by Sarina Bowen
Jesus.
The worst thing about the last two weeks wasn’t the stress of finding out I’d fathered a child. And it wasn’t getting yelled at by a baby or my sister. The worst part was a brain full of shitty old memories. No lie—every tense conversation with Zara was easier than five minutes alone with my own head.
I pulled out my phone to distract myself. There were texts from Zara, with an address for the farm. Her mother was scheduled to arrive at the wedding during the ceremony. And Zara would text me when it was over, probably around six.
It was almost six now.
I knelt beside the spot where Bess sat with Nicole. “I’m going to change. Don’t want to walk through someone’s wedding wearing this.” I pointed at my gym shorts and T-shirt.
“Good plan,” Bess said without looking up.
But when I got up to go, Nicole squawked. Then she raised her short little arms up to me.
“Wow, Davey.” Bess put a hand on her heart and smiled. “The lady wants your attention.”
“I’m just going upstairs,” I said to Nicole. “I’ll be right back.”
That apparently wasn’t good enough. She put her little hands on the ground and pushed herself into a standing position. Then she came for me.
“Fine,” I said, caving. I didn’t want her to cry again. “Let’s go find a nicer shirt for me to wear.” I scooped her up and carried her indoors.
Upstairs, my bed was unmade. So I awkwardly tugged the comforter up while holding Nicole in one arm. “Okay, little miss.” I deposited her on the bed. “Let’s see what we’ve got.” I opened the closet to locate the button down I’d brought to Vermont. I grabbed my T-shirt and pulled it off. Then I tossed it at Nicole, and it came down on her head.
She giggled from underneath.
I hastily buttoned up the clean shirt and pulled my nicer pair of khakis out of a drawer. But then I hesitated. Nicole had shrugged off the T-shirt and was watching me. So I turned away like a prude and changed my pants facing into the closet. If she had an opinion on the color of my boxers she did not express it.
When I turned around again, she had crawled to the edge of the bed and was leaning down, head first. So far down that—
I lunged, catching her by the waist just as she nearly executed a face plant onto the wood floor.
She squawked as I moved her back onto the bed.
“Everything okay up there?” my sister called. She must have been hovering at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for me to fuck up.
“Yup! All set!” Except I’d thought the baby might know better than to dive to her own doom. My heart was pounding from the near miss. I could just picture handing Nicole back to Zara with a giant bruise on her face and a possible concussion.
Note to self—don’t take your eyes off the kid.
Tucking in my shirt in record time, I scooped Nicole off the bed. “Try not to scare me like that again,” I whispered. “At least not until I figure out what the hell I’m doing.”
“Ba-bah-de-da,” she said, as I carried her into the bathroom to do the worst one-handed tooth-brushing job ever. It was a mystery to me how Zara ever got anything done at all. Single moms must develop some kind of ninja skills just to get through the day.
By the time I carried her downstairs, Zara had texted to say that the ceremony was over and that I could bring the baby to Shipley Farm. “She says her mother will be there shortly,” Bess added. Then she looked up from my phone, and her face lit up. “Holy cow. You are hilarious.”
“What?” I looked down at myself, wondering what I’d done.
“You’re twinsies! I need a picture. Stand on the porch.” She snapped her fingers.
When I looked at Nicole, I saw what she meant. The pattern on the baby’s blue checkered dress was awfully similar to the one on my blue and green checked shirt.
“Adorable,” my sister said, aiming her phone at us, as I tried not to roll my eyes.
After the photo, Bess took Nicole out of my arms for one more squeeze. “You are my favorite baby,” she said to Nicole. “Please don’t get much bigger before I find a way to see you again.”
The look on Bess’s face was one I’d never seen before. Pure yearning. She carried the baby to her car seat, strapped her in, and put the wooden bus on the seat beside her.
“You could drive over there with us,” I offered.
Bess shook her head. “You go. Spend a few minutes with Zara. I’ll start dinner with Castro. I told him I’d try out a recipe for peach pie.”
