Page 74 of Not Our First Rodeo
A grin splits my mouth and the warm bubbly spreads from my chest, invading every part of my body until it feels like sunshine in my veins. “That sounds perfect.”
We take the bed apart, and I manage to move the mattress on one of Elsie’s frequent bathroom breaks. She acts like she’s annoyed, but I know she isn’t, not when every time I look at her, she’s holding back a smile. I know she thought we wouldn’t get here. Us, but mostly the baby. That this pregnancy would end the same as the last. That she held herself back from being excited, but that she’s finally allowing herself to now.
It pours out of her, filling the room with its warmth.
We chose a muted blue color for the walls, one that matches the summer sky outside. It was Elsie’s choice, and I couldn’t have been happier with it. This room felt so dark when I lived in it. The walls were a medium gray color that we had never gotten around to changing after we moved in. The furniture and decor were mismatched pieces we’d acquired over the years. Nothing about it felt intentional or personal. It felt lifeless.
And I couldn’t be more excited to bring new life into it.
Elsie paints, and we both pretend I don’t notice the way she stops every few rolls to place a hand on her lower back. I have to suppress a smile each time, knowing that she won’t stop, no matter what I say.
I cover three walls in the amount of time it takes her to do one, but we don’t acknowledge that either.
We talk as we paint. I ask her about the lunch she had with her mom last week, the one Diana initiated. It surprised us both, and I offered to go with her, but she went alone. It went better than either of us expected. There’s still tension between them. Dianastill thinks she knows best, but she’s trying, and that’s more than she did before.
We discuss baby name options. We haven’t found anything that sticks out to either of us, and I think we both thought we would by now. Elsie says she feels like time is closing in, but I tell her I think we will know when we meet her, so we leave it at that.
She asks if Cooper has been acting weird and tells me about her conversation with Jade. I tell her about the comment Dad made, the way Cooper brushed it off. We both agree something is going on, but that Cooper will tell us when he’s ready.
Time moves at an easy pace, and before we know it, we’ve finished all the walls, the color making the entire room feel like summer. We settle on the carpet that will need a good cleaning before we begin to move in furniture and admire our handiwork. It already looks better in here, and the sight of it soothes that part of me that was broken for so long.
Elsie leans her head on my shoulder, sleep tugging at her eyes. She hasn’t been sleeping well the past few weeks, and she’s gotten progressively more uncomfortable as her hands and feet have been swelling, but she refuses to slow down.
“Let’s take a picture,” she says. Mumbles, rather. She mentioned something about a headache earlier, and I wonder if it’s lingering despite the pain reliever she took.
I pull out my phone from my back pocket. “Of what?”
Her head moves on my shoulder, her gaze catching mine. There’s a slight tilt to her lips, a tired smile. “Of us. We don’t have any pictures during the pregnancy.”
I smile back and lift the phone to snap a photo of us. She looks so exhausted, but she’s beaming too, the sun slanting through the window and making her skin look golden.
She takes the phone from my hand, examining the picture, expression wistful. “I wish we had taken more. I’ve taken a few bump pictures, but I…wasted so much time during thispregnancy. I didn’t document it because I was too stuck in my head.” Her voice is small, regretful, and it makes my chest feel tight.
My hand covers hers, retrieving the phone to click on an album before returning it to her. “I’ve been documenting it.” I watch her as she scrolls through the album. There’s a look on her face I can’t quite decipher and silver lining her eyes. A fat drop crests her eyelid, rolling slowly down her cheek.
The album is full of photos and videos, candid ones I’ve been taking of her for months. Memories for us, sure, but also living proof for our daughter that even when things were rocky between us, that even if we had never figured things out,shewas always loved.
Elsie stops scrolling and clicks on the first video in the album. My voice fills the empty room. “Hey, baby, it’s me, your dad. I wanted to introduce myself now because you’ll never know me when I’m not a dad. And you’ll never know your mom when she’s not your mom. She’s going to be the best mom in the entire world. I just know it, baby. But I want you to see her now, too, when she’s just the best woman in the world.”
The camera flips, and then Elsie is on the screen, humming as she cooks dinner. She’s so inside her head that she doesn’t hear my whisper. “Isn’t she beautiful? I can’t believe she’s growing youright now.”
The video ends and Elsie clicks on another. This one was taken at her studio. In the video, she’s demonstrating something to Maya, and the girl watches her with rapt attention, soaking in her every instruction.
“Hey, baby, it’s me, Dad,” my voice says. “But enough of me. Look at your mom. She’s dancing. I wish you could have seen her dancing on the stage, but I think she’s even better here. She’s the best dancer in the entire world. I know she probably wishes you could have seen her dancing in a company, but I’m glad you’ll getto see her like this, the way she lights up as she teaches these kids about the thing she loves most.”
She scrolls through more photos and videos, dozens, her tears falling freely now. When she speaks, her voice is thick. “I can’t believe you were doing this the whole time.”
I wrap my arm around her, pulling her body into mine. She fits so perfectly here. It makes me wonder how we went so long without it, how we ever felt whole when we were apart.
“I was…terrible to you,” she says, voice tinged with something like regret. “And you were making videos, talking about how perfect I am.”
“Elsie,” I breathe, and turn my body so I’m facing her fully. Her cheeks are tearstained, her eyes red. She looks heartbroken. “You were never terrible to me.”
“I was,” she says, nodding vigorously. “I asked you to leave and then I let you come back, but I still didn’t let you in. I held you at arm’s length for so damn long and youstillloved me. I don’t—” She sighs, wipes hard beneath her eyes. They’re bloodshot, the skin around them red. “I don’t deserve you.”
“Elsie,” I say more firmly, needing her to understand. “You were hurting, and grieving, andbroken.”
She just shakes her head again, pushing to her feet and pacing the room that smells like paint. “That’s not an excuse.”
