Page 22 of A Baby for Christmas
And then I knew what I needed to do. I stroked a hand through his dark locks. "You want to come to my place with me? There's something I gotta do, and I'd like your help withit."
"Whatever you need," he said, looking slightly dazed. I gave him the smallest smile. It was nice to know my lips still had that kind of effect onhim.
"You okay to drive?" Iasked.
"Yeah, I'll be fine." He rubbed his face. "It's only a shortdrive."
"Okay, then let's get going." I rose from the couch and he followed me. I took his hand again, leading the way and hoping that my plan wouldwork.
But I was feeling prettyconfident.
14
Ben
Ihadno idea what Robin had in mind, but when he took my hand, I was ready to follow him to the end of the world and beyond. I always was. Once we got to his place, he went up to the attic and carried down two shoe boxes, all while saying nothing. With the boxes, he went into his bedroom, and I followed. Then I watched him set his loot down on the bed and pull another box out of hisdresser.
Finally, I couldn't stop myself from asking. "What's allthis?"
"Hang on." He left the bedroom, only to reappear with a stack of blank paper in his hand. "I hope this is gonna be enough," he muttered tohimself.
"Enough forwhat?"
He licked his lips and placed the paper on his desk before turning back to the boxes. Picking one up, he handed it to me. "Openit."
I did, curious what I would findinside.
Papercranes.
Lots of paper cranes. Big ones, small ones, white ones, yellow ones, Paper cranes folded from newspapers. Paper cranes folded from exercise sheets, left in Robin's locker or secretly passed on in class... My mouth dropped and my heart beat painfully fast. I stared at the other two boxes I hadn't opened yet. "You kept them all?" I couldn't believe it. I'd folded so damn many paper cranes, how could he have kept them all? How hadn't he grown tired of them after the first two orthree?
"Of course I did." Robin's smile was almost bashful. "You made these for me. And I figure we've got almostenough."
"Enough for what?" I askedagain.
"For our wish." He took my arm and made me sit on the bed with him—not that I needed much convincing. Next he handed me a piece of paper. "We're gonna make Cooper feel better. Get folding, sunshine." There was that pet name again. When we were dating he said he liked to call me that becausemy life is dark without you in it.It made me feel warm to hear him say that, like he was my suntoo.
I started folding the paper, not caring how silly this was from a rational point of view. Folding paper cranes wasn't going to grant us our wish, and even if it did, I doubted that we could reach a thousand. None of that mattered, though. What mattered was that Robin had kept my cranes. He'dtreasuredthem. And now he'd given me something to do, apurpose.
A small part of me even believed that our wish could really come true. As long as Robin was by my side, it felt like anything waspossible.
Next to me, he was folding his own piece of paper. For a few seconds, I watched him. He was doing it exactly right. "Where did you learn to dothat?"
He scoffed, as if I'd asked him a silly question. "I've watched you often enough, don't youthink?"
"Fair enough." I continued folding and so did he. My phone was in my pocket. If there were any updates on Cooper's status, the doctor would call me. I kind of wanted it to ring because I needed information, but I also didn't want it to ring because I didn't want to hear any bad news. "You think Cooper's going to be okay?" I asked once I'd made my first three cranes of the night. I lined them up next to the one Robin hadfinished.
"Of course he will be. Hang on." Robin rose from the bed and got a black felt tip pen from the desk. Then he picked up the paper crane he'd folded and wrote something on it before passing it to me. I turned it over in my hand to read themessage.
Everything is going to befine. :)
How often had I crafted cranes with similar messages for Robin? The way he returned the favor to me now when I needed him the most was almost too much for me to take without chokingup.
"Hey," Robin handed me another piece of paper. "Just keep folding. We got this,okay?"
"How can you be so sure?" He hadn't seen the way my puppy looked at me when I had to leave him behind at the vet. My heart still hurt from that. I should have taken better care ofhim.
Robin shot me a thoughtful look. "I don't believe a lot of things," he said finally, "but if there's one thing I do believe it's that you deserve a happy ending. I'm not going to accept anythingelse."