Huh. My sister wasn’t much of a cook. Eating a pie she made might require some diplomacy. “All right. See you in a bit.”
Zara’s car was a piece of shit, I noted as I drove away. It had a hundred and eighty thousand miles on it. But one feature was nice—she had an extra mirror clipped to the rear-view, and when I glanced at it I could see Nicole’s face in the back seat.
Another single-mom innovation.
Finding Shipley Farm was easy. There were a hundred cars lining the otherwise sleepy dirt road. I added Zara’s car to the end of the line and climbed out. “Okay, girlie,” I said to Nicole. “Let’s go find your mommy.”
Nicole smiled so widely that I found myself smiling right along with her. I took stock of both of us. My fly was zipped, and my shirt was tucked in. “You look like a big girl in this dress,” I told Nicole, smoothing it down. “Very appropriate for a wedding.”
I carried her the quarter mile or so up the long driveway, past rows of apple trees not unlike the pear trees on Zara’s family farm. Only this place seemed bigger.
So this was Shipley Farm. It was a nice spread, I had to admit. I wondered what Zara thought about this wedding. If she’d gotten her original wish, it might have been her wedding, right? If Griff hadn’t ended things, she and I would never have had our fling, and Nicole wouldn’t be propped onto my right hip as I approached a wide, oval lawn where guests stood in clusters.
Would an outcome featuring Mrs. Zara Shipley have been better for everyone?
Ten days ago I would have said yes. But now Nicole was a very real weight on my arm. Bess was deeply in love with the baby, and I had to admit that Zara seemed happy—if not with me, then with life in general.
Besides—nobody had asked me, anyway. I was starting to realize that getting older was just a lengthy exercise in getting schooled on all the ways you weren’t in charge of your own destiny.
The baby wiggled in my arms as we approached the wedding guests. She wanted to get down and run across all that green grass. But I couldn’t give in. There was a cocktail hour in progress. Caterers circled with trays of drinks. I scanned the crowd for Zara, but other women wearing the same exact dress kept fooling my eyes.
Someone pointed at me—a stranger who whispered into his date’s ear. I felt eyes on me, but I didn’t really care.
There was only one person here that I needed to find.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Zara
My God, weddings were stressful. Maybe it was actually a good thing that I would never have one of my own.
“Is there anything I can bring you?” I asked Audrey for the seventeenth time. “Maybe something bland to put in your stomach?”
“Sure,” she whispered.
We were standing behind the caterers’ tent, where Audrey had just puked into a wastebasket. I was holding a stack of napkins, handing them to her one at a time.
“I’ll be okay now,” she said with a watery smile. “I think.” She took the glass of water from my hand, rinsed out her mouth, and spit.
“Here’s the lipgloss.” I offered it to her from my purse.
She shook her head. “The fake cherry smell isn’t helping.”
“Oh, honey. I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “I knew this was a risk.”
“You’re a trooper. And I’m sure Griff will be great about it on your honeymoon.”
“He’s over the moon about the pregnancy.”
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br /> “Oh, I’m sure.” He would be, of course. Before today, Griff and his mother were the only two people who’d officially known about Audrey’s pregnancy. They’d been trying to reach the twelve-week mark before announcing it. But morning sickness was still hitting Audrey hard, and this morning I’d stopped pretending I didn’t know she was pregnant. Instead, I’d held her hair and her dress out of the way every time she’d barfed.
“You’re my hero,” Audrey had whimpered more than once already.
She’d held it together during the ceremony and the receiving line, but when I had seen her dart away from Grandpa Shipley and run behind the tent, I’d followed with the water and the napkins.
“This gets better, right?” She dabbed at her watery eyes.
“Absolutely.” I was faking this knowledge, though, because I’d never thrown up when I was pregnant, whereas Audrey had puked four times already today. I had no clue when she’d start to feel better. “If it’s any consolation, you really do look beautiful right now. I hate you just a little bit that you can yarf and still look put-together.”
