Authors: Lauren Gilley
His smile widened and softened. “You wanted a wedding.”
“I know, but I didn’t say anything and you did it anyway…” She trailed off before the emotion in her voice got the best of her.
Jordan sighed, not unhappily, and his expression told her he understood something that even she didn’t. His arms slid around her waist and he pulled her into him. She smoothed a hand down his tie and stared up at him through her building haze of tears.
“You don’t have to ask me to do nice things for you.” He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.
“It might take me a while to get used to that,” she admitted. “But I’m going to try to quit crying about it.” She batted her lashes in a vain attempt to get rid of them.
He hooked a knuckle under her chin and tipped her head back. Her eyes fluttered shut as he kissed her and it was, in her mind, the perfect romance novel kiss with her imperfectly wonderful track coach.
“You wanna go upstairs?” he asked against her lips and a hot thrill went rippling down her spine.
The door to her room was shut and he let her go first, behind her with his hands on her hips like they were one of those obnoxious grabby couples at the state fair she couldn’t stand.
“Am I going to find something kinky in here?” she asked as she turned the knob. “Or…”
The light was different, and that was what stopped her midsentence. Strands of white Christmas lights had been wound around all four bedposts. They were threaded around the bases of the half dozen glass vases of white roses on her dressing table. And draped across the top of her mirror. And then she saw the other changes.
A second nightstand had been added on the other side of the bed: a heavy, masculine dark wood piece full of drawers that was the male to her feminine, white cabinet. There was a silver-framed picture of her on top of it, a water glass and a stopwatch. The closet doors were open and she could see the line of demarcation between his clothes and hers. Their shoes were lined up neatly in the floor.
Someone else might not have noticed – it was the same room just full of twinkly lights – but Ellie found all the little details: the new bottle of perfume on her dressing table, the card with her name scrawled across the envelope propped up against the lamp on her nightstand. The scent of him his things had brought into her room –
their
room. Because it was theirs now. The bed, the room…everything.
“This wasn’t Paige,” she said.
“No it wasn’t.” His lips were against the back of her neck when he spoke. “Is it alright?”
She whirled around in his arms and slid her own all the way up around his neck so she was on her tiptoes, their faces in close. She nodded and kissed him, mouth open and ready, asking him to kiss her back like it was their wedding night and he wanted her more than anything.
And he did.
The next morning, in pearlescent sunshine, drowsy, his arm slung around her waist, she would open her card and read the sweet things he’d had to write down because he couldn’t say them without rolling his eyes and calling himself a “sappy ass.” But in the moment, the details she committed to memory were wordless.
The black of her nails against the white buttons of his shirt. The hiss of his tie slipping through his collar. The soft
thump
of his blazer hitting the floor when she pushed it off his shoulders. The clinging sounds of their lips coming together and pulling apart. The whisper of satin and lace against her skin as he pulled her dress over her head. The bronze of his long fingers against the cream of her skin as he replaced her bra cups with his hands against her breasts.
She would remember the way the light carved shadows between all his lean, shredded muscles. The way he watched her as she settled back on the bed and reached for him. His palms against the soft insides of her thighs, the catch in his breath when he entered her.
For the rest of her life, through the fights and tears and triumphs and quiet Sunday mornings window shopping, she would remember this night, and how much her husband loved her. Now and always.
40
W
illa Beth Wales was born at four-fifteen in the morning on April eleventh. Jordan didn’t get to see her until just after eleven, and even seven hours later, his little sister looked tiny and pale and all swallowed up in her gown and the covers of the hospital bed. She was smiling, though; the kind of smile she’d had on her wedding day.
“Tam named her,” Jo explained.” He was insistent that both his girls have boys’ names.” She breathed a laugh. “He was so excited about it, I couldn’t tell him no. So I guess we’re Joey and Will.”
“Willa’s a pretty good name anyway,” Jordan said down to the pink-faced, swaddled bundle he cradled in his hands. The blanket wrapped around her was the one Ellie had helped him pick out: a super soft white fleece adorned with baby zebras. He’d seen babies before – Chase, Logan and Tyler – and they all had a certain similar wrinkled little face and bright, flushed skin at this stage, but he’d always had a favorite sibling. And this was his favorite sibling’s baby. “She’s gorgeous, Jo,” he said, and meant it.
“Take note, Will. This is our favorite Uncle Jordie.”
“I like that.” Tiny Willa yawned in his arms, all no teeth and tightly shut eyes and pink cheeks. “I’m already an uncle, but not a
favorite
uncle.” He’d noticed, with a surge of anger at his oldest brother, that the bouquet of yellow roses in the window was signed Gwen, Chase and Logan, but that Walt had not wanted to be included. Asshole.
But there were flowers from Jess and Dylan too. From Delta and Mike, Delta’s note handwritten and exclaiming:
I can’t believe you had yours before me!
With a big smiley face drawn at the end.
He glanced up at his sister and thought she looked ten-years-old and worlds older at the same time: proud, content and unburdened. “How’d Tam handle it?”
“Like a superstar,” she said with a satisfied sigh. “Held my hand and didn’t pass out, said I was beautiful and cut the cord and wanted to hold her straight away. He did so well, Jordie. You would have been proud.”
