impossible. No amount of sand castles and gorgeous weather can chase my worries away today. It’s been hours since I heard from him. His last text said that they weren’t going to be able to keep her from delivering sometime today. The medication they were using to hold off her labor wasn’t working. At thirty-five weeks, they were only trying to get a round of steroids into Amira for the baby’s lung development before they stopped preventing her from delivering, and that takes twenty-four hours. It had only been twelve hours this morning at ten when he last texted me.
If we had a car here, I’d go to Rachel’s, and I know she’d come get me if I asked, but I don’t think that’s the way I want to tell her that my boyfriend, who is still married and possibly having a baby today with his wife, just bought me a house on the beach. God, when I think about it all in one string of events like that, it sounds like an episode of Maury Povich. I could use some company, though. Maybe I’ll call Kit. He wouldn’t judge about the house or the situation. He’s very liberal. I lean back and grab my phone to call him and see there is a text I missed. It’s from Liam, and I’m not sure I want to open it, but I do.
Sorry it’s taken me so long to fill you in, but as you probably guessed, Amira had her baby. He’s in the NICU and he’s doing pretty well for being five weeks early. Amira’s all right—bitchy, but physically she’s fine. I have some news, but I don’t want to talk about it like this. I’m coming home soon and we can go out to dinner. Oh, he doesn’t look much like me, btw, but we won’t know for sure until the paternity tests are done. I can’t wait to kiss you. -L
He doesn’t look like Liam. Out of all of that information, that’s what I’m focusing on as I gather our towels and bowls to head inside and get ready for dinner.
An hour later, Liam comes through the front door looking tired and weary. Toby attacks him, throwing his arms around his legs and squealing with excitement. Liam lifts him over his head and gives him a flutter burst on his neck before carrying him into the living room where we’ve settled in with a movie.
“You guys have been making yourselves at home, I see,” he says, flopping down on the couch next to me.
“You made it pretty easy. Food in the fridge, a fully stocked kitchen, cable and internet all hooked up, and you even have Netflix. How long have you been planning this?”
“A while. I had my realtor looking, but it wasn’t until Amira showed up unannounced that I made a final decision.”
“What if I hated the house?”
“I knew you wouldn’t.” He reaches out to skim his fingers along my shoulder and down my arm, causing that familiar shiver to run down my spine.
“Well, you’re right. I do. Are you sure you want to go out to eat? You look tired.”
“I am, but I’ll be okay once I shower and change.”
He’s quiet for a few minutes, staring blankly at the television, not connecting with the movie Toby’s engrossed in.
“Did you take pictures?”
His head is resting on the back of the couch, and he lolls it toward me and looks at me like he’s trying to make a decision. Then he pulls out his phone and holds it out for me to take.
“I’ll go shower. If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, come and make sure I haven’t drowned.”
“Aw, you sure you’re up for going out? You’ve had a really big day. I could cook and we could eat on the patio.”
“No, we’re going out.” He kisses my nose and heaves himself off the couch. I watch his lovely backside lope down the hall to our bedroom. I love the sound of that—our bedroom. This place has no memories but the ones we will make here together . . . if we can ever completely be together. He never mentioned whether Amira made a fuss about the slap, but then again, she wouldn’t. She’ll just pull that out when it’s necessary, like when Liam brings up a divorce again. There is no way Amira is going to raise a baby alone. If this little boy is Liam’s, she’s going to pull out all the stops to keep him, but I’ll fight for what we have, just like I’m going to fight this cancer.
Liam’s phone is still in my hand. I’d almost forgotten why he left it here. When I click on the photo app, a string of pictures shows up and I start scrolling through them. There are at least forty pictures here. I can’t tell if he was taking so many to commemorate the day or to prove something. One thing is for sure. He’s right. This baby boy doesn’t look a thing like Liam. This little guy is beautiful, but he’s all Amira, and he’s very dark for a mixed baby. Not that that couldn’t happen, but I would have thought that since Liam is a blue-eyed, blonde-headed Caucasian, the baby would resemble him a little. There are no pictures of Amira, which secretly makes me happy, although it’s sad that she didn’t get to spend time with him right away because he was taken directly to the NICU. Liam must have had the nurses take pictures of him leaning up against the isolette. He’s smiling and gazing down at the baby as if there were no doubt that he’s his son. Now that makes me nervous.
An hour later, at a nearby seafood restaurant, we are all looking at menus and trying to decide what to order. The restaurant is situated on a dock, so the back end is open to the ocean, where we’re watching the sun go down and Toby is getting up close and personal with a pelican. The bird is enormous, and it’s making me a little nervous, but the waiter assures us the bird is a regular and there is nothing to worry about.
“Okay, Liam, I can’t wait anymore. What are we here to talk about?” I say, reaching for Toby’s hand to keep him away from that damn bird. This feels like dinner for four with that big thing eyeing us.
Liam takes a deep breath and leans back in his chair before blowing it out. “You’re sort of scaring me here. Will you just spit it out?”
