Freakin’ intellectuals! Why couldn’t she just trust her instincts and believe what we had was right?
“Tell me how you want to be loved.”
“I-I don’t know.”
“Oh, I think you do. I think you know exactly how you want to be loved. You’ve seen it in action. Big love, big gestures. Your dad and Violet, your aunts and their husbands, hell, every retired Rebel you know. But you didn’t think that was in the cards for you because you’re a weirdo. An egghead. A geek. Who would want Slug Girl with her dorky glasses and her very strong, but often incredibly incorrect, opinions? That girl has her books and her snails and her family, and soon she’ll have a baby to fill the void in her chest. She’s like one of her snails that doesn’t need another snail. She can self-fertilize or self-love or whatever it’s called, and get the desired result, but it’s not what she really wants.”
Her eyes were round with fury—and a little fear. “You don’t know what I want. I can do this alone. I don’t need you.”
“So you keep saying, Doc. But I know something you don’t. Damn, even your snails have it figured out.”
“What’s that?”
“That it’s better with two.” I sat down close and cupped her jaw. “I don’t mean sex, though that’s definitely better with an extra person. I don’t mean parenting, though two responsible adults usually make things easier for everyone as long as they’re not at loggerheads. I mean that my body is just a hollow shell when you’re not around. My mind is fuzzy if I go a day without a text or message or the sight of your beautiful face. And that includes your slutty little librarian glasses. My heart doesn’t beat right when I can’t be with you. All of it”—I waved a hand around—“is better with two.”
She peered at me, her eyes shiny with emotion. I was finally getting through to her.
“But I’m not what you had in mind.” Barely a whisper.
“Nope. And I wasn’t what you had in mind. Pretty sure we established that during the BFB.”
“BFB?”
“Big Fight in Boston. Trademarking that.”
She blinked away tears. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I was trying to be logical.”
I kissed her forehead. “My sweet, smarty pants, mistress of logic. So nine months ago, the idea of the two of us being parents—together—was incomprehensible. For us both, right?”
She nodded. “Snowball’s chance and all that.”
“But it’s happened. And yet you’ve gone this whole time thinking everything is carved in stone. Feelings should stay the same. People should stay the same. Any deviation is wrong or disastrous to the experiment. You seem to think that people can’t change, but you see evolution all the time in your work, don’t you?”
She looked at me like I was an idiot. “Over thousands of years.”
“So I can’t evolve into a man who loves you over thousands of seconds or minutes? What’s it going to take, Doc?”
A small sniff. “I interviewed for the job at Harvard.”
Of course she did. “And they’d be idiots not to offer it to you.” So I couldn’t compete with that, with all Harvard had to offer her. But neither was I prepared to give up.
Francesca St. James was mine no matter where the hell she ended up.
There was a knock on the door.
“Yeah?” I called out.
“We have more gifts to open,” my mom said. “Are you guys up to it?”
“Be right there, Mom.” I turned back to Franky. “I’ve got a gift for you. Not baby-related, or not really. Just something to remind you of where we started.”
I pressed the item into her hand. She looked down at it and gasped.
“You had it all this time? I thought I’d lost it.”
It was the “I heart Detroit” key ring, the one I bought in the hotel gift shop right before we conceived our baby. Along with that first ultrasound picture, I had carried it into every game since, except for the ones against the Motors because that would have been a fuck-you to the hockey gods.
“You said you weren’t superstitious, that you didn’t believe in good luck charms. But look how far we’ve come, Franky. If that’s not the universe on our side, what is it?”
