Page 45 of A Very Bumpy Christmas
I blink. “Say that again.”
“I can plan Denver,” he says, eyes steady on mine. “Gate numbers, rotations, a Saint Pierce post if Dean will play ball. Logistics are legible to me. Loving you?” His mouth tips, not quite a smile. “There’s no manual for that. And I don’t want to improvise where you, and the baby, are the things I can’t replace.”
My throat goes tight in that inconvenient way. “You won’t.”
“I might,” he says, honest to a fault. “If I rush. If I assume. If I make you carry the parts of me that should be my job.” Helowers his head until our foreheads touch, the softest press. “I am more afraid of being a postcard dad and a holiday boyfriend than I am of a winter transfer. That’s the truth.”
My fingers curl in his shirt, because I am, maddeningly, equal parts strong and soft. “I’m afraid of needing you,” I admit, and there it is—the thing I’ve been orbiting. “It feels like handing you the only parachute. I’ve been training for solo landings my whole life. Needing you means… what if you’re wheels up and I’m here holding an empty bag?”
He exhales, a sound that holds both ache and relief. “Then we pack two,” he says simply. “Two parachutes. Two calendars. Two sets of shoulders. We make redundancies for the heart the way we make them for everything else.”
A laugh escapes me, watery and ridiculous. “You’re romantic in such a weird, tactical way.”
“Thank you?” he offers, and that earns him a real laugh.
The baby shifts like they want in on the conversation. He slides a palm to my belly, and we both go quiet at the press of a little heel or elbow against his hand. His eyes go glassy for a second, and mine do, too.
“Slow yes?” he says, not moving his hand. “We don’t solve January tonight. We build the habit of not assuming. We ask. We list. We try. We forgive. We keep the bubble tight. One sandbag at a time.”
I nod, and something unclenches in my chest I didn’t notice was clenched. “Slow yes,” I echo. “With… scheduled moments of being brave.”
“Deal.” He kisses my forehead like a signature, then looks past me at the refrigerator. “Write it down?”
I follow his gaze. The fridge is a collage of our small life: appointment card, grocery list with “lemons” underlined twice, the heartbeat strip magneted front and center. I grab a sticky note and a pen, heart banging like it wants to be part of the to-do list.
“What are we writing?” I ask.
He thinks for exactly one beat. “Ask, don’t assume.”
I scribble it and stick it next to the heartbeat curve. It looks right there, like a label for the sound.
“And one for you,” he says gently, nodding at the pad.
I chew the pen cap, then write, “Let him help.” The words look naked and brave and exactly the size of the leap I can make tonight. I put it under his. The notes overlap a little. It feels like the point.
We stand there, ridiculous and earnest in our midnight kitchen, admiring two sticky notes like they’re cathedral blueprints. Then he tugs me in by the waistband of my pajama pants and steals a kiss that tastes like lemon and relief.
“I don’t want to love you wrong,” he murmurs against my mouth.
“Then don’t,” I say, because complicated can be simple sometimes. “We’ll tell each other when we’re off-course.”
“We’ll also tell each other when we get it right,” he adds, and there’s that small smile again, the one that rewires the lighting in a room.
He shifts behind me, palms finding the spots at my low back that hurt and easing them with the kind of pressure that proves he’s been paying attention. My body, traitor and ally both, melts into him, the kind of fit that makes a person dangerous to your routines.
“I’m still scared,” I confess, quieter now, because the truth doesn’t get smaller just because we’ve named it once.
“Me too,” he says easily. “Fear can ride in the back seat. It doesn’t get the wheel.”
“You and your metaphors,” I mutter, smiling.
“I’m adapting to my audience,” he says, and kisses the top of my head.
The kettle finally clicks off, like it’s been holding its breath with us. He pours, adds honey and a squeeze of lemon, and hands me the mug with both hands like it’s a warm contract. We carry it down the hall together—the tree still glowing, the apartment still ours. I climb into bed and he follows, fitting himself around me like a promise he can keep.
“Denver?” I ask into the dark, because I’m me and because the quiet is where I do my worst writing.
“We’ll talk to Dean,” he says. “See if Saint Pierce can be more than a season.” A pause. “But I won’t ask you to move away from your life. If anything moves, it starts with me.”