A smile that would light up one of his concerts for five hundred thousand ravers breaks out on his face, and I’m even more confused than ever.
“There was a reason Amira went into labor early. It was stress-induced.”
“And this makes you very happy why?” I ask, cocking my head to the side.
“I shouldn’t be happy about this at all. I mean, nobody’s happy when someone dies, but well, yeah, I’m happy, so . . .”
“Liam, help me here. Who died?”
“Amira’s dad.”
My mouth drops open and I gasp. Oh my God, if he’s dead, there’s no more threat. If he’s dead, we can be together and Amira can’t do anything about it. If he’s dead, all of our problems are gone. Well, not all of them. I still have cancer, but that’s different. I want to jump up and down and do a happy dance, but that’s so terribly wrong. I’ve never been glad someone was dead before, let alone someone I’ve never met, but this solves so many problems for all of us. But wait. “What about the will? Did he leave her anything? Is she still coming after you financially?”
“She doesn’t know anything yet. She got the call that he had died and got so upset it put her into labor.”
“And still nobody in Nigeria will tell her anything?”
“No, she didn’t have much time to make any calls or research because she was in pain. She’s trying to find out now. You should have seen her, Lourdes. She pushed that baby out like it was nothing, and as soon as they were stitching her up, she was on the phone to her father’s lawyers. No concern for her son. She didn’t want to hold him or go up and see him w
hen she was allowed into a wheelchair. Nothing.”
Now this is sad. I figured she wouldn’t be mother material, but I thought maybe when the baby was born, she would have some feelings for him.
“That’s why I was gone so long. I wanted that kid to know somebody was there for him, ya know? Even if I’m not his father, I didn’t want the little guy to feel abandoned.”
I roll my top lip in and bite it to keep from crying. This man is so good through and through that he couldn’t leave Amira’s baby alone in the NICU. Biologically his or not, he loved that baby during his first hours in this world, and that shows some pretty remarkable character if you ask me.
“Liam Wild . . . hey, what’s your middle name? Have you ever told me?”
“I don’t think I have. It’s James, why?”
“Liam James Wild, I love you more than any woman on this planet loves a man. You make me want to be a better person,” I say and hug him as tight as I can with the arms of our chairs and my baby bump between us.
“Stop it. I didn’t do anything great. You would have done the same.”
I think about that for a minute. Would I? Yes, I would have. Babies are one hundred percent pure when they are born. They can’t help who their parents are. I’d have spent time with him too.
“Yes, I guess you’re right. I still love that you did that though.”
“Okay, then let me ask you this: Would you be willing to come and see him with me tomorrow? You won’t have to see Amira, of course, but I’d like you to see him. Just in case he turns out to be mine, you’ll sort of be his stepmom.”
“Yikes, stepmom. That sounds so weird.” I’m the one who had a child already going into this relationship, yet I’m ending up a stepmom. “But yes, I’ll go.”
“Great. Now that all of that is settled, let’s eat,” he says as the waitress approaches to deliver our food. Perfect timing.
Later at home, when we’ve put Toby in his new bed for the second night in a row without so much as a peep of resistance, we lie on our backs, side by side, on a double chaise lounge on the patio and look up at the stars.
“Which one is your favorite?”
I look at him in the dark. His face flickers in the light of the Tiki torches scattered around the patio. I can smell the salty air of the ocean. I can even smell the sand, and a few seagulls are still squawking on the beach.
“My favorite star?” I ask. No one has ever asked me that before. “I didn’t know there were any differences.”
“Oh yes. See that one?” he says, pointing at a star very high in the sky.
“That’s the North Star. It’s located directly above the North Pole. Didn’t your father teach you how to find your way if you got lost at night?”
“No. Was he supposed to?”
“Well I will be teaching our kids. You never know when you might need that kind of information.”
I love that he said our children. I know he already considers Toby his own, but it’s nice to hear him refer to him that way so causally.
“Anyway, we’ve gotten off the topic. Which is your favorite?”
I look up and squint into the dark. They’re all easy to see, but one stands out to me. It’s very twinkly and sparkly. It’s my favorite.
“That one there,” I say, pointing at my little glitter star.
“Ah, the Sirius. Yes, it’s very bright, the brightest in the sky.”
“I thought the North Star was the brightest?’
“Nope, that’s a myth.” He takes my hand and holds it up between us, lacing our fingers together.
“So what’s with the astronomy lesson anyway?”
“I wanted to see if you’d pick the prettiest star or the one that would be most helpful.”
“Why?”
“Because I was counting on you preferring large, glittery, sparkly things instead of practical things.”
“You’re weird Liam. Don’t all women prefer sparkle over practicality?”
“You’re not all women. You’re my woman, and I want you to be mine forever.”
Liam sits up, pulling me up with him, and scoots to the end of the chaise.
“Are we going for a walk?” I ask.
