by A. E. Wasp
“Tell him that Samantha is going to call him.”
“Umm-hmm,” Sergei murmured, his lips busy trailing down Alex’s neck.
Alex pushed him away. “I’m on the phone with my mother!” He laughed, gave Sergei another quick kiss and walked back inside.
Sergei sighed.
“Everything okay?” Lipe asked.
“Yes. But do you think all this will chase Alex away? That he will leave me?”
“I don’t know what to tell you, Big Guy. I don’t know why Suzanne keeps me around. I don’t know how any of these women—and guys, I guess—do it. Or why they stick around when we’re so useless most of the time.”
“Is it the money?” He knew that wasn’t the case for Alex; he would barely allow Sergei to buy him dinner.
“Nah. Money helps, don’t get me wrong. But making a family is so much more than that. For what it’s worth, you and Alex seem good together. Did you both want a family?”
“Yes. Maybe. Someday. I never think right away.”
“Life’s like that, man. You just gotta roll with it and do the best you can. It’s all any of us can do. You’re not alone; you have friends who will be there for you all. It’s going to be okay.”
Sergei was beginning to think it might be, after all. “Thank you, Daniel, for everything.”
“You calling me Daniel makes me think I’m in trouble. Call me Danny, or even Lipe. Suzanne and I will meet you at the airport, okay?”
“No, it is too much—”
Lipe cut him off. “Don’t even say it’s too much trouble. We don’t talk about it a lot, but we all know you got no family in this country. So you’re stuck with a bunch of smelly, foul-mouthed but well-meaning hockey players and their long-suffering, beautiful, much better-smelling wives and girlfriends. When they heard about the babies, they went into motion. Don’t fight it. Just give into it. You’d lose anyway.”
“Thank you. Thank you so much.”
“Don’t sweat it. I’ll see you soon, okay? Team’s not the same without you.”
“Oh? How is Vicky doing?”
“Not bad.”
They spent a few minutes discussing the team before saying goodbye. Sergei promised to make sure the office knew their flight details, and Daniel repeated that he would take care of everything on his end and meet them in the airport.
Feeling better than he had in a while, Sergei went to track down Alex.
25
Alex
Alex needed to talk to his mother. Remarkably, Sergei, Patti, and Julie were all in the house at the same time, and he had a brief moment to himself. He could take a shower or talk to his mother. Or maybe, given a miracle, do both. Maybe he should get a waterproof phone so that he could call people from the shower. He felt as if the phone had been surgically attached to his head the past few days. The number of details that had to be taken care of was staggering.
In the end, he decided talking to his mom was more important than personal hygiene. He’d squeeze a shower in at some point. Probably. Sergei was on the phone in the guest room they’d been staying in. Patti was feeding the babies in the kitchen. He’d offered to help, but she’d waved him away, saying she was used to doing it alone and it was her last day to do it.
She’d sounded so sad. The funeral had been hard on all of them. Alex hadn’t really known Elena, so his sorrow was for Sergei and the babies. Alex reminded her that they would pay for her to come up and visit the babies anytime she wanted. He made a note to himself to call her with some dates. He had a feeling she wasn’t any more used to accepting gifts than he was.
Wandering around, he found a small unoccupied room that must have been Elena’s office. Feeling like an intruder, he slipped into the light and airy room. He sat on the upholstered chair in front of the desk and stared around the room as he waited for his mother to pick up.
Framed posters from Lena’s movies were hung on the walls. Mostly foreign-language films that Alex hadn’t seen, but the newest ones were for the latest Hollywood blockbuster franchise she had scored the leading role in. Alex hadn’t seen those either, but he’d heard good things about them, specifically how meaty the female lead role was and how Lena had apparently knocked it out of the park.
Now someone else would take her place. It was so tragic.
“Salute, mon bébé! Comment ça va?” his mother said as she answered the phone.
He almost reflexively answered fine. But things were far from fine. “Hello, maman. Things are not good. I have some bad news, and I need advice.” He gave her a quick rundown on the last few days. “It’s been a very long week.”
