The Best Thing

by Zapata, Mariana

  With one more turn of the wheel, I spotted the big sign for Panera coming up just on the left and turned in. I pulled into the first spot closest to the door that I could find and parked. I had left the gym first, with Jonah, his mom, and sister busy still talking just outside my office in some hushed tones, so I had no idea what kind of car he was driving, much less what rental car she might have had, if she had one in the first place.

  But I had barely opened my door when I spotted, in the side mirror, a very familiar body stepping off the curb and heading over. By the time I slammed the door shut and opened the rear door, Jonah was there, pulling out Mo’s diaper backpack from the passenger seat and handing it over to me.

  One look at his face confirmed he was tense as hell.

  “You all right?” I asked, watching through the glass as those big fingers fiddled with the straps almost clumsily.

  He made some kind of response.

  “Jonah?”

  “Yeh,” he answered, distractedly. Then he sighed. “Nah. My mum is in a mood, and I’m sorry, Len. I’ll tell you everything later, but I hope you’ll give me a chance to explain tonight.”

  He was still fumbling around with the straps as I watched him and thought about what he said. “Is she being mean to you or something?”

  Jonah’s laugh was dry, and I didn’t like it. “Some of it’s deserved, but some of it isn’t. I’m used to it.”

  Used to it?

  For all the shit Grandpa Gus had given me over the course of my life, there was nothing to be… used to. I had always known all his shit-talking was love. I rarely took anything he said to heart because I knew he loved me as much as I loved him. I knew he thought I was a champ, even when I wasn’t. He’d never cared whether I won or lost as long as I had tried my best.

  But this? This tone he was using, the apologies he was making? It didn’t sound similar at all. Then again, I had apologized to him for Grandpa being a pain in the ass toward him, so I wasn’t sure how he should take that.

  “I promise I’ll explain later,” he said before muttering, “bloody finally” as the latch on the straps finally unbuckled themselves and he managed to get two arms out before the rest of that baby body followed, Mo streaming out some really important shit as she gripped his sweater in her hands.

  I couldn’t help but smile at the smile on Mo’s face or at the animation in her voice as she babbled to him. She’d been watching Jonah the entire time as she rambled on, with that curious and open expression on her face, like she was all about this person and wanted to tell him exactly what was on her mind. It was nice.

  I fucking loved her. So, so much.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I told him, figuring after that last debate that I really wasn’t in any position to say shit about his mom.

  Grandpa Gus was still calling him by the wrong name every opportunity he had. Just the night before, he’d called him Carlisle. Three days before that, he’d chosen Emmett. God help me.

  “How ya goin’?” Jonah whispered to Mo as he pulled her right up against that massive chest, a big, white smile crossing over the closely bearded face. “How’s my sweet girl?”

  Mo, in response, was watching his face with those big eyes like she was staring into some kind of mysterious universe that had her completely in awe. Whatever it was that she said, she said slowly and in a voice that sounded pretty close to awe as well. They really were going to make me throw up one of these days.

  I was too busy looking at her cute little face to see one of those tiny hands reach up, quick like lightning—like me, I wanted to think—and wrap its fingers into the short-trimmed hair on the face in front of her and yank at it.

  Jonah blinked in surprise—and I was sure in more than a little pain—as I said, “No, Mo, no,” and went to undo one tiny finger at a time from that crazy strong grasp. Which I also liked to think she got from me.

  “Oww, Mo, oww,” Jonah said with a minor wince as I pulled the last finger off from its death grip. “Please, no.”

  My little psycho just laughed. Our little psycho just laughed. And clapped her hands.

  I snorted, and Jonah shot me a smirk.

  “You look so pleased with her.”

  “I am,” I agreed with a laugh. “Where’s your mom anyway? Inside?” I asked him as I closed the back door, tossing the backpack over my shoulder.

  The lightheartedness in his voice disappeared. “Inside.”

  I didn’t like how he sounded, and it made me frown at his back. Before I could think about it too much, I reached forward, slipped a finger through the belt loop directly in the center of his back, and tugged at it. “Is she mad at you because of Mo?”

