"This was a flash piece," I said. "Lucky number thirteen." She told me the number she wanted. I smiled politely, but while my eye for detail was sharp, I didn't have a photographic memory, and besides, I hadn't recognized half the animals on the wall.
"Keith is a friend, I take it?" Talia asked when we were back in the SUV and on our way home.
"He's a tattoo artist," I said. "I barely know him, but if his husband makes baby mobiles, it would be really cool to work with him."
Talia grinned at the road. Unlike Mika, she never took her eyes off it when we were moving down the highway. "See? That's what I love about you. You never stop searching for the next level."
Tears stung the corners of my eyes. "You love something about me?"
She held her hand up over the center console, and I took it, sliding my warm palm across hers. "I love all of you, Gabe. Not one thing, or a few things. All of you. You're the perfect fit for my son and for our family."
Maybe it was the pregnancy hormones, or maybe it was the lack of parental acceptance in the first twenty-seven years of my life. Whichever it was sent tears coursing down my cheeks, darkening my loose faded black t-shirt where they fell.
"I love you, too, Talia. All of you. Nico, Rachel, Faria, Franco, and Nathan."
"And Mika?" Her tone was sharp, but I caught her smirk in the corner of my eye.
"Mika first," I said.
"Have you told him?"
The tears fell harder, and I was glad she kept her eyes on the road so she wouldn't see me ugly cry. She heard it, though. Disgusting, snot-filled sobs. Full-body shakes that left me breathless and gasping. "No," I finally managed to say. "What if he doesn't love me?"
The words peeled back the layers over the giant hole in my chest created by my dads' breakup and subsequent years of blaming myself. I hadn't been enough to keep my parents together. How could I bet half my stuff that one man would love me for the rest of my life? I didn't have that much stuff to begin with, and Mika had everything to lose by choosing me.
"Of course he loves you," Talia said. "You're fated."
"You keep saying that." All fated meant to me was compatible. Was that all it really took for two people to stay together forever? Similar interests and libidos that wouldn't quit?
"Fate brought you to him," she said. "Now, all you need to do is believe in her."
I couldn't see through my tears, but I heard the smile in her voice. She tapped the lid of the center compartment. "There are tissues in here. Clean yourself up, or Mika will blame me for making you cry."
"You kinda did," I reminded her.
"Nope, uh-uh," she said. "You made yourself cry. It's time for you to see yourself as worthy of love because you are, Gabe. Your dad … " she waved her hand from side to side, "eh. Not so easy, but he's lived with the same burden, and longer than you have. He also thinks he's unworthy of love."
That was my fault, I realized as I wiped my face with a wad of tissues. I didn't know which had come first, his ultimatums or my emotionless responses. I'd gone numb to his chastisementlong before I left. "I thought he wanted me to move out," I whispered. "But all he really wanted me to do was prove that my alpha dad was right, that he was unlovable."
"People say a lot of shit they don't mean when they're hiding something," Talia said. "Do you ever talk to your alpha dad?"
"Not since Dad told me about him. I left him a message, but he hasn't called back."
"Try him again," she said. "He'll be more likely to think you were serious. Otherwise, it could have been a drunken moment of weakness or something."
We both laughed at the thought of me having a drunken moment of anything. I was such a lightweight, one beer with dinner was enough to send me to bed for the night, and that was before the pregnancy knocked my tolerance down to zero.
"I'll call him tonight," I promised. "Right after I call the artist."
20
MIKA
Our new housewas supposed to be done days before the baby's arrival, but supply chain issues, a shoddy batch of lumber, and a cement worker's union strike pushed us further behind schedule. Instead of holding the baby shower in our new living room, we settled for opening presents with the family before Sunday dinner a week prior to Gabe's due date.
"It's all right," he reassured me when I vented my frustrations on an armful of stuffed animals we'd acquired, tossing them one at a time into the corner of my room. One hard plastic nose cracked against the wall and dented the drywall. I dumped the rest of the stuffies on the pile to hide the evidence until I could patch it over with filler.
"This wasn't how I wanted to start our life together." I regretted the words the moment they flew from my mouth.
