by Sam Mariano
Rafe sighs, his head falling back.
“I’m sorry, I’m not trying to be a tease, I swear. I thought I could, but I can’t. I don’t want to be the person who feels like shit afterward.”
“You’re killing me.”
“I’m sorry,” I repeat. “I really am. Just… I need to know he fucked the waitress first. I’m so sorry, but I have to. If he did, then I’ll know it’s over. I’ll have closure. But I have to know. I can’t be the one who ruins it, I need it to be him. I’m sorry; I know this is… not what you want to hear.”
Instead of looking angry, he looks relieved. “That’s it? You only need to know he fucked someone else?”
“Yes.”
“And you’ll let go?”
I nod. “I’ll cut the strings of that attachment so fast, you won’t even see it.”
“Huh.” He cocks his head. “Okay. I can handle that.”
“Yeah?”
“Sure.” His hand comes up out of the water again to cup the back of my neck and draw me closer. It’s a Sin move, one that cuts deep because it’s a Sin move, but right before he gives me another kiss, he says, “He probably fucked her last night, so I won’t have to wait long.”
21
Laurel
Rafe wanted to go out tonight, but I was exhausted so I told him to go without me. He didn’t seem overly enthused, but I swear, sometimes since this pregnancy started I feel like I could pass out at 6pm. Today is one of those days.
Since I can’t actually go to sleep at 6pm, I curl up on the couch and resume watching Smallville by myself. I feel vaguely guilty, so I text Carly to tell on myself and she starts watching with me so we can text about it.
We only make it through one episode, then the doorbell rings.
I sit up, alarmed. I don’t know if I’m allowed to answer the door, and Juanita is already off for the day. I walk into the foyer, holding my phone like a weapon. An ineffective weapon. If anyone on the other side of this door means me harm, I would do better to walk over and grab something out of Rafe’s weapons armoire.
Of course, if they meant me harm, they probably wouldn’t be ringing the doorbell. I open up my text messages to Rafe to ask him if I should answer the door, and see two texts from him I must have missed while I was texting Carly about Smallville.
Hey, Gio’s babysitter canceled on them, can you watch Skylar?
Told Gio and Lydia you could watch Skylar. Figured you’d appreciate the practice. ;) Hope you’re awake, they’re on their way.
Awesome.
Now that I know there’s nothing more lethal than Gio’s spawn on the other side of the door, I walk over and flip the locks one at a time, then ease it open.
A mountain of baby things greets me on the other side. Gio is hidden behind them somewhere, while Lydia is dressed up and lugging a baby carrier.
“You are a lifesaver,” she tells me, inviting herself right in. “You know, I wasn’t so sure about Rafe knocking you up at first, but I’m coming around to it. I swear, you cannot count on people these days. What did I say?” she asks, glancing back at Gio. “Didn’t I tell you she was going to leave us high and dry one of these days? That boyfriend of hers. Don’t even get me started.”
I don’t know which one of us she’s talking to, but I take a step back and look down at the sleeping baby sucking on the pacifier. A faint smile steals across my face. “Aw, she’s adorable.”
Distracted giving Gio directions, she tells him, “Take that to the living room and set it up for her. Where’s the bear? Did you bring in the lasagna?”
Sighing, Gio traipses past me muttering, “Yes, I brought all of it.”
I guess I’m glad Rafe isn’t here to see this. I’m not terrified of domesticity, and this scene right here would not make me eager to procreate with someone.
Lydia pats me on the arm as she follows after Gio. “I brought you some lasagna for dinner. Rafe said you didn’t feel like going out and I wanted to thank you. My mother’s recipe. Delicious.”
“Thank you, that was nice of you,” I tell her, following her back into the living room. Smallville is paused, Tom Welling gazing dreamily off at nothing. Gio glances at the screen, then looks at me and cocks a skeptical eyebrow.
“Not a Superman fan?” I ask.
“Do I look like I root for the good guys?” he asks.