  He stopped walking immediately, his chin coming up to rest on his shoulder. Conflict moved beneath his eyes. There was my answer.

  I knew what that was like. But I also knew that Grandpa Gus hadn’t been pissed at me for getting pregnant. He’d been pissed at me for keeping it a secret so long. He’d been pissed at me, initially, for refusing to tell him who her sperm donor had been. He’d been mad at me for crying over it.

  He hated when I cried.

  But he hated it even more when I forgot the lessons he’d taught me. The important one then being that actions had consequences, and I couldn’t blame anyone else for my own mistakes. Which was what I’d done to be fair, for a while.

  I’d blamed Jonah’s super sperm for kicking my life off track when it really had been fifty-fifty.

  So his mom being pissed at him?

  “We’re adults, the last time I checked. What’s she going to do? Call her a mistake? Say we screwed up? Because she’s not a mistake—at least I don’t think she is,” I told him, sounding defensive.

  Jonah turned all the way around to face me, forcing me to drop my hand. But his free one, the one he wasn’t using to hold up the baby, grabbed mine unexpectedly, and he said, watching me carefully, his voice serious as hell, “She’s not a mistake.”

  Now that really did make me smile at him genuinely. “Good. Because I’d kick your ass if you thought she was.”

  His laugh was rough as the hand on mine gave one more squeeze before dropping away. He shook his head all the way inside. It was then, as he stopped to open the door for me, Mo balanced in one arm, that he gave me another tight smile that honestly just irritated me. Not toward him, but toward his mom.

  He was warning me. I knew it.

  Because I knew what dealing with a drama queen was like. At least what it was like for me. Because Grandpa Gus was too much, but I thought it was hilarious and it always amused the hell out of me. Not once had he embarrassed me with how over the top he could be. I had never dreaded it. But based on the look that Jonah was sporting, it didn’t seem like that was the same in this case.

  And why didn’t she know where he was? Or why hadn’t he answered her calls? Why didn’t his phone ever ring?

  And also, who the fuck flew all the way from what may or may not have been New Zealand on a whim?

  I needed to figure this shit out. And also make sure that Sarah, Mrs. Collins, didn’t upset her son too much, because I liked him happy and easygoing. I dealt with enough drama and egos; she wasn’t taking this away from me. At least not if I had anything to say about it.

  Jonah waited by my side as I placed my order on the screen to avoid the line, and I didn’t say a word when he batted my elbow away when I started to pull my little wallet out of my back pocket and paid.

  He wasn’t hurting for money. Plus, I’d carried giant-ass Mo around inside of me for nine months and four days. It wasn’t my fault Jonah had passed along his size-gigantean genes to her, regardless of what he said about being a skinny little turd back in the day. If he wanted to pay for my food, I wasn’t going to stop him.

  Jonah’s hand landed on my lower back with the gentlest of pressure after I filled my drink, steering me toward the corner of the restaurant. I couldn’t help but notice all the men and women who stared at him as we passed by, also noticing that he
didn’t pay them any attention. It was like he didn’t see he was the object of any attention.

  When I snickered, he glanced at me and tipped his chin up, asking what that noise was for.

  I smirked. “Five bucks says someone comes over and gets you confused with a football player.”

  He didn’t break his stride as he wrinkled his nose. “American football?”

  Reaching over his shoulder, I touched my fingers to the little hand Mo had on his neck, just to get a little taste, and snorted. “If I need to offend you in the future, I know how now. Thanks.”

  He faced forward again, shaking his head as he did so, confirming my suspicion that he really was offended by that idea. “Nothing against American football players, but….”

  The fact he trailed off said everything, and it just made me snort, catching sight of another person in the restaurant gazing at Jonah like he was trying to figure out where he had seen him before. “Well, if it matters any, I think rugby is a lot more entertaining than football from what I’ve watched. Not that I really know much about it still.”