“I’ve been a very tidy barfer today. There should be a trophy.”
“What sounds better—a bit of bread, or sparkling water?”
“Fizzy water. Definitely.”
“Coming right up.”
Audrey pasted on a smile and went back to her guests. I brought her a drink and then got a glass of soda for myself. Today had been long already, and I was looking forward to eating some barbecue and then sneaking out before it got very late.
Outside the bar tent I found May Shipley—Griff’s sister—as well as my friends Lark and Zachariah. The three of them were standing in the sunshine together, eating from a bunch of grapes that May held on a plate.
“Where’s Nicole today?” Zach asked me after I’d greeted them.
“She’s”—I’d never said these words before—“with her father for a couple of hours. My mother was supposed to be my babysitter, but she got stuck at the ER with a friend of hers. In fact…” I pulled out my phone and looked for my mother’s last text. There wasn’t a new one, which meant she was still en route.
“Wow,” Lark said. “Does that feel strange to see them together?”
“You have no idea,” I said, taking a pull of my soda. “I’m not used to it yet.” And probably never will be.
Time for a subject change. “Did the wedding give you any big ideas?” I teased Zach, cuffing him on the arm.
He laughed and glanced at his girlfriend. “What’s the count up to?”
“Eight,” Lark said. “Eight people in twenty minutes.”
“As if the topic had never occurred to me before.” He wrapped an arm around Lark’s shoulders.
“I’m sorry!” God. Open mouth, insert foot. “I should be the last person to tease you about popping the question. Social convention and I don’t really get along very well.”
Lark smiled at me from inside Zach’s embrace. “And yet you’re not the one who spent a couple of months at the mental hospital. So you have that going for you.” She held up her beer and we touched glasses. “Cheers!”
I liked these two a lot. They gave me hope, because they’d both been through a lot, and now they were so happy together. I scanned the rest of the crowd and saw a lot of smiling faces. A girl shouldn’t breathe too deeply here today—the wedding was off-gassing optimism right along with the smell of barbecue smoking on the grill.
And I was happy in spite of the odd circumstances. I’d just stood up for Griff and Audrey’s wedding, keeping my Joy Face intact the whole time. It hadn’t even been that hard, because I really did feel joy for the two of them. The way Griff looked at Audrey while reciting his vows—with every promise echoed by the expression of love in his big brown eyes—gave me hope for the future of the human race.
This was a good day. I was going to keep telling myself that.
“Whoa,” Lark said suddenly. “Is that your…? Wowzers. I wouldn’t kick him out of bed, either.”
And then my eyes found the man who’d made her say that. Hell, the crowd parted like the Red Sea for Dave Beringer as he came toward me with my daughter in his arms. Their two coppery heads were inches apart, and I was startled by how much like a matched set they really were.
Seriously, I forgot to breathe there for a moment. My reaction was swift and strong—a tug in my belly and a quickening pulse.
Okay, who knew that the sight of the two of them would be ten times harder to watch than Griff’s wedding? My gaze snagged on Nicole’s chubby arm resting casually against Dave’s chest and her serene face. Just like any little girl being carried by her daddy.
My throat got tight even as I straightened my spine and prepared to greet him. This was so much worse than the wedding, because my yearning for the picture in front of me was fierce.
“Damn,” May murmured. “He’s dreamy.”
That he was. Dreamy was exactly the right word, because dreams weren’t real. He was smiling at me, causing another hormone spike throughout my body.
“Hey there,” I said in greeting as May and Lark moved over to give him the space to approach me. “You guys look cute together. Your tough-guy rep is going to take a hit.”
The baby chose that moment to dive for me, but both Dave and I were ready.
With a chuckle, he transferred her weight to my arms. “I think she missed you. But I promise she didn’t cry the whole time.”
“I should have brought you ear plugs,” I said. “Have you met May, or Lark and Zach?” I introduced them, and when Dave leaned forward to shake Zach’s hand, May made a comical fanning gesture in front of her chest.
