Or at least I didn’t.
Now my only intention is going to be to stay the heck away from Finch Vasquez. Because I feel a connection to her. And connections are scary and dangerous and they make you stupid. I can’t afford to be stupid. I have Benji to take care of, and I can’t let anything affect the fact that I currently have a roof over his head, some formula to put in his belly, and diapers to cover his behind, but…
…I could lose everything if I’m not careful. And that means I have to be very careful with Finch.
I push the thoughts of her to the side, because she belongs behind a door labeled Happiness, and that door has been firmly locked to me my whole life. I’ve never been given the key, and I doubt I ever will.
Finch
There’s a quick rap on the front door and I jump up to go to my room, but just as quickly the lock turns and the door opens. Peck and Star walk into the room, and they’re carrying lots and lots of shopping bags. Peck has a carrier with her baby in it, and Wren immediately goes to get him out of it.
“You t-take Sammy out and he’s going to w-wake up hungry,” Peck warns.
I look around at all the junk. “Are you doing meals on wheels again?”
Star shakes her head. “We went baby shopping.” She grins.
“You’re barely pregnant,” I scold.
“It’s not for me, dummy,” Star says. “It’s all for Tag and his baby.”
I wave my hand over the piles and piles of stuff. “You bought all this for that little thing in there?” I jerk my thumb toward Tag’s room.
“Well, Tag didn’t have anything with him. We thought he could use some stuff.” Star shrugs.
“Wait a minute!” I cry. “Aren’t you supposed to be on your honeymoon? Why the fuck are you out shopping instead of screwing that amazingly sexy husband of yours?”
She winces. “Oh my god,” she breathes. “My vagina is sore already. I couldn’t go one more time on that swing.” She grins. “Well, not until tonight, anyway.”
“So the swing was a hit?” I ask.
“Oh hell yeah! You can do some crazy shit with that thing. Upside down. Right side up. Backward. Forward. You name it.”
Sammy starts to cry, and Peck holds out her arms to take him from Wren. “I w-warned you,” she says. Then she sits down and lifts her shirt. He makes a sweet little humming sound as he finds his breakfast. Wren rubs his head. “Be quick about it, dude,” she says. “Aunty Wren wants to play with you.” He pops off Peck’s boob long enough to grin at Wren. Then he turns his head and dives back in.
A noise sounds from Tag’s room.
“Oh, another baby! I’ll go get that one!” Wren cries.
“There are entirely too many children in this apartment,” I grumble.
Wren comes back carrying Benji, and she has the back of her hand pressed against his forehead. “Does he feel warm to you?” she asks. She lowers him like she wants me to take him.
“Oh, hell no,” I say.
“Take him. Feel his forehead,” she insists.
Begrudgingly, I take him from her and set him in my lap. He looks up at me and immediately starts to cry.
“She makes me feel like that too,” Star tells him.
“Here, you take it.” I hold him out toward Star. She has baby fever, so I assume she’ll take him, but she jumps up and starts to sort through bags of baby stuff instead. “Hel-loooo,” I cry. Everyone ignores me.
I feel a little wobbly with him in my arms and I’m afraid I’ll drop him, so I pull him closer to me. He settles his little head against my shoulder and I look down my nose at him. The weight of him in my arms feels awkward.
“He does feel warm,” I say. “You don’t think he’s getting sick, do you?”
Star unwraps little sleepers and blankets and then takes them to put them in the wash.
“Shouldn’t you ask Tag if he wants that stuff?” I say.
“It’s just some used crap that my neighbor was throwing out.” Star grins at me as she comes back into the room. She hides all the empty packages in the trashcan, burying them deep. “And it’s not like he doesn’t need it. I don’t think he has much.”
“Except for Wren’s fifty thousand dollars,” I remind her.
“I used that to get Benji from Julia,” a deep voice says from behind me.
I jump, and the baby jumps too. I pat his back to calm him down.
