by Olivia Janae
It was rash, asking her to get married. She knew that. The thing was, their relationship had been so quick in the beginning. Friends had turned into lovers so seamlessly that she was willing to bet this would be just as easy.
No, she had no idea what it would be like to be married, but neither did Vivian. She had a feeling they would figure it out together.
For once, the parking in front of her apartment was easy.
They got out of the car and slipped between the chained-up pit bull and the group of little boys that were looking at Vivian’s car like they were ready to tear it down and sell it for parts. Entering the downstairs door, Vivian signed over her shoulder, “The best part about you marrying me is that you and Max can come live with me, somewhere safe.” Vivian paused for a split second, her look thoughtful, and then added, “I think we should start looking for a house somewhere.”
Kate choked on nothing.
“Hello?” She called as she pushed through the door. “Hell—ew.”
Charlie sprang up, her hair messy and wild, her face flushed and guilty. From the couch where Charlie had just been, John grinned foolishly at Kate, not embarrassed at all that they had caught them in the middle of a high school make-out session.
“Hi!” Charlie breathed. “You’re back.”
“Uh, where’s Max?” Kate asked, hoping beyond hope that he wasn’t sitting somewhere in the room.
“Down for his nap.” Charlie shrugged as if this were obvious. “Where else would be be? Viv. Hey.”
Vivian just smirked and signed that the top of her shirt was unbuttoned.
Kate rolled her eyes.
“So, um.” Charlie smoothed her hair, looking between them. “You’re together. Here. Together.”
“Caught that, did you?” Kate asked in her best I-swear-everything-is-normal voice. She didn’t know. Did Vivian want to say something to them?
“And you’re okay,” Charlie said uncertainly. “Because this morning...” Her voice trailed off. Kate didn’t see what Vivian had done behind her, but suddenly Charlie’s mouth hung open in shock and John gave an impressed whistle.
“Shut up!” Charlie cried, making Kate wince and shush her. “Shut up! Are you fucking serious!” She gravitated to Vivian’s hand, yanking it up so that Vivian squawked and had to twist to get into an angle where that didn’t hurt. “Is this what – you didn’t – Jesus, K, you could have said something.”
Charlie continued to splutter, making Kate and Vivian laugh until they were caught in a choking hug.
They were finally alone when Kate heard Max’s bedroom door open. They hadn’t been doing much of anything, simply sitting together in silence and processing things. The day had been a big one.
“Aunt Charlie?” Max’s groggy voice called.
Kate’s eyebrows shot up. Since when had it been “Aunt Charlie?” Was that a new development, or had she missed it before?
“Hey kid, it’s me. I’m home. Go potty and then come here please.”
“Is he up?” Vivian’s long finger signed.
Kate nodded. She was nervous, and that was strange. She was nervous but also completely excited. Her fingers drummed on her leg, her teeth grinding a little.
“You’re nervous,” Vivian signed.
“I don’t know why, but I am.”
“Do you think he’ll say he doesn’t want me?” Vivian asked, her shoulders drooping. “I know I have a lot to make up for.” Kate lifted her hands to respond, but Vivian charged on. “I shouldn’t have disappeared like that,” she silently moaned, her head falling back onto the couch, her face twisted. “I should have kept coming to see him, I should have taken him to museums and been his friend.”
Unsure how else to stop her, Kate reached forward and grabbed her hands. “Kids forgive a lot. Just... just don’t do it again.”
Vivian nodded, sitting up straighter as Kate turned, hearing Max shuffling down the hall.
She held her breath, unsure of exactly how he would react.
“I’m tired,” Max was whining. “Charlie wouldn’t let me have juice before my na—” he stopped, blinking slowly, the sleep making his mind heavy.
Vivian scooted to the edge of the couch, crouching down to his level. She was smiling, but the nerves were clear on her face. “Hi, buddy,” she signed.
Max’s eyebrows drew, his hand uncertainly going to pull on his ear.
Kate watched, worried.
His thumb traveled to his mouth, popping in and sitting as he didn’t look at Vivian, but instead at the floor right beside her.
