Noah shrugged. "I don't need much, Cedric, just somewhere to hide at the moment."
Cedric studied Noah closely. "So the way you were floating around the place this morning had nothing to do with Vincent staying with you last night?"
Noah felt himself color a little. "That was a 'want' not a 'need'. I need sanctuary. Whatever else I might want is pretty irrelevant."
Cedric looked dubiously at Noah. "How long are you up here for?" he asked, and Noah felt relieved. He really didn't want Cedric quizzing him on the state of his putative relationship with Vincent.
"A few months I hope, or at least until the docs want me back in LA."
Cedric nodded. "Ella'll look after you when you're back, and threaten Vincent as required."
"What's she like? I've only met her a couple of times. I’d no idea you were seeing her."
Cedric shrugged. "Well just like you and Vincent, hey? You didn't exactly broadcast you've been fucking for years. Isn't something I figured was public property either... Ella is loud and passionate and abrasive, and genuinely kind. We like each other, which is a rare commodity."
"It is," Noah agreed. He shifted a little and found his back was hurting too much for him to sit up right then, so he stared at the ceiling, studying the dark beams and the cobwebs, before asking, "Cedric, did you cheat on your wives at all?"
When Noah turned back to him, Cedric was looking at his hands. "I was unfaithful to Mel. It's not something I'm proud of at all. Not my finest hour. There was a good reason that marriage broke down. Why?"
"Because I feel bad about Kaycie." He sighed, his head rolling back up to continue his study of the ceiling. "You know, at the time, I didn't really care about her, it was all just... happening, was what I wanted to do. But now..." He shook his head.
Cedric's hand slid over Noah's. "Gotta let go of all that, mate. Kaycie's gone, just like Mel is. So you fucked up that time. It happens."
"Why'd I do it?"
"I haven't got a fucking clue mate. I have enough trouble with my own motivations. I can't be trying to figure out yours too."
***
Cedric dropped his bag into the boot of the rental car, and waved at Noah, leaning against the railing of the front porch.
Vincent slammed the boot shut. “Thanks for caring enough to come and make sure he was alright.”
Cedric hugged him quickly. "You don’t have to thank me for that. You do however have to do a better bloody job of looking after him. And I mean properly. None of this pretending you’re just mates, not now there’s a baby on the way."
“I have a boot print on my backside to remind me.”
Cedric opened the driver’s door. “No second chances, get it right this time,” he said in a low voice.
Vincent nodded, and Cedric closed his door, and was gone, a trail of dust rising from the gravel behind the car.
CHAPTER NINE
Noah turned the taps of the shower off and pressed a hand against his belly. The shower head trickled on him as he stopped and waited. There it was again, a current moving inside him, an eddy and swirl of movement.
The bathroom tiles were cool under his feet as he pulled on a pair of Vincent’s shorts and tied the drawstring over the curve of his belly, then pulled a shirt on. There was no one other than Vincent around, but Noah was becoming terribly self conscious about the pubescent breasts he was growing. It was going to take a while to adjust to that change.
Vincent was outside, up on the roof with a caulking gun in his hand. Noah was getting used to this, to sudden bursts of domestic repair work. It wasn’t nesting; it was Vincent trying to shake the nicotine cravings once and for all, now that cigarette smoke made Noah queasy. Caulking the loose tiles on the roof was probably more constructive than yesterday’s venture, which had been frenetic fence painting.
Noah rested one hand against a lilac fence slat and called out, “Vincent, come on down.”
Vincent shaded his eyes with the hand holding the caulking gun. “Wassup?”
Noah gestured with his hand, and Vincent slithered across the tiles to where the ladder rested against the porch roof. He clambered down, dropped to the ground and wiped a hand across his face, mixing putty with sweat.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“I can feel it. I can feel the baby.”
Vincent was across the hard baked soil of the yard in a moment, pressing one grubby hand against Noah’s shorts, then sliding it under the material so his rough hand brushed across Noah’s skin.
