“I’m gonna head out,” Jay announces as we kind of hover in the living room, Kayla circling Jay’s legs. “You probably wanna catch up with your family, anyway.”
Rebecca sits down on the couch and whips her breast out to feed Viera and looks up at us as I mentally recoil from seeing my sister’s tit for the first time ever. “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to, Jay. I plan on making my baby brother pull his weight around here. He might need some help so I can take a goddamn nap.”
My sister has a point. I have no idea what I’m doing and I’m sure after she explains everything to me, I’ll still need help. Jay looks at me and shrugs. “If you want me to, I’d be happy to stay and help out. It’s Sunday—I don’t have anything going on today.”
I inwardly release a sigh of relief. Kayla’s tail wags as Jay leans down to pick her up, snuggling into her black and white fur.
My sister gives us a tired smile. “Then settle in, wash up, and get back here to hold your niece.”
We do as she says and sit back down as Viera finishes up feeding—which, by the way, is disturbingly loud. Viera’s like a month old and how she makes all those grunts while eating blows my mind. She sounds like a pig—the cutest little pig.
Rebecca finally puts her breast away, and I mentally remind myself this is natural and normal, and I should not be weirded out by breastfeeding, then she brings me my teeny, tiny niece. “First lesson is burping. Hold her on your shoulder and pat her back in an upward motion.” I obey as I sit straight up, clutching her. Jay watches me like a hawk, and I can vaguely sense his hands ready to catch her if she decides to squirm away.
Can infants squirm away at this stage?
Becs tells me to tap harder, but I’m afraid I’ll break her. She says it’s okay, and when I do, my delicate little niece lets out a deep burp that I’m pretty sure was summoned by Satan.
Jay rubs her back and cheers quietly for the small victory. “Yay! Good job, little one!”
As I pull her off my shoulder and face her head-on with a big smile, her face is serious. Then all at once, she projectile vomits all over my chest and lap. The burp cloth over my shoulder doing absolutely nothing to help.
Jay launches himself off the couch laughing at my misfortune. “Ahh! Oh my god, that’s disgusting.”
My sister tosses me a spare burp cloth from the pile of clean clothes next to her, seemingly unfazed by this. “Yeah, she’ll do that. Gotta watch out.”
I hand Viera to Jay as I clean myself up the best I can when I hear a thunderous sound come from his direction. “What was that? It sounds like a rocket launch.”
Jay’s holding her chest to chest with her feet propped against his forearm. “Did she just poop?” he asks my sister with wide eyes.
She lifts her eyebrows, again, unfazed. “Yup. Okay, next lesson: how to change a diaper.”
Jay and I get the hang of things by the end of the night—kind of. Enough that Rebecca could in fact, take a nap while Jay and I watched Viera, changed a hundred diapers, and prepared some food for her and Vinny who got home a few hours ago and is now deeply sleeping, too.
Jay walks around the first floor with Viera in his arms as they watch each other intently. I pop the lid on the glass container of rigatone I made and put it in the fridge. “You know she has that swing thing you can set her in if your arms are getting tired.”
“I know,” he says gently, swaying her. I lean my hip against the counter and touch her little hand. She is precious and I feel a sense of pride already. Like this little part of me is out here in the world now. A world I want to make better for her.
I smile at the sight of them both. “You want kids?” I ask.
“Is it weird if I say yes? I feel like guys never admit that; but I do.” He looks back at me. “What about you? You think you’d ever want one?”
“Ya know, until today, I didn’t think so. I thought that if I did, I’d accidentally repeat some of the fucked up shit my parents did to us. But seeing her—I mean, she’s not even mine—it makes me think I can give her a better life, the one Rebecca and I wanted to have growing up.”
“You didn’t have a good childhood?”
I tell Jay about my piece-of-shit father and my mentally unstable, absent, drug-addict mother. About the mental and physical scars they left us. I don’t know what possesses me to spill all of this to him here and now, but I don’t want to stop. The words and the memories keep flowing, and it’s not as hard to explain as I always thought it would be. Only Becs knows this shit—but Jay’s here, and he’s listening to every word. The way he’s looking at me makes me feel… I don’t know… understood, I guess. There’s not a lick of pity on his face. It’s like he’s stepped back and adjusted his focus to see the whole painting that is my fucked-up life.
Eventually Viera falls asleep in his arms and I end my traumatic childhood download, so he hands her off to me and I lay her down in her bassinet in Vinny and Rebecca’s room. I quietly shut the door while the whole family finally sleeps.
When I get back downstairs, Jay’s cleaning up the remaining few dishes, leaving a spotless kitchen.
“It’s almost 11:00, man. You should probably get home and get some sleep for work tomorrow.”
“I know. Sorry if I’ve been hogging your time.”
“Hogging my time? Are you kidding? You saved me today. You spent the last thirty-six hours driving me, sheltering me, feeding me, and helping me learn how to be an uncle. I should be apologizing to you for taking up allyourtime.”
He goes to grab his coat and slip on his shoes. “Don’t even mention it. I’m just glad you’re home, Marco. I’ll take as much of your time as you give me. We gotta make these three months count, right?”