“Max?” Kate tried. “Look who’s here.”
Max didn’t respond. Instead, he took a dragging step forward and then, eyes still downcast and thumb still in his mouth, he went to her, wedging himself into her embrace.
Vivian scooped him up, cradling him to her as he began to cry.
“Shhhh,” she soothed, smoothing his hair, kissing his forehead as she rocked him.
Kate watched, somewhat startled and yet not startled at all as tears began to slip down Vivian’s face as well.
“You said the next day!” Max wailed. “You said the next day, and it wasn’t the next day!”
She wasn’t sure if she should interpret for her or not, but it seemed it wasn’t needed.
Vivian just rocked him back and forth, her arms tight around him as she promised that she was there, that she wasn’t going anywhere.
It took a long time for Max to calm, and even longer before he was willing to sit up in her arms, though no amount of persuasion could get him to sit next to Vivian instead of on her.
They both looked like drowned rats by the time they were laughing again.
“You’ve grown a foot. I’m telling you.”
“Nu-uh, Viv’n!” Max giggled.
“Oh no?”
“No, I grew – I grew to four!”
The three laughed, Vivian tousling his hair.
“Hey Max, Vivian and I, we have a question for you. Do you think we can ask you?”
Max’s bright eyes opened wide, suddenly alarmed.
“It’s nothing bad,” Vivian promised.
“Okay.” His thumb tried to get back to his mouth, but carefully, Vivian took his hand and cupped it in hers.
“So, Max...” Kate started and then stopped. She had no idea how to ask. She glanced at Vivian for help and saw she looked like she was going to be sick.
“Max, honey,” Vivian started. “Your mom and I were wondering, do you know what marriage is?”
He nodded, but his face stayed confused.
“Okay,” Vivian said through a small laugh. “Well, your mommy, she asked me if I would be part of your family.”
“Like, adopt you?” Max asked, his head craning to the side in confusion.
“More like I adopt you and then,” she cleared her throat, “then you’ll have two mommies.”
“You gonna be my mommy?” Max asked, his voice small.
“If you want me to be.”
“What do you think?” Kate asked, rubbing his back.
His hand worked out of Vivian’s and his thumb popped back into his mouth, making Kate groan internally.
He looked at Kate and then he looked up at Vivian. Slowly, around his thumb, he began to smile.
“Yeah!” he suddenly shouted. “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” He sprang up, jumping on top of Vivian, tackling her back against the couch.
She yipped and yelped as Max’s bony knees and elbows jabbed into her.
Unable to help it, Kate reached out and tickled her exposed side.
Vivian gave a yell, and together she and Max rolled to the floor, laughing and screaming and beaming brightly.
16
Things moved at warp speed over the spring and summer, and yet they weren’t quick enough for Kate.
The proposal had been spontaneous, definitely not a thoroughly thought-out action. Only, it had been the right one. She was sure of it.
She loved Vivian and, surprise, surprise, it appeared t
hat Vivian loved her, too.
They were both scared, Kate knew that, but somehow, despite their fear, they both were elated.
Soon boxes were packed. Appliances were compared and thrown away or more often updated and replaced. The furniture was condensed to the bare essentials while new pieces were purchased to fit the new accommodations.
The apartment and the loft were stripped naked and for the very last time Kate and Max gathered all of their belongings, their entire lives into the small cardboard boxes.
This time, however, the boxes holding their lives weren’t just thrown haphazardly into the back of the car but were lovingly placed, amongst their new brothers and sisters, all bearing fanatically neat and precise labels such as “main bathroom,” “secondary bathroom,” “kitchen,” and “books,” in the back of the moving van.
Max couldn’t sit still. So far, he had only seen a picture of the newly remodeled Tudor deep in the heart of Evanston, and he had been talking about nothing else. Kate was half convinced that her son was going to explode before they could finish the short drive.
“So any room?” he asked, bouncing in his seat as they turned off of Lake Shore, winding their way through the morning traffic.