“Who’s Julia?” Star asks.
“His mother,” Tag answers. He’s wearing a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, and he doesn’t have shoes or socks on. He rubs a towel across his wet hair, chafing it briskly.
“Where is she?” Star asks.
“I have no idea.” He sits down next to me on the couch and smiles at his son. “I didn’t think you like babies,” he says to me.
“I don’t,” I grumble. But the baby’s being so still and calm. I hold him, because I want to hear the story about the mother of Tag’s child.
“Well, babies like you,” he says. Then he tweaks the end of my nose with the tip of his finger.
I reach up and cover my nose. I can’t believe he just did that. I catch my sisters looking at one another with shocked expressions. “Shut it,” I say to them all.
Peck pops her baby off her boob and switches sides, all beneath a blanket that Star handed her from her bag. “So she’s not coming b-back?” Peck asks.
He shakes his head. “No.”
Star asks softly, “Do you want her to?”
“I did. Even after all that happened, I wanted her to come back. But she’d moved on. It was my own fault, I think.”
So you just offered her fifty thousand dollars and she gave you the baby?” I ask.
“No.” He scratches his head. “There was a little more to it than that. But to make a long story short, I’m broke and I have Benji.” He shrugs. He looks down at Benji, who is starting to fidget in my arms. “Does he look warm to you?”
Benji is still fretful, so Tag gets up and fetches a bottle. I expect him to take the baby from me, but he just warms the bottle and then hands it to me. I look up at him like I’m lost, because I am.
Tag adjusts Benji in my arms so that he’s reclining a little, and he sticks the bottle into his mouth. Tag grins at me. “I had to figure it all out too,” he says. “I’m still learning.”
“I don’t particularly want to learn,” I grumble.
He laughs. “He likes you,” he says quietly.
“Well, that’s one of us,” I toss back.
I try to maintain my aloofness, but I find that I kind of like the little guy.
Tag’s leg is pressed along the length of mine, and my shoulder touches his arm. He could move over some. There’s room on the other side of him.
“We brought you some baby stuff,” Star tells him. “You didn’t look like you had much with you.”
He heaves a sigh. “I don’t have much. But you really didn’t have to do that.”
She waves a breezy hand through the air. “Oh, it was nothing. Just some stuff my neighbor was tossing out.”
“Liar,” he says.
She grins. “Whatever.”
They sit and talk quietly while I finish feeding Benji. When his bottle is empty and his eyes are heavy, Tag adjusts him on my shoulder and picks up my hand to show me how to burp him. “Is he going to throw up on me?” I ask, panicking a little.
Peck tosses him a burp cloth and he slides it between my shirt and his kid’s face. I relax a little. Then the little guy lets out the biggest burp I ever heard. I’m about to sit him back from me so I can give him some serious props for that massive burp, but before I can move him far enough he spits up on me. White stuff flies out of his mouth and onto my shirt.
“Eww! Take it. Take it now.”
Tag laughs as he holds out his arms, and I pass Benji over. I get up to go and change. “A little puke won’t hurt you!” he calls to my back.
But what worries me more than anything isn’t the fact that I just got puked on. It’s
the fact that I don’t mind nearly as much as I should.
Tag
I pace the floor with Benji in my arms. I have no idea what to do with him. He’s hot and his cheeks are rosy and he’s fretful. I haven’t known him that long, but he’s never been this fretful before. I bounce him gently on my shoulder and he just cries and cries. He won’t take a bottle, and he doesn’t need a clean diaper. I already checked.
Wren has been gone all night. I assume she’s out with the others, since no one is here but me. I’m all alone, my son is sick, and I have no idea what to do with him.
Suddenly, the front door opens and Fin tumbles into the apartment. She has a man with her, and he has his hand on her ass. She freezes when she sees me. He doesn’t. He spins her toward him so he can cover her mouth with his.
