“And take a picture with your phone, too,” Rocket suggests. “So I can see her before I come tomorrow.”
“Good idea,” I say, trying to sound enthusiastic. “You’ll get the first picture of her. I promise.”
“Cool,” Rocket says. “Uncle Garrett says I have to let you go now.”
“Yes, they’re going to take me to another room now. G’night.”
“G’night, Mommy,” Rocket says.
And the phone goes silent.
I hold it for a moment then extend it to Freya. I don’t tell her that Rocket called me ‘mommy’ again. I keep that little gem, just for me.
The operating room is surprisingly small, and exceedingly bright. There is an impressive amount of medical equipment and more people than one would think it should take to deliver a single human being into the world. I think groggily that it doesn’t seem labor efficient or cost effective for there to be so many. And then I am thankful that there are, because it probably increases the odds of my baby being okay when she comes out.
I meet the anesthesiologist just as I’m being wheeled in place, and he already has his surgical mask on so I only see his smile from the way his eyes crinkle at the corners. Freya has been taken elsewhere to suit up, and the anesthesiologist explains that she will come in once the surgical curtain is up.
“I’ll explain to you both what’s happening as it happens,” he says.
His voice is slow, calm and soothing. The surroundings, which would be alarming to any layperson seem less so because of the calmness of his tone.
I hear Dr. Hubbard conferring with her colleagues, down at my lower extremities, and a nurse wheels a surgical cart closer to them. She winks at me as she does, and I smile back at her. She is the same nurse who earlier told me that if I had known I was getting a C-section, I could have requested that a plastic surgeon be in attendance to perform a tummy tuck when I was stitched back together.
‘You’re kidding,’ I’d responded, distracted for a moment from my worry about Rand’s whereabouts.
‘Nah uh, honey,’ she’d said, sucking her teeth. ‘I’m serious …’ She pronounced it SUR-ree-us. ‘Just for three-grand more, and your stomach would be flat as a board right after the baby. That’s the stuff we be doin’ these days.’
“Danielle,” Dr. Hubbard’s voice startles me for a moment. “We’re going to perform the incision. You shouldn’t feel any discomfort. Just a little pressure against your skin.”
“But …” I begin. Freya. Where’s Freya?
“It’s okay,” the anesthesiologist says, misinterpreting my objection. “It’ll feel kind of like when you run the tip of a fingernail over your skin. Not at all painful.”
“But …” I say again.
Off to my right, just behind me, I hear something. I try to turn and look but the anesthesiologist holds me still with a firm hand on my shoulder. Another nurse has entered the room. She wheels a stool next to my head and then steps away. My shoulder sags.
Then, as if conjured up by magic, I see Rand’s face looming over mine. He is wearing a surgical gown over his clothes, and one of those little surgical caps, but no mask. He looks stressed, and tired, and there is an unmistakable bruise on his right cheek.
He presses his lips against mine just as I feel the pressure of something against my skin somewhere at or around my abdomen. He lingers for a moment, and his kiss tastes like relief.
I want to cry, I’m so happy to see him. I can’t even access the right words to say how happy.
Rand grabs and holds my hand. He leans in and kisses the side of my neck. His lips are against the shell of my ear.
“Here we go, baby,” he says, like he’s preparing for the biggest game of his life. “Here we go.”
Epilogue
Our house is noisy and full of people. Freya and her brood, Dani’s friend Trudie and a boyfriend she brought along as her plus-one, Jennifer and a new dude I already know isn’t going to last, and assorted friends, colleagues and even a few clients. And Eva is here as well, with her friend Josette.
Dani insisted on inviting Josette, even though neither of us cared for her too much. Weston, Faith’s father declined to attend. Because it is Dani’s and my wedding day, and he still isn’t sure how he feels about me and my happy ending, nor about his wife’s embrace of Dani as Rocket’s mother.
I understand, though. Faith was his little girl, and now that I have one of my own, I get how difficult it would be to forgive anyone who hurt her. For now, and probably for a long, long time, all I can expect is that he will tolerate me.