“Within reason, I guess. I don’t think you can have the master bedroom, and you probably want to avoid picking the rooms with toilets in them.”
He rolled his eyes, showing his transition from toddler to little boy, but he grinned at her all the same. “Mooommy! Why’d I wanna sleep in the bathroom?”
Kate laughed and ran a hand through his hair. “What about out back? We can give you a tent. You wanna sleep in a tree like Mowgli?”
“Yeah!” He gave her a goofy grin, exposing the gap where his first loose tooth had been lost the week before.
“Even in the snow?” she cried back.
“I’ll make an igloo!”
The moving van was still beside the lawn when they pulled up.
“Wait!” Kate held onto Max’s shirt collar so he didn’t throw himself from the car before it had come to a full stop.
Men were mumbling as they pulled box after box from the van and set them in the middle of the grand foyer of 1304 Havana Avenue.
“Moooom! Lemme go! Lemme go!”
“Hold on!” She turned the ignition off and released the squirming boy. He shot from the car like a horse in a race, his hands waving and flying as he ran at Vivian, who stood in the middle of the front walk.
“Viv’n, Viv’n – I mean.” He stopped running, looking delightfully baffled. “I mean, Mama.”
Vivian scooped the five-year-old up and kissed his cheeks, their hands flying together.
It hadn’t been a rocky transition from ‘Viv’n’ to Mama at all, not that Kate was really surprised. Vivian had stepped into that role the moment she had picked him up that day in the park a year before. Asking him had only been the formality on something as easy as breathing.
Kate got out of the car, grinning, her heart hammering as it always did when she saw her fiancée these days. It was as though each time she saw her, her heart needed a moment to acclimate all over again. Vivian, that beautiful woman she had grown so crazy about, had promised to marry her, to be her wife. Each time she remembered that she was blown away. She had agreed to marry her, to take her son as her own, and there had even been talk of Vivian giving her body sometime in the next few years to make Max a brother or a sister. It was all so blissfully overwhelming.
I’m going to marry her: the thought never got old, never lost its shine.
Vivian’s eyes lifted from Max’s, and she smiled a genuine and uncomplicatedly happy smile. “You’re late,” she signed, with an eyebrow arched.
Kate held her hands up in surrender. “Max needed the bathroom!”
“I did not!”
Vivian laughed and kissed his cheek.
“Mommy, can I go? Can I go look? Can I?”
“Can you go?” Kate gasped in mock horror. “No way, I’m going to go first!”
She sprinted around Vivian, stopping only for a brief kiss and dashed for the door. Max screamed that she was cheating as he flew after her, giggling.
They flew up the huge center staircase toward the bedrooms, Kate taunting her son over her shoulder.
“What about this one?”
“No way! It’s a bathroom!”
“I thought you wanted to sleep in the bathtub!”
“Whooooooaaa! This one, this one!”
Kate rounded the corner to see a huge empty room, window seat and dormer window open to the front of the house and the giant tree nestled safely just outside the screen.
“This one?” Kate caught him and tickled his sides.
“Yeah! Look, I can see the whole block!”
“Okay, kid, go downstairs and tell the movers to bring your boxes up here.”
He cheered, his tiny legs moving fast.
“Be careful on the stairs!”
Heels clicked on the hardwood behind her, and Kate grinned as Vivian nestled her head in the crook of her neck, giving it a small kiss. “Want to see our room?”
Kate playfully bit her lip and Vivian grinned, her teeth sinking lightly into the skin of her ear. She pulled her along by the hand until they found the large room. It was beautiful, wide, and open, the polished wood on the floor shining in the sunlight. They passed through it, though, and out onto the large patio overlooking the grassy lawn.
“Any regrets, Mrs. Kensington?” Vivian asked, biting her lip.
Kate gave her a playful scowl. “I don’t know, I still think Vivian Flynn has a better ring to it.”
“Mm, I don’t know. There’s something sexy about Katelyn Kensington.”
