The One, page 25
These fuckwits apparently never heard of people who are just naturally big-boned or thick and lush, as I like to say. What the hell is she supposed to do if that’s the way she’s built? Starve herself to death? Assholes! Whatever.
Since I couldn’t be with her twenty-four-seven to knock the shit out of idiots that made her feel bad about herself, I instead worked on building her confidence, but I think I did that shit too well because she’s a damn terror now. The student had surpassed the teacher.
She no longer hid from stares but held her head up and just basically ignored, especially when her hand was in mine. I taught her how to walk into places like she owned them and how to grey-rock ignorant motherfuckers, and wouldn’t you know, instead of whispers and stares, she now had people starting up conversations with her.
Her newfound confidence made her even more beautiful to me, at least, and I guess the idiot brigade caught a case of, if you can’t beat them, join them because she was beating back friends left and right. At least she had the good sense not to fall for that superficial bullshit.
She didn’t need any new friends anyway. Between my sisters and Nat, she was covered, and my ass was paying the price. Why is it that whenever females get together, a man is always the pinata at their party? I had to tell all of them to get the hell out of my face and leave me out of their shit more than once.
And guess what? Roz is the worst of the bunch. If this one says I did some shit with her lying ass, my little sister reads me for filth and puts me in my place while the terror laughs her ass off. Then I have to hear from Jackie, my sister-in-law, and Nat because they have some sort of network going against me.
That’s one of the reasons I stayed out of their wedding planning bullshit because I was never right about anything, according to them. What’s so wrong about a kegger at the reception, I ask you? Or me wearing the suit of my choice instead of a tux which I had no interest in wearing? Apparently, weddings are for women only, and we men just had to show up. Since that was their take, they could have that shit and plan it themselves.
Apparently, that wasn’t allowed, either. She wanted my input, but all my ideas were stupid. By the third or fourth time they ganged up on me, I washed my hands of the whole thing, and no matter how she sulked and pouted, I refused to put myself in the middle of that hell again. She could spend all my money on her froufrou shit, but I’d be damned if I was saying one more word about ‘her’ wedding.
Once we had that behind us, it was time to focus on the little one; that was a whole other minefield. I went to all the checkups before the midwife started coming to the house to do her thing. That’s when the question of whether or not we wanted to know the sex reared its ugly head. This one wasn’t sure if she wanted to know or be surprised. That question took weeks to answer.
She decided she didn’t want to know, but then the others wanted a gender reveal, and we got back on the merry-go-round. They settled on a baby shower, where they lost their damn minds again. It took three cars to bring all that shit back to the house, and we already had a nursery full of shit because as soon as we got back from the honeymoon, this one had been shopping for the baby. Women confuse the hell out of me.
We’re not going to talk about the nursery or how it took knocking down one wall between two rooms to make the space bigger for something that was the size of a damn peanut. Or the weeks it took to get it done the way she wanted. Thankfully, I hired professionals to do that shit, or I’d have shot myself in the head a long time ago. Steph, my Steph, is a demanding little shit.
“Hey, you, it’s been eight hours with this shit; what’s going on?” The midwife, who had brought another one along for the birth, just smiled at me like I asked her for the time or some shit.
“We’ve talked about this, Mr. Donovan; some births can take hours, sometimes days. Your wife is doing very well; the baby’s already crowning.”
Did she say that shit to piss me off? What days? And what the fuck is crowning? This ain’t no coronation; it sounded more like a beheading, what with the way my wife was screaming the place down. “Leave her alone Mace.”
Of course, she had strength to ride my ass. “Go give the others an update.”
“No dice, I’m not leaving you.” I’d won the toss about who got to be in the room with her when she gave birth. Not that there was any doubt. I didn’t even take part in that particular argument.
I sat in the kitchen listening as the argument heated up between Nat, my sisters, and my mother as to who deserved to be in the room. When they started getting out of hand, I just simply walked past them with the final decision, me, I was going to be the one holding her hand. I drowned out their arguments, including hers, because they were stupid.
She didn’t want me to see her like that; Nat thought she had dibs because of their many years of friendship, and mom and my sisters argued family. I bit into my apple and grinned at them as I crushed their dreams, then walked away, leaving them calling me names.
I don’t regret that decision, but damn, this shit is for the birds. Since when do people give birth in bathtubs? What if ours wasn’t big enough? What if the kid drowned with his first breath? That question got me eye rolls from my beloved wife, and her midwife laughed at me as she explained things to me as if I were ten. I’m gonna cancel every payment I ever made to this quack as soon as we get out of here.
“That’s it, push, push.” We were back in business again. I knew because Steph was on a mission once again to break every bone in my hand. “Come on, dad, do you want to see your baby being born?”
“I’m good.” The fuck I’m going down there; I had a good enough view from where I stood. I was going to get into the tub so I could sit behind her and hold her until they told me about the blood and other shit, and I noped the fuck out of that idea.
My knees were about to give out from kneeling here for so long, but it was nothing compared to what she was going through. Now, I’ve been distracting myself with my thoughts of what the last few months of our lives had been like, but when I heard the first little sound from my kid that seemed to come out of nowhere, it was like the world had changed.