Dani’s adoption of Rocket took almost no time at all. It was the first order of business after we brought Ella home. We wanted to have the adoption final just as we were getting our daughter’s birth certificate, social security number and all that other administrative stuff squared away. So that Dani would be officially a mother-of-two, and not just the one.
Changing Rocket’s name is next up, but Dani seems in no hurry to get that done. She says it suits him, though she will go through with the change “on paper” if that’s what I want. It’s definitely what I want. And it has nothing to do with erasing Faith, or her wishes. It’s just that I have a new life now, and a new outlook, and I want everything to be renewed and refreshed, including the deliberation and thought I put into the name I send my son out into the world with when he is grown.
“Here, Rand. Hold her a minute.”
Dani comes bursting out of our bedroom and almost collides with me on the landing. She is carrying our daughter and wearing a white off-the-rack dress that she grabbed when we were out the previous weekend just browsing in the mall. She saw it and ducked into a changing room to try it, coming out with a wide grin and telling me it was perfect to get married in.
Garrett was right. At the end of the day, she didn’t care too much about how we get married, just that we do get married. She surrendered the idea of a big flashy wedding without a second thought. I think I mentioned the possibility of a backyard wedding when she was warming up the baby’s bottle or something, and she shrugged and said, ‘Cool, yeah. Let’s do that.’
I take Ella from her arms and Dani adjusts herself under her dress. I watch her as she does it, taking note of her new, fuller figure. She’s not crazy about it, but I am. I make sure I show my appreciation as often as our noisy, non-sleeping-when-you-put-her-down-at-night daughter will permit.
“Had to breastfeed her so she doesn’t get fussy during the ceremony,” Dani explains, misinterpreting my stare. “You got her?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I got her.”
I look down at Ella who stares back up at me with wide, long-lashed versions of my eyes. There is a little milky drool at the corner of her perfect pink bud of a mouth, and she has that vaguely intoxicated look she gets when she’s just been fed. I smile at her, and she gives me a gummy smile back. More drool escapes and I grin wider.
“Burp her,” Dani says as she disappears back into the bedroom.
I put Ella over my shoulder and begin rubbing her back in circles the way Freya showed me.
I am wearing a brown morning-suit and white shirt underneath with a yellow tie. Garrett, who will serve as my best man is wearing something similar. We didn’t put a whole lot of thought into wardrobe. I’m just here for the part where the minister pronounces us man and wife.
I walk Ella downstairs and skirt around my guests in the living room, as they enjoy the food and drinks, standing in little groups of three and four people, conversing. There are a couple NFL players in attendance, guys I recently reconnected with, like my boy Quan, who survived the NFL and still made it out a reasonably well-adjusted individual. And a couple NBA guys, too, who Dani helped out in her life coaching practice, like Corey Jones who is finally living up to the hype.
Then there’s our neighbors from the townhouse in Bristol that we’ll probably be moving out of as soon as Dani finds a house she likes up there. And some of my ESPN peeps are here as well, many of whom have bec
ome more than colleagues.
These people are like a patchwork of my life and Dani’s stitched together—old and new, past and present.
At the far end of the room, there is Eva, the most unexpected piece of my past in attendance. She is gazing out at the backyard where Freya arranged to have rows of white folding chairs set up with an aisle down the middle, and a lectern at the end. There are white and yellow flowers decorating the chairs, and white candles floating in the pool. Paper lanterns festoon the mature trees.
“Ready, big man?”
A hand clamps on my shoulder and I turn to look at Garrett. Without asking, he scoops Ella out of my arms, and she squirms and pumps her chubby legs, excited to have him take her. Uncle Garrett makes funny faces, and next to Rocket, can make her laugh more easily than anyone, including me and Dani.
“More than ready,” I say.
“Man,” Garrett says, smelling the top of Ella’s curly head. “This little lady right here almost makes me want to have another one, just so I can try for a girl.”
I give him a look, and he shrugs.
“I said, almost.”