He’s so hot, she mouthed.
Yeah, I’d noticed.
When Dave stepped back, he put a polite hand on my shoulder, his touch cordial. “How are you?”
“Great!” I said a little too brightly, aware of all the people looking our way. Dave’s reappearance had been widely discussed, but few people had set eyes on him. Several dozen were taking that opportunity right now.
Naturally Nicole picked that moment to put her hand right between my boobs, down my dress. “Abah!” she babbled, which surely meant, Whip out the boobs, Mom.
“Well…” I chuckled nervously. “Since your grandma is deep in discussion with Father Peters, you and I can sneak off for a few minutes. I should nurse or she’ll be cranky for my mom.”
“I’ll come with you,” Dave said.
“You don’t have to.” I’d expected him to bail immediately.
“It’s okay.” He pointed into the catering tent. “In there, maybe? There’re chairs.”
I didn’t want to be nursing while they ran around me setting the tables. “No, this way.” I led him to the side of the cider house. On a work day, Zach and Griff might be washing or filling cider barrels here. But today the concrete slab was empty of people, and I sat down on the bench against the wall.
Immediately, Nicole tugged on my dress.
“Hang on there, champ,” I said, trying to wriggle an arm out. My efforts weren’t working.
“Want me to hold her for a second?” Dave asked.
I looked up at him in surprise. We’d come a long way in two weeks. And every time he did something fatherly my insides turned to mush.
Danger!
“Well… Could you unzip me?” I steered my knees away from him in order to expose the back of my dress.
“Any day of the week.” He chuckled. Then his hand landed at my shoulder, the palm warm, while his other one slid my zipper down.
I bit my lip as a sizzle ran through my body. Just the brush of his fingertips against my skin was enough to remind me how much I’d enjoyed being undressed by this man.
Stop it, Zara! We’re not going there.
Slipping an arm out of one side of my dress and bra, I set the baby up to nurse on the right side. Tired—and probably cranky from dealing with strangers—she naturally tried to get at my other breast.
“Nope, sorry.
You have to go with righty today.” I was trying to preserve a few shreds of my dignity by exposing only the boob furthest from the party.
“She has a preference?” The bench creaked as Dave sat down beside me. He angled his big body the other way and was actually blocking for me now.
“Yup. She prefers the left side. I think she’s going to be left-handed.”
“I’m left-handed,” he said suddenly. “Is that genetic?”
“No idea. Although Alec once made a joke about loading the shotgun for any left-handed redheads he met.”
Dave snorted. “Of course he did. Your brother hates me.”
“He hates the idea of you,” I corrected.
“Whatever. I can take it.”
We fell into a companionable silence as the baby nursed and the sun sank behind the distant hillside. Dave was people-watching, while I gazed down at my daughter. “How’d it go with her?” I asked. She looked as peaceful as ever.
It had been incredibly hard to walk away from her earlier—to just hand her over even though I’d known in my gut that Bess was as avid a babysitter as they come. Even though I knew Dave well enough to say he was a good guy who cared about people.
It was still hard. For Nicole’s sake, I wanted Dave to stay in our lives. But sharing her might be the hardest thing I’d ever tried to do.
“It went fine. She freaked out when you left, but then she fell back to sleep and woke up in a better mood.”
“I should have brought you the portable crib,” I said, feeling guilty. Here, watch my screaming kid without any of the gear!
“It was okay. We took a cat nap together in the hammock.”
“Really?”
“Sure. I like a nap as much as the next guy.”
The mental image was almost more than I could take. Nicole curled up in a hammock with Dave? Was it awful that I was a little jealous of both of them?
At the sound of a bell being struck, I looked over Dave’s shoulder to see Dylan Shipley—Griff’s younger brother—walking through the crowd with a dinner bell which he tapped with a fork.
“Can I offer you a plate of barbecue for your efforts today?” I asked, tucking my boob back into my bra. Nicole sat up on my lap, swaying like a little drunk. She had that blissed-out look she always got after nursing.