by R. S. Elliot
"How are you feeling?" I asked as she sucked the drizzle of honey and flakes of buttery pastry crust off her fingers. A huge slice of baklava sat between us, still warm from the oven and half-eaten. It was one of my favorite comfort foods, and I had been delighted to find out that Mia loved it as well. I loved munching on slices until we were both happy and full and sticky with honey.
"I’m not entirely sure yet. I’ll probably be feeling all sorts of things for days. But I’m absolutely relieved, no doubt about that. I feel like I can finally sleep at night again."
"That’s what’s important. You did so well, Mia, really. I’m so proud of you."
A bit of shy color came into her cheeks. She was getting better at taking my compliments, but they still made her bashful.
"I appreciate that."
"Look at you, actually accepting something nice I’ve said."
"I’m trying to be better."
"You’re wonderful," I said with a laugh. I put another heaping forkful of pistachio and pastry into my mouth, then gathered myself as I chewed. I was still worried about her since the day had been such a strain.
"But you’re sure you’re feeling alright?"
She shrugged, pressing her fingers thoughtfully against her mouth.
“It’s so weird. I’ve been so hung up on being in the middle of trial prep and worrying about school that now that it’s over, I feel like I blinked and it was done. I didn’t really plan on what I was going to do after this. I was so focused on surviving this."
I brushed my hand across her cheek. "Well, you survived, and you did a damn good job of it. Now you get to live your life, I guess, without having to look over your shoulder anymore."
A waitress drifted by to ask if we needed anything else, and Mia smiled and shook her head. For right now, we were content to relax in the back of this restaurant together, ensconced away from the noise and stress of the city. It felt like the first time we had just sat still together in the last hectic week. I had been slammed at work and Mia had been buried in her books, as usual, but we did our best to make time for each other. I was always crossing town to meet her or calling her on my breaks or getting up early to see her for an hour before my long and arduous day. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be willing to go to those lengths for anyone, but she made it feel easy. And she always met me halfway.
"Thank you. I couldn’t have done it without you."
"Yes, you could have. But I’m glad I could be there for you."
She took another bite of crumbling pistachio pastry, making a pleased sound at the crunch of candied rose petals. I never knew watching someone enjoy themselves could bring me so much pleasure, but I lived to see her smile. And Mia took so much pleasure in the smallest things. She reminded me to slow down and appreciate being alive, as cliché as such a thing might have sounded to me just a few months ago.
"I guess it’s just back to business as usual then," Mia said. "Work, school, our routine at Carrier. I’m sure there’s plenty of stuff at the office that needs your attention. I know I’ve been taking up a lot of it, making you run around the city for me."
I ran my thumb along the handle of my coffee mug, swallowing as I gathered up my courage. I didn’t expect to feel so nervous about this in the moment.
"Or maybe we don’t have to go back to business as usual."
"How do you mean?"
"I’ve been thinking," I began. I looked up to meet her eyes, and the warmth I saw in them made me absolutely sure of myself. I squared my shoulders and leaned forward a bit over the table, suddenly grateful that the restaurant was relatively empty. I had never liked an audience except when I called a press conference.
"What if you moved in with me? Permanently. I’ve wanted to ask you for a while, but it just...wasn’t the right time."
She leaned back in her seat, still holding my free hand. She looked a bit dazed.
"You want me to move in?"
"Only if you want to. It was working so well during the few weeks when you were staying with me while you were apartment hunting. We’re already spending so much of our time together, it seems like the most sensible thing to do in this situation." I swallowed. I had plenty of rational reasons why we should move in together, reasons I could rattle off like numbers on a spreadsheet. Economic, sociological, geographical reasons. But I knew that I couldn’t lean my case too heavily on those. I needed to tell her the whole truth, the real reason I felt so possessed to ask her to move in with me. "I love you, Mia. I love spending my time with you and building a life with you. I want this for us."
She was smiling, and that was a good sign, but she still looked a little dazed. I had caught her off guard, and I could see the wheels turning behind her eyes. Maybe she hadn’t had as much time to consider this as I had. Maybe she hadn’t let herself hope that it could be in our future. I didn’t blame her. Even though things were going perfectly smoothly between us, we had been torn apart before, and that had probably made her hesitant about making easy assumptions about our future ever again.
"What about my studio?"
"I’ll get you out of your lease; don’t worry about the studio. You could be out of there in a week and in my bed for good...with your own place to study and do your hobbies, and more space to have your friends over."
Her green eyes shone with interest, but I could tell she was getting a little overwhelmed at the prospect. I had been working up to asking her to move in for weeks, but now I wondered if I should have waited a little longer after the trial. Two major life changes in one day might be too much. Maybe she needed time to rest and re-group, to think about what direction she wanted to take her life in. If it was space she needed, I was willing to give her that. I had waited to have her back in my arms for almost seven years. I could wait a little while more.