In the blink of an eye, everything felt different. There was a bolder in my chest, and I lost my vision for a minute. It took me that long to realize that I was crying, and when the midwife handed my wife our son, I almost lost it. He was so tiny, so vulnerable, and all my new responsibilities hit me at once. For the rest of my life, this little being was going to need me. Fuck me!
“Good job Stephanie, you did so well.” I didn’t hear most of what the midwife was saying because of the ringing in my ears, but I did hear the scream Steph let out and saw the flurry of movement as midwife number two took the baby back while the other one went back to the other end of the tub and told Steph to push again.
I feel bad for my kid; he’s going to grow up without a dad because I’m going to end these two right here and now. It was obvious that something was wrong from the way they were acting, but before I could voice my displeasure and grab my kid from the arms of midwife number two, there was another little being falling into the hands of midwife one.
I was stunned, speechless. “Two?” That didn’t sound like me, but I felt the word leave my lungs. I pointed at the kid. “This one’s missing something.” The three of them laughed it up as I stood there like a hump, having lost all thought from my head.
Steph was laughing and crying at the same time as I handed our newly cleaned-up son back to her while she passed our daughter off to be taken care of as well. What the hell is she laughing about? I distinctly remember telling her no girls. The fuck, they played me. I glared at the midwife, who never mentioned two babies being in there, and my wife, the sneak, who was cooing like a nut.
“How is it two? How come you didn’t tell me?” I glared at the midwife again.
“We didn’t know; she was hidden.” Just then, midwife number two passed me my daughter, and I got trapped before I caught myself. Her eyes, my eyes, looked right into mine; fuck…me. So, this is how they do it, how women talk men into having more than one of these things, how they get men to forget the hell that was the first one.
“Hello, baby girl, I’m your daddy.” Plunk, that’s the sound of my heart falling at her little feet.
“Mace, for crying out loud, hand me, my granddaughter.” My mom, the baby thief, had parked her ass in my house for the past two weeks under the guise of helping my wife. Every day I walked in the door, I had to fight her and the other gaggle of women who didn’t have anything better to do than hang around my place all day just to hold my kids.
My little princess cooed and smacked her lips as she looked up at me while her mom fed her brother, who seemed to always be on the tit, a chip off the old block. The past two weeks have been both amazing and terrifying as hell. Because no one knew my daughter was hiding in there, we thought we might have to take the babies to the hospital after the birth, but the midwives took care of monitoring everything that first day before giving us the all-clear.
I spent the days after the birth getting another set of everything we already had, from cribs down to the stroller, which we had to change altogether for a double. The women took care of the clothes because all the things we had bought were pretty much unisex, but apparently, girls need more shit; all pink and frilly.
As life would have it, my daughter liked me more while her brother was stuck to his mother like a limpet, the little shit. I didn’t mind, though, because no matter which one of them I held, my heart did the same flopping around shit in my chest.
I thought I loved their mom before, but the love I now felt for the three of them was next level. If I could just get my mother out of my damn house and her flying monkeys along with her, I’d be straight. I was tempted at least once a day to call dad to come and take her ass home, but when I saw how much Steph appreciated having her here to help out, I backed down.
Not that my dad was much help, he was just as bad as his wife. His excuse is that they didn’t have the opportunity to enjoy their own kids as they would’ve liked due to responsibilities and stress, so now they plan to make up for it with their grandbabies.
As for Nat, I have to beat her off with a stick because she loves her niece and nephew almost as much as their mother and I do, which means she and Jaxx are at my place every time they breathe. I think she’s trying to talk Jaxx into marriage because he always has a petrified look on his face these days. According to Steph, he’d already asked her about rings and sizes, jackass.
I can’t blame him, though, since he’s seen how well things have been working out for me; he got it into his head that marriage is a breeze. I’m not gonna tell him about the other side of that coin. All in all, I got a great deal out of the bargain, my kids and the woman who’s now smiling up at me as she feeds my son.
I winked at her as the people around us, our family, argued amongst each other as to which preschool in the area was best for the kids that couldn’t even walk or talk yet. This is my life now, yep, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I doubt they noticed when I helped Steph up off the couch with one hand while holding Jasmine in the crook of the other and walked her up the stairs to our room. This wasn’t the first time we’d disappeared without them noticing. As soon as they get their teeth in one of their bones about the kids, we give them the slip and let them fight it out without our input which never seems to matter anyway.
“Can you believe them?” I got her settled on the bed with little Justin and sat across from her, just taking it all in. I find myself doing this a lot these days, almost as if in a dream and this is someone else’s life. It amazed me sometimes how awesome everything is between us, especially those nights when I walk into the nursery, which is connected to our master suite through a door just to stand over the cribs and watch my little ones sleep.
My heart gets so full at those times that I can’t imagine needing or wanting anything else in life. Then I go back to bed and hold my wife in my arms and know that somewhere, somehow, I’d done something deserving of my perfect one. Now as we looked at each other over the heads of our children, grinning like simpletons, she reached for my hand and squeezed. Yeah, I know. No words were needed. We’d both found the one.
Silver, Jordan, The One
