Somehow
I sat on the couch, watching Zac and Layla nap for quite a while before my stomach began to growl, reminding me that it was well past lunch time. Not wanting to make a lot of noise and wake them up, I carefully and quietly made myself a grilled cheese sandwich. Once it was done, I tossed a handful of chips onto the plate, grabbed a bottle of water and made my way back to the couch.
It almost hurt to look at the two of them, but I couldn’t stay away. They were too cute. At the same time, it hurt because I knew it couldn’t last. It wouldn’t last. Soon, Zac would leave us and I had no way of knowing when he would come back. Even though I had learned not to trust him, seeing the way he had instantly bonded with our daughter made me long for something I knew I couldn’t have.
Layla was too young to understand any of what was happening, I knew. To her, Zac walking into the other room was the same as him boarding a plane back to Tulsa. Either way, he was gone. It was funny how that worked, how her little mind processed what she saw and experienced. It amazed me that she even seemed to understand who he was, but I could see that in her own little baby way, she did. When he held her and spoke to her so softly, something inside of her mind just knew that was the man called Daddy. What it didn’t know, what it was going to learn the hard way, was that Daddy wouldn’t stay.
Just as I sat my empty plate on the coffee table, I felt Zac stir next to me. He mumbled something unintelligible as his hand automatically curled around Layla’s head.
“Good morning, starshine,” I said.
“Hmm?” Zac blinked a few times. “Oh… oh, hey. Was I asleep?”
“You only drooled a little.”
For a brief second, he looked like he was actually going to wipe his mouth, but then he just snarled at me. “So mean to me in front of the baby.”
“She’s asleep,” I said, reaching out to tickle her foot. She kicked a little, but continuing snoozing away. “See? Sleeping like a—wait for it—baby.”
Zac rolled his eyes. “Did you eat?”
“Yeah, are you hungry?” I asked. “I can make you a sandwich, too.”
He grinned. “Would you? I didn’t get to eat on the plane. Well, nothing but pretzels.”
It shocked me that I was finding it so easy to be accommodating to him, but I was. I carried my plate back to the kitchen and started making another grilled cheese. While I cooked, I asked, “So why are you here anyway?”
“Same reason as last time,” he said, craning his neck to look my way. “I wanted to see you. And her. I had to meet our baby, Colbs.”
“Yeah,” I replied. “I guess you did. But why now? Avery, umm… she said Taylor and Natalie were here too?”
“They came to look at houses,” Zac replied. “They’ve been talking about moving back here for a while, but I guess they’re serious this time.”
“And you decided to tag along?” I asked, walking back to the couch with his sandwich. He passed Layla back to me as I handed him the plate.
“Thanks,” he said. “And yeah, I guess I did. I just… needed to see you.”
I could tell there was more he wanted to say, more than he simply wasn’t saying, but I wasn’t sure how to get him to open up and say it. While I considered my options, I felt Layla begin to stir, at first just a little but becoming more distressed by the second. I was learning how to read her signs already, and I had a feeling I knew which cries were about to follow.
“Looks like someone else decided it was lunch time,” I said, glancing up at Zac. “This is about to get gross.”
He shrugged, not even bothering to swallow a bite of his sandwich before replying, “Nothing I haven’t seen before. Go ahead.”
A part of me wanted to run into the other room so that Zac couldn’t watch, but he wasn’t watching. I might as well not even have been in the room for as much as my body interested him right then. He eyes didn’t even flicker my way when I unbuttoned my shirt and wiggled out of the medieval torture device of a nursing bra I’d actually bothered to wear that day. As I positioned Layla and waited for her to latch on, Zac was still completely consumed with his sandwich. I hated myself for being bothered that he was ignoring me, but then I remembered that I didn’t really want him to watch this. No matter what he did, I didn’t win.
Finally, he finished his sandwich and turned to face me. I was struck again by the sadness in his eyes. “The truth is, Colbs, I… Kate and I aren’t living together anymore. We’re… I guess officially separated now. I’ve been staying with Tay and Nat, so I’m shit out of luck if they really do move.”
“Am I supposed to say I’m sorry?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “You always said you wouldn’t ask me to leave her. And I didn’t. She left me. So… I don’t know how you feel about that.”
“You know, it might be hard to believe, all things considered, but I really didn’t want to break up your family.”
Zac reached out and stroked Layla’s hair. “But now we’re… we’re kind of a family, too, aren’t we? I mean… I can’t pretend she’s not mine, Colby. I can’t. I don’t care what the birth certificate says, she’s my daughter.”
“So what?” I asked, shifting Layla to the other side. “What does that mean? What does that change? You’re not going to stay here indefinitely. You might not be with Kate, but you still have three kids with her, and that means something, too. You can’t leave one family and just replace it with another.”
Zac wiggled closer to me, putting his hands on my knees. “That’s not… I wasn’t trying to do that, Colbs. I’m trying to find a way to make this work, okay. So I can be there for Layla and not abandon my other kids. Because despite what Kate thinks, that’s not what I want to do.”
