Page 39 of Rock the Cradle of Love
The speed limit drops when Milaca appears around a bend in the road. Thank God Cameron and Stacy have GPS in their car. He finds the store easily enough rather than having to drive around town, wasting precious minutes. And it’s open already.
Matty is snoozing peacefully and Taylor regrets having to disturb him; he has no choice though. The whole point of the drive was to get a new phone. Taylor unfolds the stroller and as gently as possible transfers his nephew into it. Matty remains asleep and Taylor breathes a sigh of relief.
The store isn’t busy, thankfully, although there are a couple of people ahead of him. Nervous energy keeps his leg in motion even though he’s trying to wait patiently. The sooner he gets his phone issue taken care of, the sooner he can at least put Noah on official hold instead of being in this blackout. There’s no doubt that Noah has already called him, and Taylor is rarely inaccessible via call or text or even email. Add in Noah’s worry about their compatibility and he’s probably freaking the fuck out.
Fuck. Taylor rakes his fingers through his hair. If he’d just stayed awake last night, he wouldn’t be in this mess. If he’d refused to leave Noah’s condo in the first place and they’d talked. It’s his fault, either way. Taylor sighs, but a store rep walks over just then.
An hour later, Taylor walks out with a new phone. All his contacts and photos are in place. He’s going to memorize Noah’s number. At the very least, he’s going to write it down and keep the note in his wallet.
Matty’s still sleeping and the park across the street looks like a nice spot for a quick phone call. He turns the stroller toward the crosswalk.
The red light is just fixing to change when a firetruck comes racing around the corner, lights flashing and sirens blaring. An ambulance is right behind it and the high-pitched siren chirps loudly as it passes. Matty startles out of sleep into crying and looking panicked.
And fuck. How is this Taylor’s day?
Matty struggles to sit up in his stroller, screaming and reaching his arms out to Taylor once he finally gets upright. Taylor lifts the poor kid up of course. Matty clings to him and wipes tears and snot on Taylor’s shoulder. Taylor jiggles him trying to get him calm down and steers the stroller back toward the car with a sigh.
Matty fights getting in his car seat, gripping Taylor’s shirt in his small hands and calling out, “Ma, ma, ma, ma…”
Taylor gives up and climbs in the back seat, digging around for something to help the kid chill out. He finds a bottle of water and feels around for a container of formula powder and mixes them together while trying to keep clasping hands from spilling both. Once he’s got it ready, he nestles Matty into the crook of his arm and slips the nipple into Matty’s waiting mouth. His breath shudders a couple of times, but he settles down and slurps away as if his life depends on it. And he won’t hold his own bottle.
Jesus fucking Christ. Taylor wants to makeonefucking phone call.
Doesn’t Murphy have better things to do than plague Taylor right now. He’s got a relationship to salvage.
He looks down at Matty. Matty’s big brown eyes are looking up at him with shiny interest, long eyelashes still clumped together from his tears. Despite everything, Taylor can’t help but smile. Matty’s cute as they come with wisps of brown hair and chubby rosy cheeks. Matty grins back around the nipple.
Taylor’s reminded of Emma. And Noah. His heart hurts, he cares so much for Noah.
Noah’s a great hockey player. He’s a great guy, a great teammate and friend, and a great dad.
But he’s asexual. As innotsexual. And Taylor likes sex a lot. Would have it all the time if he could.
On the drive here, anxiety had kept his brain from thinking too hard about much of anything except replacing his phone and calling Noah. He can make that call now and suddenly he’s thinking better of it. For the moment at least. Now that Taylor’s still for longer than ten seconds and he’s not freaking out about his phone any longer, other thoughts are creeping in.
The first couple of weeks with Noah had been idyllic. Everything Taylor could have wished for. A cozy little love nest, a precious baby to sorta call his own, a smoking hot hockey player in his life and bed and a lot of sex. Noah had been game to try everything. Hand jobs, blow jobs, frotting, anal, even.
But then Taylor had started feeling weird and uncomfortable about having sex with a guy who physically felt no desire whatsoever. He still can’t really wrap his head around that, becausecome on…So he’d gotten on the Internet and read about asexuality. One website claimed that most asexuals seemed to be averse to sex. It freaked him out. If Noah was having sex just to appease Taylor, well, he just… That didn’t sit well with him at all. And the fact that he hadn’t considered it any point made him feel like shit. Of course, another site said many asexuals enjoyed sex with their partners even though they didn’t feel physical desire.
That seems to be where things started to go off the rails.
Perhaps his phone dying, his phone falling in the toilet, Matty’s breakdown—maybe all these events were the universe’s way of trying to get Taylor’s attention. Well, it had it now. Until Matty finished his bottle and allowed himself to be placed in his car seat, Taylor has nothing else to do but pay attention.
Maybe the universe didn’t want him to call Noah. Maybe he’s supposed to take this time to think long and hard about a relationship with Noah.
To be fair, Noah had tried on several occasions to instigate a conversation. For one reason or another, it had never happened. Now that Taylor thinks about it, it was mostly him. Not with any malicious intent, but it was as if he didn’t want to hear what Noah had to say. Either about himself, about his asexuality, or about what a relationship with him would be like. Taylor had evaded those attempts as if he was afraid of what Noah would say. And maybe he had been.
Matty turns his head away from the bottle and struggles to sit up. Taylor helps him. Pats his back for a few minutes until a juicy burp issues forth.
“Hey, buddy, you ready to go home?”
“Ma ma ma.”
“Yeah, let’s go see your mama.”
Chapter Thirteen
The next day and a half passes in a whirlwind of funeral preparations. Taylor’s sole job has been to wrangle the kids between the ages of five and thirteen. The older ones stick around though, because Uncle/Cousin Taylor is an honest-to-God professional hockey player and, well, bragging rights, eh?