“Ignore him,” Lydia tells me. “He’s grumpy.” Bending to put down the baby carrier, she says, “She should sleep for you a good hour or two, you won’t even have to do much. When she wakes up she’ll probably be hungry. I have two bottles in here. Make sure you warm them up, but not too warm. Test it on your wrist. It shouldn’t be chilly, but in the meantime, put it in the fridge. Diapers are in the bag along with two changes of clothing.” Reaching over to retrieve a teddy bear from Gio, she places it on the coffee table. “She doesn’t really play with this yet, but she likes to have it around so she can look at it. I packed her play mat. She likes to look up at the little mirror at herself if you hold it over her head. After she eats, burp her. I think that’s it. You know how babies work, I assume?”
I thought I did, but my head is spinning. It can’t be too hard to figure out, so I nod my head, since that seems to be the expected response.
“Good. We’re going to a movie, then dinner. If you need to reach us, here, let me give you my cell phone number.”
I hand over my phone and she taps the screen, then hands it back. “There you go. I hate to drop her and run, but the stupid fucking babysitter really set us back, now we’re running late. Enjoy the lasagna!”
I don’t even get to say goodbye, she’s already grabbing Gio’s arm and hauling him back into the foyer and out the front door.
Now that they’re gone as quickly as they came, I dig through the diaper bag to find the bottles Lydia mentioned so I can put them in the refrigerator. I hustle back, not wanting to leave the sleeping baby alone, and look around at everything else. Gio set up some kind of portable bassinet type thing. There’s a square, colorful mat spread out on the floor.
A tiny little sound grabs my attention and I turn around to see a pair of big blue eyes looking up at me.
“Uh oh, your mommy said you were going to sleep for a couple hours.”
She starts to wiggle around and her binky pops out of her mouth. Immediately, she starts to fuss. I crouch down in front of her seat, unsure whether or not I should take her out. Will she go back to sleep? I should probably hold her. If she does fall asleep, I can put her in the bassinet thing and she will probably be more comfortable than in the car seat anyway.
I pop her binky back in her mouth and peel back her blanket, unfastening her harness and reaching under her tiny arms to pick her up. “Well, hello, cutie. My name is Laurel, and apparently I’m going to be babysitting you tonight. How does that sound?”
She lets out a string of noises that sound vaguely like a complaint.
“Well, I think we’ll have fun,” I tell her, lifting her up. “Your mommy and daddy left us all kinds of cool stuff to play with. How old are you?”
Naturally, she does not answer me. I wish someone had told me how old this baby was. If I need any mom tips, I could text Mia for emergency help on how to keep a baby of this age busy. She’s really small, but that’s not much help.
I’m not sure what to do with her, so I just walk around, gently jostling her while I try to figure it out. Since Lydia said she should nap for a while, I assume she has been fed and diapered recently.
“How about your mat?” I ask her. “Your mom said you like to look up at yourself, let’s try that.”
Holding her close to my chest, I drop to my knees next to the mat Gio laid out for her. I support her neck and put her down on her back, but the minute her back hits the mat, she starts fussing.
“Wait, wait, wait,” I tell her, darting over to grab the diaper bag. “Hang on, you know what I see?” I grab the round reflective toy and hold the mirror up over her head and gasp. “Look at that! Do yo
u see that pretty baby right there?”
For about a second and a half, she looks at the mirror.
Then her little face crinkles up and she starts screaming bloody murder.
I try again to get her attention, to show her the reflection in the mirror, but she is not having it. Her little downturned mouth and mournful cry are so heartbreaking, I can’t stand it. I give up and put the mirror aside, grabbing the teddy bear and holding it up to show her. “How about Mr. Bear? Is that his name? That’s not a very creative name, is it?”
Still, she screams, so I put the bear back on the coffee table and pick her up, gathering her against my chest, rocking and shushing her.
That does not work. Apparently she finds it offensive that I put her down in the first place, and outraged by my perceived abandonment, she now wants no Laurel cuddles.
“I’m sorry, I thought you would want to play,” I tell her.
Her screams of betrayal tell me I thought wrong.