“Oh, my baby! And poor Serhoya!” She sniffled a bit, and he could imagine the tears in her big blue eyes. “So much happiness and so much sorrow.”
“Do you think we’re crazy for taking the babies?”
“No! You have to; those poor babies have no one else to love them. And you and Sergei have so much to give. So, things are good with you and Serhoya? You are boyfriends now?” She sounded so hopeful.
“Yes, we are boyfriends now.” He couldn’t help smiling as he said it. It still sounded ridiculous and wonderful at the same time. “I think it is going good, but now what?”
“You take care of him. He takes care of you. You take care of each other. And you both take of my grandbabies. Can I call them my grandbabies?”
“I’m sure you can, maman.”
“Tell me about them.”
Alex was more than happy to do that. He was deep into a recounting of Tatyana’s preference for Teletubbies over Elmo when Patti came in carrying the baby. She gurgled happily and reached out to Alex.
“It’s nap time for Missy Muffin, and I knew she’d want to see you first,” Patti said as she handed the baby over to Alex.
“Hello, ma choupinette! Envie de faire dodo?”
“Is that my granddaughter?” Daphneé asked loudly enough for Patti to hear.
“Is that your mother?” Patti asked.
Alex nodded.
Patti motioned for him to give her the phone. He passed it over, concentrating on talking baby talk to Tanya and bouncing her on his knee to get her to laugh. He listened with half an ear to Patti and his mother’s conversation. They seemed to be laughing a lot.
Tanya opened her mouth in a wide grin and proceeded to spit up all down the front of her and Alex’s shirt. “Oh, gross, princess!” Grimacing, he held her at the end of his outstretched arms. “Now we both need to get changed.” In Alex’s admittedly limited experience, nothing smelled quite as nasty as baby spit-up.
“Let me take her,” Patti said quickly. “You finish talking to your mother.” She deftly scooped the baby out of Alex’s arms while saying goodbye to Daphneé. “It was lovely speaking to you. You have a wonderful son. Yes. That would be lovely. Goodbye.”
She handed the phone back to Alex. “She has the same adorable accent as you do. I can’t wait to meet her.”
Alex nodded and kissed Tanya goodbye. Holding his shirt away from his body with one hand, he headed to the bedroom. His mom spoke enough for both of them.
He saw Sergei out on the balcony and waved, motioning for him to keep talking as he wedged the phone between his shoulder and neck and pulled a clean shirt out of the drawer. “Oui, Oui, maman. La, I know, I know. Hold on.”
Alex put on the new shirt before walking over to Sergei. “Who are you talking to?” he asked with a quick kiss on Sergei’s cheek. The view outside Elena’s house was gorgeous, but he missed the water and the mountains of Seattle.
“Daniel Lipe,” Sergei said, grabbing for Alex as he started to move away.
“Tell him I said hello.”
“Alex says hello,” Sergei said obediently into the phone. Leaning against the railing, he braced the phone against his shoulder and tugged Alex into place between his legs. Alex let himself be pulled against Sergei.
He shuddered as Sergei mouthed down the side of his neck. God that felt good. They’d barely touched in days, both
of them collapsing into bed exhausted every night. After the second day, Patti had started going home in the evenings after Alex assured her they would be fine.
Mostly they had been, but once or twice Alex’s finger had hovered over her name in his phone contacts as he tried to soothe a fussy, teething baby back to sleep before it woke up the other one. It was so awesome the way they were both teething at the same time.
Awesome. Really.
Sergei’s hands slipped under Alex’s shirt. He melted against Sergei.
“Honey, are you still there?” his mother asked, pulling him back from dreams of stripping Sergei naked and pushing him into bed.
Reluctantly, Alex pushed Sergei away instead. “I’m on the phone with my mother,” he said apologetically. He left Sergei with a quick goodbye kiss in a silent promise of more when they had time.