"I don’t want you to go through the trouble of moving right now in the middle of everything when you’ve just done it once already, and I know it’s a lot to consider," I said gently. "But...know that my door is open to you. My home is already yours, Mia, and I want you to have absolutely everything you want."
A smile spread across her lips, and she leaned all the way across the table, narrowly missing the baklava and almost toppling my coffee, to kiss me squarely on the mouth. One of the waitresses up at the front giggled behind me, but I didn’t care. I was smiling so wide against Mia’s kiss that my cheeks hurt.
"Well, I want you," she giggled.
"You say that an awful lot," I responded wryly. Teasing her had been second nature to me in high school and slowly, those old playful instincts were reasserting themselves. Mia’s presence made me feel young and energetic―like I could take on the world. She burned away any cynicism I might feel about my success or any temptation to become complacent in the sight of it. When I was with her, I felt ten feet tall, like the star quarterback once again.
"Well, I meant it."
"That’s a yes then?" I asked hopefully. She could still say no, and I would understand. We hadn’t been back together for very long. We hadn’t even told everyone at the office yet.
Her eyes slid shut as she leaned in to kiss me again, and the last thing I heard before her lips met mine was,
"That’s a very enthusiastic yes."
Epilogue
"I think ‘insert tab A into slot B’ means to gently press them together, not bang on them until they fit."
"Well," Aiden said, tapping away at the two pieces of glossy white Ikea wood with his hammer. "I’m improvising. I’m a maverick, remember? I disrupt the status quo."
I snorted at him lovingly from where I leaned against the windowsill in the room we had picked out for the baby. Aiden was seated on the ground, bits of wood and packages of screws and crumbled directions spread out around him on the ultra-soft carpet we had put in just last month. We were still two months out from my delivery date, but Aiden was nothing, if not overly prepared. We had read all the books, gone to all the doctor’s visits and then some, and laid awake p
lenty of nights talking about names and parenting styles and how we were going to deal with discipline. I was both beyond ready to have this baby in my arms and worried about that very thing happening. I was also trying to enjoy my relatively smooth pregnancy knowing that it had its own kind of special blessings and lessons to teach me, despite the morning sickness and swollen ankles and wildly fluctuating mood swings.
Aiden had, for all intents and purposes, been a saint. I had never had any doubts about our decision to get quietly married a few months after we moved in together, even though by most other people’s standards that was far too soon to make such a lifelong commitment to each other. But Aiden and I had known each other for ages, and we had seen each other through so much, and now that we had found each other after a long separation, we never wanted to let each other go ever again. We had enjoyed our micro-engagement and our luxurious first couple of years of marriage, and then, just as I was getting ready to graduate from my blended law program (thankfully most of the credits from Stanford had transferred), we got our happy surprise. A positive pregnancy test and shortly thereafter, a pronunciation that we were expecting a healthy baby daughter.
We had never felt so overjoyed.
"When is your mother going to get here?" Aiden asked idly as though he were merely curious and not worried about cleaning up the mess he had made of the nursery-in-progress. I swallowed a little snicker.
"Oh, not for another hour or so. Are you still good to pick her up from JFK?"
"Of course. There are scarier things in the world than being trapped in the car with your mother for an hour, especially now that she’s decided she likes me."
"She never hated you. A last minute wedding invitation is just...not something any parent expected to receive as an introduction to their kid’s relationship."
My mother had not been very involved in my life since she and my father divorced, despite her encouraging phone calls, gifts, and her appearance at every single major holiday and birthday in my life. She and my father had nothing to say to each other by the end of their relationship except icy pleasantries, but she tried to always be warm to me, even if it wasn't in her nature. Honestly, I hadn’t been sure how she would react to the wedding, or if she would even come. But she had been there, looking a little guilty and very proud and happy, and since then, we had tentatively opened our relationship back up for exploration. She went into total grandma mode once we found out I was pregnant and had been emailing me breastfeeding articles and offering to fly out and help me get ready for the baby ever since. She would only be visiting for a week this time, and then would probably come back to New York from the Midwest to help around the house right after our little girl was born.
This sort of cozy domesticity was never a future I had imagined for my mother and me, but I was immensely grateful for it now. Having a support system in place meant the world to me. Between Aiden, my mother, and my friends rallying around me and offering to bring over baby clothes and casseroles, I felt like motherhood was something I could do.