Thinking to walk around and distract her with something else, I stand and look around for something to show her. Rafe doesn’t have anything she would care about, but there is a large silver mirror on the other side of the room, so I walk over and turn so she can see her own reflection.
“Look, you see there?” I ask, pointing.
Her head wobbles on my shoulder as she looks up, but then her face crumbles and she shoves her fist into her mouth, sobbing inconsolably.
Damn.
I walk around for the longest few minutes of all time, but she does not stop crying. Not once, not even to catch her breath. My nerves are already shot as I try desperately to think of what could be wrong with her.
“Are you hungry?” I ask. “Your mom said you wouldn’t be hungry for a couple hours.” She is chewing on her fist though, so maybe her mom was wrong? Maybe she only figured she wouldn’t need to eat because she would be asleep.
Walking back into the living room, I grab my phone and text Lydia to ask if there’s any chance Skylar might be hungry. It takes her a few minutes of screaming to text back, and when she does, it’s simply, “Yeah.”
I try putting Skylar down in the bassinet so I can go make her bottle, and boy, does that piss her off. Now she is doubly offended—not only did I put her down once, I repeated the offense. This baby has clearly had it with me, and I’ve only had her for roughly ten minutes.
I pick her back up and try to stop the wailing, but to no avail. My insides are shaking as I haul her into the kitchen and dig out a bottle. Rafe has a Keurig machine, so I grab a boring-ass coffee mug and fill it with hot water.
I make a mental note that his coffee mug situation needs to be fixed. He has white ceramic mugs and black matte mugs, and not a single funny saying on any of them. I can’t live this way.
“We need to buy Uncle Rafe some cool coffee cups.” Frowning, I reconsider, “Wait, is he your uncle? No, he’s your second cousin, isn’t he? You Morellis have way too many babies. Do you know that? I realize I myself am contributing to the problem, but sheesh.”
Skylar does not at all appreciate my commentary on her family’s reproductive habits, and she screams her little head off until she can’t breathe to let me know it.
Now she’s starting to worry me. It was bad enough she was crying, but now she’s crying so hard her little body shudders as her breath hitches.
“Why are you so mad?” I ask, rocking her as I dip the bottle into the coffee cup. “I’m so sorry I put you down, I’ll never do it again. Never ever. I’ll learn to sleep standing up, and steal you from your mommy and daddy to prevent such a thing ever happening again. Will that make you happy?”
While the bottle is warming up, I take her back to the living room to try her binky again. She seemed to like that thing while she was sleeping. Retrieving it from the carrier, I bring it to her mouth, but she’s too busy freaking out to take it. She begins to calm down and starts sucking on it, but within several seconds, she stops sucking it and wails again, like it has only added to her disappointment.
Giving up, I toss that back in the carrier and haul her back to the kitchen.
The bottle isn’t warmed up yet, but after a couple desperate minutes of rocking and humming while we wait, it’s finally warm enough—I think. Popping the bottle in her mouth seems to work for five hopeful seconds, then she turns her head and rejects my offering.
“Skylar, I don’t know what you want. I don’t know what to do here.”
Letting her scream can’t be the answer. I put the bottle back down and trail back into the living room, but much more hopelessly than I was a minute ago. This is going to be a long few hours if this is what she’s going to do, and why is this happening? Am I horrible with babies? Is my own baby going to come out, take one look at my ineptitude, and cry for the rest of its life?
That’s all I can think about, then Skylar distracts me, burping and then throwing up all over me. I go rigid, looking down at the white baby vomit now covering both of us.
Oh, my God.
Now big, wet tears make their way out of the corners of her eyes as she screams.
“Does your little tummy hurt?” I ask uselessly, watching a white trail drip off me and onto the floor. “Oh, God, this is so gross.”
I need help.
Juanita left for the evening though, so I’m on my own.