The day was too beautiful to stay inside, so he went outside so he could walk up and down the canyon road. He loved the smell of the warm sun on the twisty eucalyptus trees.
“Babies change things,” his mother was saying. “I can’t lie. When I had Phillipe and then you, your dad was still playing hockey. It was hard when he was gone. Don’t feel like you have to do everything yourself. And take care of yourself. And your relationship. You have to make it a priority.”
“Câlisse, you make it sound like I should meet him at the door wrapped up in plastic wrap and start reading Cosmo sex tips.” Alex’s stomach growled as he walked slowly up the hill. He and Sergei probably both needed to hit the gym. They hadn’t done any kind of workout in days. Sergei had a game the day after tomorrow that he was planning on starting in. He was going to be stiff as a board afterward.
“All I meant is that it was you two first, and it will be you two after the kids grow up and move away. You need to make sure you don’t become strangers to each other.”
“Ostie de crisse, maman. You are talking about things that are decades away!” Alex thought he might be on the verge of his first panic attack. “We’ve only been whatever we are for a week.”
“Alex Pierre Stanton, you can’t curse so much around the babies!”
“You’re right.” He really should stop. Hanging around hockey players was bad for his vocabulary. “I promise,” he said.
“But you’ve been friends for a lifetime. Hold on to that. Remember that. Be there for each other. For the good times and hard times.”
He plucked a bougainvillea blossom off the lush bush growing wild along the street. “What if one of the babies gets sick? Or hurt? What about dying in their sleep? Doesn’t that happen?” It was his deepest fear. Thinking about something happening to Tanya or David woke him up from sleep at night and haunted his days. He was going to throw up just thinking about it.
To his surprise, his mother laughed. “Oh, baby, welcome to being a parent. That fear, it never goes away.”
“Never?” Even if he wasn’t exactly their parent, it still would kill him if they got hurt.
“You think it was easy for me to watch you hurt yourself over and over? To see your friends fall to concussions and be sliced open by blades? Break a leg, an arm? Need hip surgery at eighteen? No, baby. I still worry. You want to wrap them in cotton wool and keep them safe forever.”
“Forever,” he echoed, feeling faint. “I have to go, Mom. I love you. Tell Papa I love him too. And say hi to Laurent and Chloé.” He hadn’t thought much about his siblings in the past, but watching Tatyana and David made him realize that he and his siblings had a special relationship. They had been there for each other since the beginning. He would try to see them more often this year.
“Send Serhoya our love,” his mother said. “I wish things were different for him. His parents were very cold whenever we spoke. Do you think now, with the babies, things might change?”
Alex headed back to the house. “I doubt it.” He wasn’t going to betray Sergei’s confidence and tell his mother why the relationship between Sergei and his parents was so bad.
“Your father and I will make plans to come out soon and be an extra pair of hands, okay?”
“Okay,” he agreed. As if he would be able to stop her. She would probably be at their Seattle house before they were.
Unable to see past his next breath all of a sudden as panic returned, Alex disconnected while Daphneé was still talking. He sat down heavily on the neighbor’s low stone wall, putting his head between his knees and breathing like he was up next at Worlds.
A shadow passed over him, and a strong hand rubbed his back. He leaned into Sergei’s leg with a sigh. Sergei tipped his head up, and Alex saw the same dazed expression on Sergei’s face that he had.
“We have babies,” Sergei said unbelievingly. “What the fuck are we doing?”
Alex burst into hysterical laughter, shaking his head. “I don’t know, babe. I have no idea.”
Joining Alex in laughter, Sergei dropped next to Alex on the wall as if he could no longer hold himself up. He wrapped an arm around Alex’s shoulder and pulled their bodies together.
They sat that way, laughing a little, sighing a little, until the ringing of Sergei’s phone brought the real world back.
26
Alex
The GM for the LA Kings had let them use the team plane to fly home. It was a massive favor, but the guy had four kids, and he knew what a nightmare it could be to travel with babies. Once again, Alex was extremely grateful for the VIP treatment. He still felt a little guilty, but they deserved it after all this trauma.