Liam stands and shakes his head back and forth. Then he bends down on one knee between my legs, and suddenly, I can’t breathe. He wouldn’t—he can’t. Shit, he is. He’s going to ask me to marry him.
He reaches into his pocket and produces a blue box—Tiffany blue. Oh God, this is actually happening.
“Lourdes Unity Kennedy, I want to spend the rest of my days by your side, loving you and our beautiful children. Would you make me the happiest man alive by doing me the phenomenal honor of marrying me?”
He opens the box, but I can’t see anything through my tears, and it hardly matters, because I would marry this man with no ring at all as long as I was able to spend eternity by his side. I throw my arms around his neck and cry. “Yes, yes, yes. I will marry you.”
“I want to kiss you,” he murmurs, untangling my arms.
He wipes the tears from my cheeks with his thumbs and presses his lips against mine. It’s hard to kiss and cry at the same time, but somehow I manage to get the job done. When we come up for air, I feel the cool metal of the ring on my left hand. How did he do that without m knowing? I look down, and even in the dark, the square cushion cut ring sparkles, just like my new favorite star in the sky. I turn and tilt my hand, admiring the large stone through teary eyes.
“You like it?” he asks.
“I love it. But Liam, what about . . . I mean, you can’t really ask me to marry you—”
“Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong. Amira signed the divorce papers this afternoon.”
And there’s that megawatt smile again.
“She did? But how, why? What if the baby’s yours?” I’m stuttering and stammering all over the place, but I never thought I’d see the day when that woman would make me happy.
“Remember how I told you she was calling home while they did her episiotomy?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, what I didn’t tell you was that she got through to them and she got it all. Everything he had was left to her. She’s not going to be a problem for us anymore, baby. I’m finally getting my life back.”
It’s not the life he had before, though. “Are you sure you want to give up the carefree, jet setting, playboy life you had before Amira?” I ask, fiddling with my necklace.
“It’s dark out here, LK, but I want you to know in case you can’t see me that I am rolling my eyes again so hard that it hurts. I wouldn’t trade you and Toby and the butterball for that life or for anything. I had no idea what I was missing out on. This is what makes me happy.” He places his hands on my belly. “This is what makes me want to wake up every morning and go out and kick some ass.” He moves one hand over my heart that is beating wildly in my chest. “This is why my heart beats. It’s why my soul has life. You gave me purpose and hope and faith. I am in love and out of it I will not go.”
This beautiful man who loves me bows his head and kisses my hand while I mentally rummage around in my brain for something equally meaningful and beautiful to say, but I have nothing. It’s like someone took a file full of every romantic thought I’ve ever had and threw it up in the air. All the papers in the file are fluttering and floating around aimlessly until they fall to the ground in an unorganized, mountainous mess.
I show him how much I love him instead of telling him when I wrap my legs around his waist and pull him close to kiss him senseless. He stands with me clinging to his body and carries me to our bed, in our house, where our family will live happily ever after.
Chapter 35
Liam
So much has happened in the past six weeks that it makes my head spin. It’s almost Christmas. Lourdes completed her second chemotherapy treatment a week ago, and the doctors are very optimistic that she will make a full recovery by the time she delivers in March. We brought the newest member of our family h
ome from the NICU on November tenth, James Dylan Wild. He isn’t my biological son, but he’s known no one but Lourdes and me since birth. We visited him every day, and Lourdes even spent many nights sleeping on a pull-out bed in his room so she could hold and feed him and love him. Amira abandoned him in the hospital when he was only a week old. She informed me that her personal trainer is James’s biological father and that he wants nothing to do with having a kid. As far as we know, he went to Nigeria with her to collect her inheritance. They both signed away their rights to James before they left. Good riddance.
I couldn’t wait to get married. Funny how something that used to bring me such bitterness now causes me nothing but joy. Lourdes agreed to a Christmas wedding because she loves me, of course, but she also wanted to have her own hair when she walked down the aisle. She’s halfway through her treatments, and her hair is beginning to thin, but she’s still drop-dead gorgeous to me.
December twenty-fifth, when Lourdes is almost twenty-nine weeks pregnant with our baby girl, we will walk down the beach behind our house, me holding our two-and-a-half-year-old son and her carrying our nine-week-old baby boy to promise in front of our friends and family that we will love and cherish each other forever. Finally, my DJ name will have more meaning than it’s ever had before. Freedom. Sometimes, being tethered to something beautiful and miraculous gives you more freedom than floating aimlessly through life trying only to please yourself. When Lourdes came along and unlocked my heart, she taught me that love knows no boundaries. The more love we give, the more love there is.
Chapter 36
Wedding Day
“Have you seen the beach?” Kit says, peeking out my bedroom window.
“No, is it everything?” I ask.
“Yes, yes! I thought you said you didn’t look,” he says.
“Just a lucky guess,” I say with a smile. I have totally adapted to his slang. I can hang out with Kit and Devin all day now and never miss a beat.