  He stopped walking for a second, giving me a view of his mom at a table possibly five feet away, glaring in our direction with eyes that honestly reminded me a little too much of Grandpa Gus when he was being a shit. Ha.

  “American football,” he corrected me.

  “American football,” I conceded. “Smart-ass.”

  The smile he gave me was one of the smaller ones, and I wondered again what the hell was up his mom’s ass to make him so hesitant. He wasn’t even this bad when he’d first shown up to talk to me, I was pretty sure.

  With one last lingering look I wasn’t going to overanalyze, he turned that enormously muscular body forward again and cut the rest of the distance that separated us from his mom and his sister, who was busy hunched over her cell phone, tapping away at the screen. To give Mrs. Collins credit, she stood up, her eyes going wide, and even her mouth opened. I was pretty sure she gasped.

  And I was definitely sure that her eyes went glassy instantly as Jonah stopped to the side of the wall where she had been seated at a bench and held Mo up even higher on his chest as he said in that ridiculous, lovely voice, “Mum, this is Mo.” He did that thing where he lowered his forehead until it rested against the much smaller one—her hands grabbing the T-shirt Jonah had on under his open sweater—and he finished in an even deeper, more charged voice, “Mo, this is your grandmother. Your gram-my,” he enunciated carefully.

  “Oh, Jonah,” the other woman whispered, her voice pretty damn wobbly. “You could’ve been twins.”

  “Hema,” Natia gasped, dropping her phone onto the surface of the counter and standing up too.

  The next thing I knew, Mrs. Collins was crying, and his sister looked pretty damn close to it too. There were tears rolling down Jonah’s mom’s cheeks, and she wasn’t even trying to wipe them up. Huh. I guess she wasn’t as awful as she’d seemed. At least not toward Mo, and she was the one who mattered. She didn’t have to like me, but she did have to like her.

  The older woman’s fingers came up to cover her mouth for a moment, and in the next, she was holding them in front of the center of her body, her voice just as shaky as it had been before when she sniffed and then asked, “May I hold her?”

  The gold-brown eyes on the biggest head around me flicked to my direction, glassy, so damn glassy, but asking.

  Hadn’t I made it clear that we let everybody hold her as long as they weren’t shitheads? And didn’t he know that she was half his too? He didn’t have to ask me for permission. I just raised my eyebrows at him like duh.

  And as Jonah turned his body just enough so that our girl could get a good look at the woman who had a pretty impressive part in her existence, she still wasn’t able to tear her eyes away from the man holding her. The little fingers she had on his shirt dug in and said, “Da, ba?”

  Did she know? I wondered. Did she know somehow that this was her dad?

  She looked at Grandpa Gus like he was an eclipse, but she looked at Jonah like he was a once-every-five-hundred-years meteor.

  She knew, some part of me recognized. She had to know. Somehow. Some way. She was easygoing but not like this.

  “Baby Mo,” the most handsome man I had ever known said quietly, tenderness hugging every syllable. “This is your grandmother, your gran, look, darling. Look.”

  He’d called her his darling.

  And I was not going to fucking tear up in the middle of Panera over it.

  Mo didn’t look anywhere else though. Her little fingers just wrapped themselves even tighter in the shirt her dad was wearing, her body leaning toward him like she was preparing for him to try and hand her off, and she wasn’t about to have it. I watched Jonah swallow hard—a gulp, it was a gulp—and smile this wonky smile before he laughed a watery laugh and hugged her to him, swallowing up this baby in those enormous arms so that the only way I knew there was someone in them was because I had seen her disappear inside the cocoon of muscle he’d created.

  Jonah laughed again, the tone low and full of… something. Joy. Love. Like he didn’t expect it and it shocked the fuck out of him.

  I was not going to fucking cry, damn it. But I did swallow hard and sniff once and glance at the woman who was grabbing a napkin off the table and dabbing at her eyes with it. Beside her, Natia was scrambling for her phone, trying to take pictures with shaky hands and saying, “She’s so cute, Hema. I want to hold her too. Please.”