A slow smile spread across Vincent’s face. “What does it feel like? Can you tell me?”
“Kind of like flickering in water,” Noah said, gripping one of Vincent’s shoulders with his hand. “There it goes again.”
“Conventional wisdom is that it feels like the brush of a butterfly’s wings. Wait… was that it?”
Delight spread through Noah. “Yes. Can you feel it too?” He pushed his fingers in-between Vincent’s over the lump inside him. There, inside the orange sized bump, there was movement. “Oh, wow. There it is.”
Vincent wrapped his arms around Noah and hugged him. “Thank you, for the best surprise of my life.”
Noah hugged him back. “Feeling the baby move?”
Vincent pulled back a little, smudged a paint stained thumb across Noah’s cheek and shook his head. “No, everything. The baby, this time here, everything.”
A mosquito buzzed Vincent’s face, and he waved a hand at it randomly, and used the palette knife in his other hand to spread the ochres and golds across the canvas. His studio had become stiflingly hot, and he'd moved his canvasses and easels to the back porch, leaving him at the mercy of insects.
At the other end of the porch Noah sat with his feet propped up on the railing, humming tunelessly to whatever was playing over his headphones. One hand was splayed across his belly, curving over the bump, and Vincent knew he was feeling the baby moving.
After never knowing when or even if he would see Noah again, having him living on the ranch gave Vincent a contented feeling that he didn’t want to analyze too closely. Instead he added vermillion to his palette and smeared some across the gold and let his mind wander. There were shapes and colors there, shadows and sounds, Noah’s fingers smoothing his sun tattoo, the way he kissed in the morning, tasting of coffee, and Vincent let the patterns flow through him and fall onto the canvas.
Some time later the screen door slammed, and Noah held out a cold bottle of beer, condensation beading the amber glass, then pressed his lips against Vincent’s cheek briefly. Vincent took the beer, drinking deeply, then reached out and spread an arc of cerulean blue across the canvas.
He was happy, that was what it was.
The bonnet of Vincent’s pickup was warm underneath where Noah was sitting, and he could hear the motor ticking faintly as it cooled down. They were up high in the mountains behind the ranch. The sun was setting, and across to the east the moon was beginning to rise through a band of cloud.
Noah bit into the wedge of watermelon Vincent handed him, and spat a seed onto the gravel. Inside him, the baby whirled.
Vincent took another wedge from the ice cream container of watermelon that was sitting between them and watched the moon rise. It was cooler up this high, and the air was moving, warm up draughts from the valley below.
“Wiccans believe that this moment, sunset of the day after full moon every month, is the moment when the Goddess moves. The sun is still in the sky, and the moon is still full, and when the light from both combines, there’s an instant of magic.”
Noah spat another pip out and said, “You having a sentimental moment there, Vincent?”
The sun slid beneath the horizon in the west.
“Don’t you have any poetry in your soul?”
Noah flicked a pip at Vincent. “I think I used to have some but I haven’t seen it in a while.”
Vincent smiled indulgently at Noah and dropped the rind into the ice cream container. The dusk was purple velvet around them, a
dog barked a long way away, and a cicada whirred in the grass, and Vincent would forgive Noah almost anything right at that moment, including laughing at Vincent’s ramblings.
Noah sighed. “Jesus Christ, now you’re being all soppy, aren’t you? Well, get over it, because I need to piss again, and for some reason I can’t take a slash standing up anymore.” He slid forward off the hood of the car. “If I’m going to squat, you’ll have to help me stand up again.”
Vincent was leaning against the railing of the porch, flicking the ash from his cigarette onto the hard ground and watching the rabbits running around the yard in the moonlight when the screen door swung open behind him.
He ground his cigarette out against the railing and carefully placed it into a tin balanced beside him.
When he turned around he saw Noah, naked, the light of the moon falling across him. He was silver and grey, black hair, face in the shadow. His belly was round now, and he had a hand pressed against it, a familiar stance as he tried to guide the baby’s feet away from the sensitive areas.