As if on cue, the door opened with a soft click and Tam came in – unshaven, bleary-eyed, hair flat, clothes limp, looking like the happiest guy on earth who’d climbed out of bed at midnight to take his laboring wife to the hospital. He had two McDonald’s bags in one hand and what Jordan knew was a Sprite in the white paper golden arches cup. The greasy smell of burgers and fries was a welcome departure from the disinfectant stink of the hospital around them.
“Bless you, you wonderful man,” Jo greeted as he set the bags on her bedside table and leaned down to drop a kiss on her forehead.
Jordan glanced away from them because they were making the kind of gooey, new-parents eye contact he didn’t want to intrude upon. He didn’t eavesdrop on the soft, whispered communication they shared; instead stared at his niece until he heard the bags crinkle and Jo went for the food. The weight of Tam’s hand touched the back of the rocking chair in which he was sitting.
“Does it make you want one?” Tam asked.
“I’m perfectly happy being uncle to this one for now. But wait till Ellie sees her. Pretty sure my bones are getting jumped.”
Jo and Tam both snorted. “When’s she coming by?” Jo asked as she nibbled at a French fry.
“Should be any minute. She had a paper to turn in and then - ”
There was a soft rap at the door and Tam went to answer it. Jordan watched his wife come creeping in on her tiptoes, hand fluttering to her mouth as she said, “Oh my God.” The sunlight coming through the mini blinds glittered off the rock her grandmother had let him give her.
“And my turn holding the baby comes to an end,” Jordan quipped.
Ellie rolled her eyes at him, but couldn’t maintain the expression for long as he made the slow, careful pass-off and she took Willa into her arms.
“Guys, she’s
beautiful
,” she cooed as she eased down into the rocking chair.
“Thank you,” Jo said with absolute sincerity as she unwrapped her cheeseburger and took a bite. “Sorry I’m eating. Turns out pushing a human out of your body makes you hungry.”
“Well I’d think so!”
Jordan caught Tam’s eye as he moved toward the door and they both slipped out into the hall. Tam stifled a yawn with his fist and rubbed at his eye with the heel of his hand like a sleepy little kid.
“You should be proud, man,” Jordan told him.
He sagged back against the wall, sneakered feet braced on the tile, and stared at the ceiling, a wondrous smile creeping across his tired face. “I’m…I don’t really even know what I am. Joey was – is – amazing. And Will is…” He shook his head. “Yeah, I’m proud.”
“I want us to wait till El’s closer to graduating,” Jordan said, mirroring his brother-in-law’s stance against the opposite wall. He glanced at the door to Jo’s room. “But I dunno. She wants one. Guess we’ll see what her doc says as we go along.”
“So cute,” Tam snorted. “You guys trying to plan it.”
“I’m not cute.”
“Yeah you are.”
“Bite me.”
They regarded one another a long moment and then Jordan pushed away from the wall. “Congrats, bro.” And he told himself their back-slapping hug was totally manly.
**
The soreness was incredible. The strain alone had grabbed at every muscle in her body, and the abuse to her reproductive system left her wondering how it was possible to return to normal. All those childbirth-is-beautiful-and-natural-and-empowering chicks could go suck it. It hurt like a son of a bitch. And it was terrifying.
But her baby girl was incredible too, and so was the shine in her husband’s eyes when Jordan and Ellie left and Tam brought Willa to her, perching on the edge of her bed.
“Where are Mom and Dad?” she asked, fearing she knew the answer.
“On their way back.” He snorted. “Randy could only get her to nap for a half hour.”
“I figured that.”
Jo reached up and smoothed the pad of her thumb across the baby’s soft, soft forehead. Her eyes were open and they were the blue of all infants. “I hope they stay blue,” she said almost to herself. The tiny, wispy hairs on the very top of her head were dark. Black. Like Tam’s.
“You sure about that?” he asked, and she flicked a look up to his face to assess how serious the question was.
He was truly curious. Under his pride and his wonder, his joy and disbelief, he wanted to know that she really did want blue eyes. Like his. Like his mother’s had been.
“So sure that if you ever ask me that again, I’ll kick your ass,” she said, but couldn’t stop the grin that stretched across her face.
“Yes, ma’am.” He grinned back and she swore she could feel how much they both loved her, their emotion a physical entity that lived between them now.
“I’m gonna say this once and only once,” she said, “because it’s sappy and it makes me want to cry for some reason. But, Tam, you…you have no idea how happy you’ve made me. I can’t thank you in any kind of proper way with words for giving her to me.”
He settled Willa carefully in her arms, then took her face in his hands like she was made of glass and kissed her like he had when she was seventeen and it was her first time; like in the dark the night she’d gone to him at Mike’s townhouse after his mother had died; like the day they got married. Their lips came apart with a soft sound and he didn’t say anything when he pulled back – she wasn’t sure he could – but his thumbs swept across her cheeks and she knew what he wanted her to know. His blue eyes told her everything.
Against the protests of her screaming body, she shifted over in the bed and he climbed up next to her. They watched Willa together until Jo’s eyelids started to get heavy and she leaned into Tam and the arm he slipped around both of them.
That was how her parents found them.