Rage clouds the corners of my vision. It’s swift and unexpected and I have no idea where it came from. It startles the crap out of me.
The guy who has his hand under her shirt freezes when she covers his hand with hers. “Stop,” she hisses. She lifts his hand from beneath her clothes and presses it away. He grimaces and pushes back. She steps away and adjusts her clothing. “Hi,” she says quietly to me. “What’s wrong?”
I look down at Benji. “I have no idea. He won’t stop crying.” I look toward her for help, but she’s staring at Benji, her brow puckered.
“Who’s this, Finch?” the guy asks.
“Shh!” she hisses at him.
He opens his mouth to speak again and she points to the door.
“You may go,” she says.
“What?” he croaks.
“Out,” she says. She walks to the door, holds it open wide, and she makes a quick “move along” motion with her hand. He hangs his head, clenches his jaw, and then squares his shoulders and leaves.
He turns back at the last moment. “Call me?” he says.
She slams the door in his face.
Benji’s cries grow even louder. “I don’t know what to do,” I say.
“Did you take his temperature?”
“I don’t have a thermometer.”
“Where’s his stuff?”
I point toward my room. As I pace back and forth, surely wearing a groove in the carpet, she goes into my room and comes back out with his diaper bag over her shoulder.
“Let’s go,” she says impatiently. She flaps her hands in the air.
“Where?”
“We’re taking the offspring to the hospital, dummy.” She motions me forward again. “Move it.”
My heart leaps into my throat. “You think he needs to go to the hospital?”
“I have no idea what he needs,” she says impatiently. She picks up his carrier and I put him in it.
He doesn’t stop screaming. He cries all the way down the hallway and into the elevator, and his sobs turn into sniffles as we get in the cab. He drifts off to sleep, but it only lasts for a moment. Then he cries again.
“I’ve never felt quite so helpless,” I say. I rub the top of his downy little head. He’s so beautiful. And I can’t even take care of him.
“They’ll get him all fixed up at the hospital,” she assures me. His car seat is in the middle of the back seat, and she’s on one side while I’m on the other.
“They have to see him there even if I don’t have money, right?” I ask quietly. My gut lurches. I hate even asking the question because saying it out loud is like affirming all the bad things my uncle told me my whole life.
I would never amount to anything.
No one could trust me.
No one can count on me.
I can’t even take care of my son.
I am nothing.
“They’ll see him,” she says. She lets Benji wrap his tiny little fist around her finger. “One way or the other,” she whispers, “they’ll see him.”
I take a breath and lay my head back against the seat of the cab.
“It’s probably nothing,” she says quietly.
“You really think so?” I whisper, more to myself than to her.
“Of course.” She smiles at me and covers my hand with hers on top of Benji’s belly. “Do you know where your sisters are?” She takes out her phone and starts to tap.
“No, I thought they might be with you.”
“I left early to come back to the apartment.”
Her face colors ever so slightly and she doesn’t look at me. She left them to come back to the apartment with a man.
“Was that your boyfriend?” I know it’s not. But I want to hear about it. It’ll take my mind off Benji.
She snorts. “God, no.”
“Who was he?”
She shrugs. “Just a guy.”
“Just a guy?”
She nods. “Just a guy.”
“Your date?”
She shakes her head and heaves a sigh. “Someone I met tonight.”
“You brought a guy home you just met?” I blurt out. I hate it as soon as it comes out of my mouth.
“Yes. Don’t judge.”
“Why?”
She finally looks at me. Her brow furrows. “Why what?”
“Why did you bring home a guy you just met? And why were his hands all over you, if you just met him?”
“Because you spent two months inside my fucking head, Tag. And now you’re back and I’m ready to move on. So let me move on, will you?” Her eyes stare into mine and I can feel an electric hum move between us like a live wire.
“Oh,” I say. “I see.”
“Don’t judge,” she warns.
I hold up my hands in surrender. “I’m not.”