The sun is beating down on the back of my neck as I say my vows, and when I look at Rand, I see that he is just beginning to perspire at his brow. His hands in mine are a little damp. We didn’t take into account the unseasonably warm weather when we decided to get married at home. He squints a little as he watches me, but his eyes are fixed on mine, and there is even a little eagerness in his gaze.
He has already said his vows, so after this, we will be official.
I smile as I get to the end, and then on cue, Rocket steps forward to present the rings. His posture is stiff, as he is serious and intent on doing his job correctly. As Rand slides the wedding band onto my finger, he is grinning so wide it makes me blush. And by the time the minister makes the pronouncement, we are both almost laughing. He kisses me, long and hard, well before he is told that he can do so. Behind us, there are loud cheers from our guests.
When we walk hand in hand back down the aisle and into the house, I think about the night Ella was born. I only found out a day after her birth that Rand was in a car accident. On the way back from Buffalo, because of the bad weather and poor visibility, his driver almost rear-ended another car, and swerved to avoid it, fishtailing them off the road and into a ditch.
The only injuries they both got were superficial, but they had to wait for a tow out of the ditch, and that took almost an hour. The entire time, Rand said he was standing on the side of the road with the driver thinking that the tow truck would get there soon, and they would be on their way any minute, any minute, any minute.
He only returned Freya’s calls once they were on the road and moving again. She was frantic, of course, and told him that I was, too. He said he didn’t want to dwell on or think about my likely panic, nor Freya’s anger at how inconsiderate he’d been not to let her know what was going on. He said it would have made him panic as well.
‘I just wanted to get to you,’ he told me. ‘That’s all I was focused on. Getting to you.’
Inside the house now, we know that it will be mere seconds before our guests enter behind us, so Rand inclines his head toward the stairs and we run up them, leaving everyone behind. Once there, we lock ourselves in our bedroom and he leans against the door, immediately beginning to loosen his tie.
“Are you serious right now?” I ask. “We have guests downstairs. We have to go right back down.”
Rand laughs. “I’m just changing into something more comfortable. What’re you thinkin’ about?”
“Shut up,” I say, laughing. “I need you to unzip me. If you’re changing, I’m changing too.”
Rand unzips my dress and we both shed our wedding garb. When I turn and see him standing there in his boxer-briefs and his socks, I smile. He is still the best-looking man I have ever seen.
“Rand,” I say, as he opens up the dresser and pulls out a plain white t-shirt.
“Yeah?” He doesn’t look up.
“We’re married,” I say.
At that, he does look up.
“Yeah, we are.”
“We did it,” I say.
“Yeah …” He advances toward me. “We did.”
When he is standing mere inches away from me, and I feel his body heat, and smell the comingled scent of clean, manly perspiration and my favorite cologne, I rethink my earlier position about going back downstairs immediately.
Rand dips his head and kisses me. Two teasing pecks on my lips at first, then a third time, longer and deeper. His hands clutch my somewhat larger behind and pull me against him. I let my head fall to one side, so he can kiss my neck.
“I think we got a half hour,” Rand says against my skin. “I’m guessing thirty minutes before Freya with her meddlin’ ass comes to find us.”
I smile. “Okay,” I say, already feeling a little hitch in my breathing from how he’s kissing me. “A half hour.”
A half hour, a lifetime … whatever he wants, I’m giving him.
Also by Nia Forrester
Commitment
Unsuitable Men
Maybe Never
Mistress
Wife
Mother
The Seduction of Dylan Acosta
The Education of Miri Acosta
In the Nothing
Secret
The Art of Endings
Lifted
The Come Up
The Takedown
Ivy’s League
The Lover
Afterwards
Afterburn
Young, Rich & Black
The Fall
Acceptable Losses
Paid Companion
Still (The Shorts – Book 1)
Just Lunch (The Shorts – Book 2)
Table for Two (The Shorts – Book 3)
The Makeover
The Wanderer
About the Author
Nia Forrester lives and writes in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where, by day, she is an attorney working on public policy. By night, she crafts woman-centered fiction that examines the complexities of life, love, and the human condition. She welcomes feedback and email from her readers at [email protected] or tweets @NiaForrester. And visit with her, at NiaForrester.com.
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