“Okay, we need to get you undressed,” I tell her. Only I don’t know where to put her down. I don’t want to get her mat dirty, I have a hunch Rafe will murder me if I put a vomit-covered baby down on his couch, and I don’t want to get her baby carrier or bassinet thing dirty, either. Digging in the diaper bag, I look for an extra receiving blanket. Once I find the only extra Lydia packed, I spread it out on the floor and put Skylar down on it.
The baby shrieks louder, her little body rigid with anger or discomfort, I’m not sure. “I don’t know what to do for you,” I tell her, desperately, as I pull the little polka dot pants off her legs. God, it’s everywhere, even on her socks. I pull those off, too, but before I can start on the onesie, more of the baby puke starts spewing out of her mouth.
“Oh, crap! I’m sorry,” I tell her, picking her up, not wanting her to choke on it. I cradle her against my chest, grimacing that she’s resting against the last batch of vomit.
I feel badly that she’s crying, but I want to cry, too. This is horrible. I feel so helpless and I have no idea what to do. Reaching for my phone on the table, I text Lydia and tell her the baby has thrown up everywhere and I’m not sure what to do. I wait two minutes, and no response. I move on to the next person—Rafe.
“Can you come home? Skylar is flipping her shit and I don’t know what’s wrong with her.”
I put the phone down and grimace at Skylar, digging in her diaper bag for a burp cloth. Optimistically, her mother only packed one, and now I have to use it to clean baby vomit off her chin.
My phone buzzes. “I’m afraid I wouldn’t be much help there, kitten.”
Glaring at the phone, I say, “Are you freaking kidding me?” I want to tell him to get his ass here right now, but then I envision that happening, and it only ends up making things worse. If he doesn’t help me and just stands there, I’ll murder him. Then Sin will have to help cover up that I murdered the Vegas boss, and it’ll be a whole thing.
Sin.
That’s a crazy thought, but I don’t have anyone else to call. I don’t know anyone in Vegas. Sin murders people, so he has to have a strong enough stomach to face down some baby vomit.
The situation is so dire that instead of texting him, I make a phone call.
I can barely hear his low, “Yeah?” over Skylar’s screams.
“Are you doing anything important right now?” I ask him.
Hearing the shrieks, now he sounds more alert, but confused. “Not really. What’s going on? Is that a baby?”
“Gio and Lydia needed me to babysit, but the baby is so mad and I don’t know why, and she threw up all over the place, and when I was trying to clean her
up, she threw up again, and now there’s baby vomit everywhere and all over both of us. I don’t know what to do and Lydia won’t text me back, and I’m not good at this, and I don’t know what to do,” I wail.
“Okay, calm down,” he says, his tone level, like this is not the crisis it feels like. “Are you at the house?”
“Yes, I’m all by myself, Juanita isn’t even here, and I need help.”
“Give me five minutes,” he says.
22
Laurel
It takes him seven minutes, and by the time Sin appears soundlessly in the living room, I am crying almost as hard as Skylar is.
Without a word, he walks over and takes the noisy baby from me, glancing down at the mess on the floor. I am kneeling, but there is nothing sexy about it. I draw in a shuddering breath, embarrassed by my own failure. I’m certain now he will see that I am not good at motherhood, and he will immensely regret encouraging me to have a baby.
As if the screaming child does not bother him in the least, he tells me, “Go get yourself cleaned up. Take your time. Take a shower. I’ve got this.”
“She’s possessed,” I inform him, scrubbing at the tears on my face.
Sin cracks a smile. “Just go take a shower and calm down. When you come back, the mess will be gone and hopefully I’ll have exorcised her.”
Shaking my head, not getting up off the floor, I tell him, “I’m not good at this. Is this what it’s going to be like?”
“No,” he says, firmly. “You will have plenty of time to adjust to your baby. You just got this one in the midst of a fit. Babies cry. That’s what they do.”
“She threw up everywhere. Is she sick?”
He puts the back of his hand against her forehead. “Probably not. Babies spit up. Another fun feature.” He glances down at her, noticing she starts to quiet down when he touches her face. So he cups her face in his giant, scarred hand and uses his thumb to rub the side of her face. The baby wiggles and he asks. “You like that, shortcake?”