In addition to my mother, Aiden’s friends from Long Island, Luke and Emily, had started to visit more frequently, dropping off baby clothes that their little one was already growing out of or bringing over takeout from our favorite Thai restaurant. We would sit together in the kitchen, Luke and Emily sharing a bottle of wine while Aiden sipped sparkling water in solidarity with my doctor-mandated sobriety, and talk about the city, our careers, or how parenting changes things. Luke had struck me as severe at first, but once he opened up and showed his wicked sense of humor, we had gotten along wonderfully. Emily was clever and warm and had immediately decided she liked me and that she was my new pregnancy advisor. I got along with them both as a unit and as individuals, and I was so happy to see that Aiden was reaching out to the few friends he had and strengthening those bonds. Parenting was supposed to isolate you from your friends, but it was just bringing us all closer together. I didn’t mind a little bit of extra help, however, and was grateful to suddenly be swimming in people who wanted to help our growing family when only a few years ago, I had almost no family to speak of.
Aiden fussed with the crib a bit more before giving in to the fact that he probably wasn’t going to be able to finish it that day. He hauled himself up off the ground and crossed the room to me, taking my face in his hands and giving me a tender kiss. His hands were strong and sure, only slightly roughened by all the work he had been doing around the apartment lately.
"What was that for?" I asked with a smile when he pulled away.
"For looking so pretty."
I wrinkled my nose at him, one hand coming to rest on my protruding belly.
"Well, I don’t feel particularly pretty in these maternity tent dresses."
"You are pretty. I’ll buy you new dresses until you feel like it."
This made me smile despite myself, and I kissed him back, slowly starting to feel a little bit like my sexier self. She hadn’t disappeared since I got pregnant with the baby, but she was changing, becoming more elusive and then making herself known at the most unexpected of times. Sex was less frequent now but more meaningful, more intentional. I was sure that our rhythms would be entirely thrown off by the birth and my recovery, but we were both willing to put some things on hold and rediscover them together later after ensuring that our new child was settled into our world.
"You’re sure you still love me like this?"
"Mia," Aiden murmured, his voice half a purr, half a reproach as his lips ghosted across mine. "Don't even say things like that. Of course, I love you. I’m obsessed with you; you’re the most important thing in the world to me."
"Even though I’m fat?" I said with a little pout. I was fishing for compliments now and we both knew it, but Aiden never minded giving them. If anything, he was delighted when I was willing to let him lavish me with praise.
"You’re carrying our child," he corrected, smiling down at me. "And you’re absolutely glowing and still tempting to me, yes. And I love the way your eyes shine when we talk about the baby. I love seeing you so happy."
I leaned my chin on his shoulder, pressing a little kiss to his neck. There was the slightest rasp of stubble there and the sharp, familiar scent of his aftershave.
"Are you feeling any more ready for this baby now that the nursery is coming together?" I asked, threading my fingers through Aiden’s hair. He laughed a little nervously. The sound went through my chest in a rumble.
"Eh...I’m getting there. You know I never really considered myself the nurturing type."
"That’s not true. You’re incredibly nurturing when you care about someone, and you already care about this little girl."
"That’s true," he said pensively. "So much it scares me, and more than I care about myself."
"See? That’s all it takes. We have everything we need right here, and we have each other. You’re going to be a great father."
He picked up my hands and kissed them gently, one after the other. He made me feel like royalty, like a queen being paid homage to by a devoted subject. When he looked into my eyes, I saw all the love in the world shining back at me.
"If you’re in this with me, I’m sure I will be."
I pulled him into my arms, our growing daughter nestled gently between us in my belly, and kissed him long and slow, knowing that we had all the time in the world to live, to love, to learn, and to grow together as a family.
Afterword
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Chapter 9
Even though I was the object of observation, the subject being photographed by Emily’s agile camera, I couldn’t stop staring at her. I studied every inch of her like a piece of fine art, from the white curve of her throat to the gnawed nails on her long, red-knuckled fingers, to the way she pressed her tongue to the back of her front teeth when she was concentrating. Having an hour alone with her in my office, the silence broken only when Emily told me to turn my head into the light or adopt a different pose, was absolute bliss. Except, of course, for the way it was torture because I couldn’t reach out and draw her back into me and kiss that beautiful red mouth all over again.
As much as I may have indulged in fantasies about Emily, the kiss hadn’t been my intention. I had flirted with her, cajoled her, and prodded her when she bristled to understand what made her tick. I was probably just as taken aback as she was when she pressed herself up on her tiptoes in front of me, but I wasted no time in seizing the moment. If she was going to present herself for the taking, I was going to take her.
But that, of course, would be insane. Emily was still my employee and working for me on company time. Even more than that, she was nearly young enough to be my daughter. As much as I wanted to get her alone, to unravel the thoughts inside her head and watch her come undone under my hands, that wasn’t possible.