Kate laughed, happily rolling her eyes. She wasn’t going to tell her... at least not yet... but Katelyn Kensington sounded pretty good to her. Her name had never been connected to anything, no family, no ties, no people. She was ready to change that.
“So. No regrets?”
“About the house?” Kate asked.
“Amongst other things.”
Kate shook her head, pulling her to her and kissing her deeply. “Are you freaking kidding me, woman?”
They remained locked in their steamy embrace for a long moment before Vivian had to finally pull away, panting. “Let’s not give the movers a show, darling.”
Kate shrugged, hooking her belt loop so she couldn’t get away. “Or maybe we should. Hmm, I think we really should.” She kissed her again, littering kisses over her cheeks and jaw until Vivian was a crumbling mess in her arms.
“You’re unfair,” Vivian breathed, but she smiled softly, her face tilted to be kissed again.
“I am.”
Vivian gave her one last kiss. “I love you, you know.”
“I do. I do know.”
“Come. Let’s start bringing boxes up, Mrs. Kensington.”
Kate scoffed.
Vivian kicked off her heels and the two began to lift boxes up the stairs, sorting them into the study, the practice room, office, bedrooms, and bathrooms.
It took a while, but, eventually, all the beds were assembled and in their proper rooms, couches and all boxes removed from the truck. The small family had their new home all to themselves.
It was strange moving into such a beautiful house. Kate had never lived in one like it before. She grinned as she ran her fingers over the marble countertop in the kitchen.
They had talked long and hard about which house they would buy, debating money and location until they were blue in the face. The thing was, Kate could afford this now and that, more than anything else, was startling.
She smiled a little as she glanced around the kitchen and then went to the JBL speaker, clicking on some music at a level that would have been illegal in her old apartment.
She moved to the boxes stacked on the kitchen island and began to unpack while, beside the speaker, Vivian began to unpack the plates.
It didn’t take long; it never did when she was near enough to
feel it. Soon Vivian was dancing a bit this way and that, the speaker in one hand, the dishes in the other.
Grinning, Kate wrapped her arms around Vivian from behind, pulling her tightly and softly, with one finger, began to tap the beat into her breastbone.
Vivian smiled tenderly at the memory. “How far we have come.”
“Mm.” Kate nodded in agreement and took the kiss that Vivian offered.
“Anybody home? Hello?”
Kate grinned and signed to her future wife. “Charlie’s here.”
Vivian nodded.
Charlie sauntered into the kitchen holding a huge take-out bag.
“Thank god, I’m starving. Where have you been all day? Where’s John?”
“John? Oh, um...” Charlie shrugged. “He’ll be here.”
She watched as Vivian laughed, ready to tease her friend. She and John had been enjoying a peaceful place of no labels and it was fun making Charlie squirm by asking. Vivian lifted a hand to speak and froze, the glass of water in her other hand pausing halfway to her lips.
Kate, not paying attention, headed to the foot of the stairs to yell for their son.
“Okay, Mommy!” Max yelled back.
She turned and stopped, shocked when she reentered the kitchen. Even Max, who came running pell-mell down the stairs a few seconds later, stopped when he hit the kitchen door.
Jacqueline stood, looking almost shy behind Charlie, her hands twitching over the potted flowers she was holding.
Charlie had said nothing about bringing anyone, and Jacqueline of all people...
Kate tried to swallow, but her throat was dry.
Vivian recovered first, glancing between her best friend and the woman her best friend had always disliked so much. “Mother! What are you doing here?” Vivian’s voice cracked slightly. It had been weeks since she had felt the need to use her voice at all now that Kate understood her own private language. She flushed and winced, clearly waiting for the reprimand.
Instead, Jacqueline gave her a small smile and handed Charlie the pot. “Vivian–”
The glass in Vivian’s hand shattered against the floor. Kate’s heart began to pound in astonishment. Even Max’s mouth popped open into a perfect circle as, shakily, Jacqueline’s hands lifted and she signed, “I thought... your new home... could use some flowers.” The words barely strung together, but they were still in the smooth language no one had ever seen Jacqueline use before.