Even with the usual private security screening, the trip was chaos. How could two babies need so much for a three-hour flight? The ‘diaper bag’ was more like a giant duffel bag big enough to hold all of Sergei's goalie gear.
The flight attendants, one man and one woman, were angels. They helped get the car seats strapped in, and took turns cooing over the babies and bringing Sergei and Alex food. Alex really liked that part.
While Sergei and the flight attendants amused the babies, Alex read through the baby books Patti and Lena had kept. The immense love Lena had for her children shone through on every page. Alex blinked away tears and opened the detailed schedule Patti had prepared for them, full of notes on everything from how many ounces of milk they drank per day to which laundry detergent to use on their clothes.
He found that Patti was one of two nannies. She was the full-time caretaker, but Lena had a separate one for nights and weekends. She had been planning on employing a full-time au pair to take with her on location during future filming.
Alex closed the notebook and leaned his head back against the seat. Kristen, the flight attendant, came over to him. "Can I get you something to drink, Mr. Stanton?" She was maybe twenty years older than Alex and looked like the kind of person Alex would like to have around in an emergency.
"Alex, please. And how badly would you judge me if I said yes?" He glanced over at the babies.
She smiled. "I'm the oldest of six kids. I wouldn't judge you at all."
"Bless you. How about a small glass of white wine?"
She patted him on the shoulder. "You got it. For what it's worth, I think you and Mr. Pergov are going to be okay. You obviously love them and each other, and that's the important part.”
"That's what my mother said."
"Momma's always right."
"She also said that."
Laughing lightly, Kristen disappeared into the galley.
Daniel and Suzanne met them as soon as they got off the plane. Baggage handlers drove a cart across the tarmac to unload the endless amount of things they'd brought back with them. Some of the stuff would get shipped directly to Sergei's house. A man with a flatbed cart followed them with the car seats, the stroller, and the giant diaper bag.
"Oh my goodness, Sergei!" Suzanne squealed and held out her hands. "Can I hold one of them, please?" A compact hurricane of a woman with curly dark hair, Suzanne Lipe had been born and raised in Texas, and the accent had stuck with her over the years.
"Of course. T
his is Tatyana," Alex said, handing the baby over.
Tatyana gave the woman a suspicious look, but both babies had gotten used to being passed around like hors d'oeuvres over the last week.
"Oh, she is precious! She looks just like you, Sergei. Hiya, honey." She bopped Tatyana on the nose. "You are just the cutest thing." She turned to her husband, fluttering her eyelashes. "Danny, honey?"
"No," he answered flatly. "Four is enough. You can play with the twins anytime you want to."
"Can I? For real?" she asked Alex.
"Of course. Please do. We're going to need all the help we can get."
She handed the baby over to her husband and hooked her arm through Alex's. "We are gonna be best friends, darlin'. Come on, let me show what Danny and I got for you. Danny, put the babies in the stroller."
"Yes, ma'am," Danny said with a little salute.
Looking over his shoulder at Sergei, Alex let himself be tugged along in Suzanne's wake.
Waiting for them at the building was a brand-new, shiny red minivan. "Nice wheels," Alex said, looking through the window. The instrument console looked like something out of a science fiction film.
"They're yours!" Suzanne said. "I mean, it's yours!"
Alex smiled at her enthusiasm. Everything she said sounded like it ended with an exclamation point. "You rented it for us? Thank you, that was very thoughtful."
"No, silly." She punched him on the arm with surprising strength. "We bought it for you. The team. Everybody chipped in, even Mr. Simard. It's a baby shower present! We figured you had everything else already. If you don't like red, we can get it changed."
"I wanted to get you a Diaper Genie," Danny added, hitting the key fob and opening the back hatch.
Sergei frowned. "I do not like that genie. It makes poopy diaper sausages." He took both babies, holding them easily as Lipe lifted the double stroller and the diaper bag into the back of the van. "Nice space," he said approvingly.