“But you’re not even living with them right now, are you?”
He sighed. “No. I’m not. But that’s Kate’s doing, not mine.”
“So you’d rather move back home and live with her?” I asked. “You want to keep that little happy family and have this one on the side?”
“No, no, no,” he said, shaking his head. He looked almost like he was going to cry, and if there hadn’t been a baby between us I would have reached out to comfort him. “I don’t know what I want, Colbs. I don’t know that it even matters. I just need to do what’s right for my babies—all of my babies. But there’s just… so much standing in the way. I don’t know how to make it happen.”
“I don’t know either, Zac,” I replied. “But it’s good that you’re… that you’re here right now. Even if you’re not staying, it’s good.”
He bowed his head for a moment, and when he looked back up he seemed happier. “I’m just glad you’ll let me be here… with her. With you.”
I glanced down at Layla. “Well, how about you be even closer to her for just a second while I go clean up the mess she made on me? And if I know her, she’s going to be ready for another nap once you get her burped.”
“I’m just about ready for another nap, too,” he replied with a goofy grin as he took Layla from me.
“Like father, like daughter,” I mumbled as I tucked myself back into my shirt and stood up. I tried to ignore how that comment made him grin even more.
I made my way to the bathroom to clean up the leaky, milky mess I’d become. I was a little tired of wearing something that wasn’t sweats, too. I had dressed up to go out, but I really didn’t care about impressing Zac. He hardly even seemed to see me as something sexual now, but I supposed that was to be expected given my condition. With the mess cleaned up, my makeup removed, and pajamas on, I looked a little refreshed but still like a mother. I hadn’t gotten used to that yet, and I snarled at my appearance in the mirror.
“I changed her diaper and put her in her crib, I hope that’s okay,” Zac said softly.
I jumped a little, not even having noticed him appear in the doorway. I spun around to face him and noticed he’d changed clothes, too. “Did she spit up on you?”
“Nah,” he replied. “Well, just a little burp. No big deal. Trust me, I’ve been covered in far grosser things that have come out of babies.”
“Good to know,” I replied, giggling in spite of myself.
He held out his hand to me. “Come on, let’s get a little nap in, too. Between my flight and your newborn, I think we need it.”
“Yeah,” I replied, taking his hand and letting him lead me to the bed. “I think we do.”
Zac led me all the way to the bed and helped me settle down into it before curling himself up around me. I felt warm, protected and even though I hated to think the word… loved.
He didn’t love me, though. Did he? Avery had asked if I loved him, but she’d never even hinted that he loved me back. Then again, if she hadn’t suspected that he did, would she have encouraged me to keep giving him more chances? Maybe that was all for the baby, though. After all, that was why she had decided to be my friend again—for the baby.
“Relax, babe,” Zac said softly. “I can’t even imagine how you’ve gotten any sleep the past two weeks. Do you have any help at all?”
I tried to ignore what he’d called me. “Not really. I mean, Avery comes by as often as she can, and one of my coworkers has been picking up groceries and stuff so I don’t have to go out. My aunt wants to come down and stay with me, but I hate for her to uproot herself like that…”
“You should let her. You’re going to run yourself into the ground.”
“What about you?” I asked, running my hand over the wrinkles around his eyes that looked so much deeper than I remembered.
“I dig my own grave,” he said. “You know me. I’d be working myself to death even without all this to worry about.”
I had a feeling there was more to his grave digging than he let on. Now that we were so close, I could smell the faintest trace of alcohol on him. Maybe he’d had a drink or two on the plane. I always did, because I hated flying. It was no big deal, but combined with what Avery had told me about his recent habits, it worried me. I wasn’t sure how to bring it up without making him defensive, though.
I let my hand run down his face, then on down his arm to the new tattoo. “When did you get this?”
“A week after the last time I saw you,” he replied, completely erasing any doubt I had that the tattoo could have been about anything but me.
“I never did ask how Kate reacted to the first one,” I said.
Zac chuckled. “She hated it. She really, really hated it. I mean, the first time she saw it, she was in labor. I just barely managed to convince her it was for our babies—three babies, three lines, you know—but later she still gave me hell for it.”
“And this one?” I asked, running my fingers over the lines of the feather.
“I don’t really care what she thinks of it. If the other one was for those three kids, then I needed one for our baby, too, didn’t I? Kate’s opinion doesn’t change the fact that you and I have a daughter.”
I sighed. “I imagine she hates that even more than she hates the tattoos.”
“Her opinion is irrelevant,” Zac replied, running his fingers through my hair. “She can’t change the facts. All she can do is bitch and moan about them.”
And try to make our lives hell, I thought, but didn’t say. Right then, being with Zac felt so good that I could convince myself that somehow, things would be okay. Somehow, we could find a way to make our little family work. Somehow.