He looked like a woman now, genitals hidden in his pubic hair, breasts filling out more every day, and every day that Noah would let him, Vincent photographed him, wanting to record this journey to show their child later, and to make sure Vincent himself never forgot. ‘Fuck gender,’ Vincent thought to himself.
Noah leant against the railing beside him. “Fell off the wagon again?” he said, pointing at the tin of cigarette butts.
Vincent nodded. “Yep. I am a slave to my addiction.”
The rabbits danced in the moonlight, and Noah pressed a hand back against his belly.
Sandra knelt beside the couch, doppler in her hand. The heartbeat was clear in the den, and Noah grinned up at Vincent where he was sitting on the coffee table. Sandra’s hands were careful on his belly, feeling around the growing shape after she had turned the doppler off, and the baby squirmed inside Noah, responding to her touch.
She sat back on her heels and spoke. “As nice as it is to have a fully paid trip here every three weeks, it’s time for Noah to move back to LA. I want you and the baby within easy reach of a hospital now.”
Noah pulled his T-shirt down to cover the bump and sat up. “Already? Can’t I stay here longer? I’m only 21 weeks.”
Sandra shook her head. “Don’t try and fudge dates with me, I’m an obstetrician. That’s 23 weeks of a normal pregnancy, and you know it. Your baby is only a couple of weeks away from viable, and I want you somewhere you can be delivered in a hurry if you need to be. It’s been fine for you to hide up here while the baby has been too small to survive if anything went wrong, but it probably weighs a pound and a half now, nearly big enough to have a chance.”
Noah looked up at Vincent anxiously. They had both hoped that he could stay another month on the ranch, at least until the end of fall.
Sandra packed the doppler away, and Vincent asked, “Are you sure? We really wanted to stay here where it’s private.”
She nodded. “I’m sure. What I’ll do is arrange to see you at about 7.30 in the morning, when my offices are deserted. That way you don’t have to worry about anyone recognizing you. But I’m going to want to start seeing you weekly soon, and I don’t plan on travelling up here every weekend.”
She rested a hand on Noah’s knee when he shook his head.
“Noah,” she said carefully. “This is about to become very difficult for you, I want you somewhere safe, with plenty of medical help. You know how uncomfortable it is when the baby kicks your bowels now?”
Noah nodded. “Yeah, it hurts.”
“Soon, those kicks will be a hundred times stronger, as the baby grows. Abdominal pregnancies are difficult and painful. You’re already struggling to cope with your back, from where you had the vertebrae fused before. I want you somewhere you can have cortisone injections in your spine if you need them, somewhere I can supervise pain management if the pregnancy becomes too hard for you. I think Vincent is going to need help looking after you too, and he can’t get it here, so far from everything.”
Noah blinked back tears. “I want to stay here.”
Vincent moved so he was sitting beside Noah and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. “Listen to Sandra. We need to be near a hospital, not an hour’s drive from one like we are now.”
Noah nodded and wiped his face roughly. “Wish I didn’t keep bursting into tears all the time.”
Sandra laughed and squeezed his knee. “All pregnancies are like that. It’s just one of those things.”
Ben’s music was playing loudly, and Noah climbed the stairs wearily, pushed Vincent’s bedroom door closed to block out some of the noise, and sat on the edge of the bed.
He had been to Vincent’s house a few times before, had even had sex with him one night in the bed he was sitting on, one night when Ben had not been there.
But now his suitcase was propped open in the corner, and Vincent was trying to sort out some of his own junk so that there was room for Noah to unpack it.
“Vincent,” he said suddenly. “How long am I here for?”
Vincent sat back on his heels and dragged a cardboard box out of the bottom of the closet. “What do you mean?”
“How long am I here for? Just until the baby arrives?”
Vincent sat beside Noah on the bed and took his hand. “Is that what you want? Because I had hoped you’d stay a while, at least through the first really tiring few months. If you want to leave after that, I guess the baby can spend half of the time with each of us.”
