“Among other things.”
“The accent.”
“Leigh.”
“I’m just saying it’s a strong foundation.”
“It’s not about that.” I press my fingers to my eyes. “He listens. Like, actually listens, the way where you can feel that he’s filing what you say rather than just waiting for his turn to speak. And he’s funny—like he occasionally says something so dry and precise that it takes me a second to catch it. And he’s good with them, Leigh. With the babies. He’s so good with them and not in a showy way. He just shows up and does the thing.”
“That’s called being a good father.”
“I know. I know that’s what it is. I’ve just never had one of those, so seeing it up close is…” I stop, trying to find the right words. “It’s a lot. It does things to me that I’m not prepared for.”
There’s a warmth in Leigh’s silence that I appreciate. “Yeah.”
“My track record is terrible,” I go on. “Connor was the last person I thought I could trust, and he cheated on me and disappeared into a bottle and then dumped me in a foreign country for content purposes. Before Connor, there was Marcus, who turned out to have a whole other girlfriend in Providence. Before Marcus?—”
“I know your history.”
“Then you understand my hesitation.”
“I understand it,” she says carefully. “I also think Ronan Callahan is not Marcus or Connor or any of the rest of them, and that two months of his evidence outweighs your historical pattern. But it’s your call, obviously.”
She’s right, and I know she’s right, and the hesitation I’m feeling isn’t really about Ronan—it’s about me. About the version of me that keeps expecting the floor to drop out, that has learned to brace for it so automatically that I brace even when there’s no reason to. “He makes me feel like myself. When I’m with him. I’ve been in relationships where I felt smaller. Where I was constantly managing how I came across. With him I just…” I shake my head. “I’m just me.”
“Then what is there to think about?” Leigh asks. “Seriously.”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I’m afraid of it going wrong. There’s more on the line now.”
“You’re afraid of everything going wrong. You always have been. And things go wrong sometimes, and you handle it.” A pause. “You handled a solo pregnancy, Sage. You handled triplets. You handled Connor proposing while high. If Ronan Callahan turns out to be a disaster, which I don’t think he will, you will handle that too. Now let me babysit the trio, so you can have a real, grown-up date and try to figure this out.”
My whole body tightens up. The idea of leaving my babies with someone else, even Leigh, is too much to bear.
But I also need this. “You’re right. I know you’re right.”
“Of course I’m right.”
I grit my teeth. “Okay.”
“Good girl. Now, ask the father of your children out on your first date.”
After I hang up I sit in the kitchen with my coffee, and I take a proper inventory of the past two months. The groceries. The morning walks with the stroller that he researched for three days before purchasing. The eggs in top hats, which has apparently become a standing event. The evenings on the sofa where we watch things neither of us is really watching and talk instead, about everything—my mother, the Callahan Labs legacy and whether he ever felt the pressure of it, the physical education degree, and what I’d do differently if I went back. The way he listens with his whole attention, the way he asks the second question, the follow-up, the one that means he was actually listening to the first answer.
The way he said, two weeks ago, looking at Boy in his arms, “Sometimes I think he already knows me.” And then looked immediately self-conscious about having said it, and I laughed,and he laughed, and something loosened between us that had been slightly held before.
By the time Ronan comes back with three sleeping babies and windswept silver hair and his coat collar turned up against the cold, I have made my decision official.
Clearly, it shows. He cocks his head. “You have a face on.”
“I have a face on,” I agree. “Leigh offered to babysit for us. I want to take her up on it. So, we can go on a date.”
Something shifts in his expression. Careful, measured, but underneath the measurement is something that is paying very close attention. “A date.”
“A date,” I confirm. “A real one. Out of the baby cottage.”
“I know a restaurant near my place.” He stops. Starts again, which is unusual enough that I notice it. “I’ve been hoping you’d want to try it out.”
“You’ve been hoping,” I say, and I can hear something warm in my own voice that I don’t try to suppress. “How long?”