“Yes, you are. Stop it.” Her voice is biting and cold all of a sudden.
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“No, really–” But in my head, I am. I am. I really am. And I hate that I am. I don’t want her to want anyone else. I want her to be mine.
She startles me when she grabs my chin and turns my face toward hers. “I like to have sex, Tag. Get over it.”
I bristle.
“It’s perfectly all right for a woman to like to fuck men. I like sex. I don’t need to defend it, particularly not to you, seeing as how you couldn’t resist me either.” She lets my face go, but she doesn’t stop looking into my eyes. “Don’t judge,” she says quietly.
“I wasn’t judging,” I say again. I groan inwardly. I shouldn’t say this out loud, but I will. I can’t help it. “I’m…jealous.” I squeeze my eyes shut tightly.
She startles. “Why?”
I might as well be honest. “It bothers me.”
“What bothers you about it?” Her words drip venom and ice.
I choose my words with care. “Because once will never be enough.”
The cab stops at the emergency room entrance and I get out, taking Benji’s car seat with me. She grabs the base and follows me into the hospital. We go to the desk, and very quickly they have us in triage and then they take Benji from me completely, promising that it’ll only be a moment and I’ll be with him again.
He’s gone, and I’m left with Finny and she’s looking at me like I’m going to shatter. And I think I might. But she’s also looking at me with a question in her eyes. And I don’t know the answer. I know nothing except that I’m scared senseless.
“Come on.” She takes my hand and pulls me toward the bathroom. She glances furtively left and right and then pulls me inside. “Sixty seconds,” she says.
She opens her arms to me and I don’t even think before I pull her against me. I need this. I need her. I need for someone to take away the helpless feeling I have.
This time when I hold her, my dick doesn’t get hard. But I do use her. I use her warmth and her softness and I listen to her sweet voice as she counts to sixty. It’s over too soon. She steps back from me and I’m at a loss.
“Let’s go wait for Benji,” she says. She threads her fingers through mine.
“I wasn’t judging,” I say quietly as we sit side by side in the wait
ing area.
She sighs. “Okay.”
“I really wasn’t. I was thinking that I can understand why you get so many flowers.”
Her brow puckers. “What?”
“Because you’re pretty awesome,” I say quietly. “If you were all the way mine, I wouldn’t want to give you up either.”
She strokes a hand up her arm when goose flesh erupts. “I don’t do relationships.”
“I don’t do one-nighters.”
“Then it’s a good thing we’re really good friends, isn’t it?” she says.
The nurse comes out and calls my name. We get up and walk to her. “Are you the mother?” she asks Fin.
Fin starts to shake her head but I say, “Yes.” I don’t want to go back there alone. Not right now. I want her with me to soften the blow of whatever is wrong with Benji. I can’t lose Benji. And I need Fin to help make it all right.
I want to explore why sixty seconds holding Fin was better than a single moment I ever spent with Julia, but I can’t do it right now. Now I have to find out what’s wrong with my son. When he’s better, I’ll deal with the rest.
Finch
He looks absolutely helpless. Tag, I mean. Not Benji. Benji actually looks comfortable. He’s not crying right this second. They hooked him up to IVs and gave him some medicine to bring down his fever. It was just an infection. A simple one. Antibiotics should clear it up. They did a bunch of blood work and pronounced him okay.
Tag is a little bit more of a problem.
“Would you stop pacing?” I say.
“I’m not pacing,” he argues. But he doesn’t stop walking.
“Okay, then stop walking briskly back and forth. You’re causing a draft.”
He stops and stares down into the bassinette. “In my head, I’m trying to plan,” he says quietly.
“Plan for what?”
He shrugs. “Plan for his life. Plan to take care of him. Plan to be a good father who can fulfill his needs. I don’t even have a job, Finny.” He heaves a sigh and then scrubs the heels of his hands into his eyes.
“It’s late,” I say. “You can think about all that tomorrow.”
“I have to find a job.”