“What if I want to stay longer than that?”
Vincent squeezed his hand. “Then I’d better clear all of the boxes out of the closet.”
Vincent woke during the night, his sleep unsettled by something. It wasn’t Noah, who was lying in bed beside him for a change, his back to Vincent, instead of prowling around the house restlessly.
Vincent rolled over so he was close to Noah and settled his face against Noah’s neck.
Noah was crying.
Closing his eyes again momentarily, Vincent asked, "Is it your back?"
He rested his hand against Noah’s lower back, and Noah’s hair tickled his face as he shook his head. “It’s the baby.”
Vincent moved his hand over the mound of his child, and felt the staccato drum beat of the baby’s legs and feet against his hand. “How long's it been awake?”
“Hours.”
Vincent vaguely remembered hearing the shower run some time before, and realized it must have been Noah hoping the warmth would soothe the baby.
Noah tensed, and Vincent could feel the infant’s heels banging against Noah’s body.
He pushed back the covers and reached for his jeans, draped over a chair beside the bed. Once dressed, he knelt beside Noah’s side of the bed. “Think you can get up?”
Noah nodded, and Vincent helped him sit up, and knelt before him and guided his feet into sweatpants.
When Noah stood up and pulled a T-shirt on, Vincent took a pillow off the bed and tucked it under his arm.
He used the other to hold Noah steady as Noah walked slowly down the stairs, feeling for each step with his feet, unable to see where he was walking.
In the hallway, Noah said, “Where are we going? Don’t make me go to hospital.”
Vincent picked up his keys and his cell phone and shook his head. “I won’t make you go, I promised I wouldn’t.”
He held Noah steady while he maneuvered his bulk into the passenger seat of Vincent’s car. Vincent leant over to do up the seatbelt, then handed him the pillow.
“We know that the car makes the baby sleepy,” Vincent said as he climbed into the driver’s seat. “Just relax, and I’ll drive.” He slid a CD into the stereo and started the car.
***
The sun had risen when Vincent leant across from the open driver’s door and shook Noah’s shoulder gently. “Wake up.”
Noah blinked his eyes and lifted his head from the pillow wedged against the passenger window. �
�Where are we?”
“San Luis Obispo. At a motel. I’m too tired to drive any longer, so I got us a room.”
At the motel room door, Noah asked, “How long have you been driving?”
Vincent pushed the door open. “About four hours. We’re 200 miles north of LA.”
The room smelt a little musty, and Vincent heard Noah tearing the paper strip off the toilet to piss. He flicked on the air conditioner set in the window and pulled back the bed covers, a cheap coverlet over a rough woolen blanket. He pushed his jeans off and dragged his T-shirt over his head and climbed wearily into the bed.
Noah settled beside him, rolling over to rest his head on Vincent’s shoulder. The baby didn’t kick against his hip, and Vincent kissed Noah’s scalp and fell asleep.
***
Vincent woke much later, rolled over and found the bed beside him empty. When he propped himself up on one elbow and rubbed his eyes sleepily, he saw Noah sitting in the only chair in the room, in front of the TV, munching on corn chips.
“Hey,” he said sleepily, and Noah turned to smile at him.
“Hey,” Noah replied.
“You get some more sleep?”
Noah nodded. “I did, then I woke up starving.” He looked at the floor around him, littered with empty packets. “I seem to have eaten everything from the mini-bar.” His eyes went back to the TV and he laughed. “Jerry Springer is such an asshole, I can’t believe anyone would go on his show.”
“’I got my boyfriend pregnant, and now we’re in a crappy motel watching Jerry Springer,’” Vincent said, and laughed too.
CHAPTER TEN
Cedric poured himself another glass of wine, then closed the fridge again as Ella pushed past him to answer the ring on the doorbell. “Stir the soup, will you, love?” she said, and Cedric circled the wooden spoon through the thick yellow pumpkin soup.
The Omega's Dearest Baby Page 4