  “You can hold her later. I think she wants me now,” Jonah murmured, letting the arm he had around Mo fall away.

  But she kept on leaning into him, those little hands not loosening their grip at all.

  I wanted some of that baby too—that warm, soft weight against me—but I couldn’t imagine going eight months without my little monster. And for being an only child… I knew how to share. I was pretty good at it.

  “I’ll go get a high chair for her,” I told the new dad and the new grandma and aunt.

  “I’ll get it,” he offered, but I gave him a look before ignoring him.

  By the time I came back, Jonah was sitting at the end, and his mom was on the bench across from him. I set the chair on their end and watched as Jonah stood and settled Mo into it with only a little bit of trouble, as she kicked her legs around, being difficult.

  Heh.

  “Ma!” Mo shriek-shouted once she was sitting.

  “Good job, booger.” I bent over and gave her kisses on the neck, getting a couple more squeals out of her that made me smile and another stream of babble.

  I took a seat beside Jonah, figuring I’d let him handle her if he wanted. I pulled out a couple of baby wipes and handed them over. He took them, thought about it for a second, and wiped off the little tray once with each one. Next I handed him a container from the backpack with cubed cheese in it that Grandpa had left with Mr. Cooper. He unscrewed the lid and peeked inside of it, eyebrows going up. And my child, in a move that was all me, grabbed a chunk of cheese and instantly tried to munch on it with her razorblade gums.

  That was my girl.

  Beside me, Jonah chuckled that low laugh. “Reminds me of you,” he whispered, like his mom couldn’t hear. Of course she could.

  I still snorted. “I was just thinking the same thing.” Wait. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  The big shithead just chuckled some more, thinking he was hilarious as he looked at me playfully from under his eyelashes.

  Playfully. Ugh. I kind of wished he was back to being an asshole.

  That was a lie. I didn’t wish that at all. What I did wish for….

  Well, it didn’t matter what I wished for. So I wouldn’t wish for shit.

  Across the table, the woman sighed, and it didn’t take a genius to know why she was doing it, but I still glanced at her anyway. Mrs. Collins had her gaze set on Mo, who was still too busy staring at Jonah while smacking all over her softened cheese to acknowledge that there was someone brand-new around. Tw
o new someones.

  “I think she’s in love with him already,” I told Mrs. Collins when her expression turned as dreamy as her resting bitch face allowed. “She doesn’t stop staring at him, but she’ll let you hold her. She’s only met one person she didn’t like.”

  “Who?” Jonah was the one who asked.

  I scooted my chair toward the table a little closer. “My best friend’s sister, but I’m not a fan of her either. She cried every time that sister held her.”

  “How many times did you try?” Sarah, Jonah’s mom, asked, interrupting us, her gaze still on the dark-haired golden-eyed baby.

  I had to think about it as I pulled a reusable stainless-steel straw from Mo’s backpack and dropped it into my fresh lemonade. “Twice.”

  She hmphed, and I narrowed my eyes at her, not even bothering to try to hide it.

  “We thought the first time was a fluke, so we tried again another day, and didn’t try after that,” I explained, trying not to get bent out of shape by her thinking I was causing my kid emotional distress or anything.

  One of her eyebrows went up a little, and I could tell that still wasn’t good enough for her. Or maybe I was being a bitch and looking too much into it. I doubted it though.

  Our source of entertainment grabbed another block and shoved it into her mouth, sucking on it, loudly, pulling it out of her mouth, staring at it, and then putting it back inside.

  “Jonah said she’s eight months,” the woman said after a moment.

  I gave my lemonade a stir. “Yeah. Her birthday is May 2nd.”

  “Is she your only child?”

  I stopped stirring and stared across the table.

  Shut the fuck up, Lenny. It’s not worth it. Just shut the hell up.

  And… I couldn’t. When the hell did I ever give shit up? Never?

  I gave my lemonade another stir, slower that time, and asked her in a sugar-sweet voice that would have made Grandpa Gus cackle at how fake it was. “How many do you think I have?”