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He’s looking at me again. Like that.
Like he has no clue what I am. But whatever it is, he kind of adores it.
Adores me, just for telling my messy, often nonsensical truth.
“Good thing you’ve got a Satanist to help you through.”
I laugh. The tickly, happy kind of laugh that runs up and down my sides and lands in the center of my being.
“Satan owes you a solid, huh?”
“Many favors, yeah. Happy to call a few in on your behalf.”
It’s my turn to look at him. The square, solid, masculine lines of his profile.
Feeling rises up inside me.
“What if it’s not okay?” I say quietly. “The ultrasound. The baby. My depression. What if something’s really wrong?”
His eyes meet mine. “Then we’ll deal with it. You and me and David Bowie.”
I smile. The words you and me sticking inside my head.
Maybe this isn’t where I thought I’d end up.
But right now, it doesn’t feel half bad.Chapter TwelveGreysonVenture capital makes for strange bedfellows. I’ve courted baristas-turned-entrepreneurs. Farmers intent to sell their grits, milled from heirloom varieties of corn, to the retail market.
I’ve fielded proposals from foul-mouth chefs tatted up to within an inch of their life and surgeons seeking a second life as restaurateurs. I do business with Harvard grads, hardscrabble fishermen, chemists-cum-distillers with a talent for making the best gin this side of the Atlantic.
But I never thought I’d find myself hanging on every word a chatty ultrasound tech in heart-spattered scrubs utters as she squirts a lube-like substance onto Julia’s belly.
It’s surreal.
And it happens so fast. One second, the tech is flicking the lights off and directing our attention to a TV screen on the far wall.
The next, the inside of Julia’s uterus is on that screen and my heart is pounding so hard my head throbs in time to its beat.
A small black space appears on the screen. Inside that space is a tiny, tiny baby-shaped thing.
“Looks like there’s just one sac,” the tech says, pressing the wand a little more firmly against Julia’s belly. “No twins this time.”
“Thank God,” Julia says. Words tight, like she’s holding her breath.
I lean forward in my chair. “You all right?”
Julia nods, making the paper on the exam table crinkle. “I’m good.”
“Let’s measure this little peanut”—a few more keystrokes—“yep, yep, eight weeks and five days. Puts your due date a few days earlier, but since you’re still within a week, we’ll leave it at June twenty-third for the time being. See that?” The tech points to a moving bit in the baby’s center. “It’s your baby’s heartbeat. We can listen…”
She hits a few keys.
Then: swoosh swoosh swoosh.
The baby’s heartbeat is loud enough to drown out my own.
I feel a sudden, searing pressure behind my eyes.
“Look at that,” the tech is saying. She bangs a few more keys, and the sound disappears. “Heartbeat is 173 beats per minute. Perfect. Peanut is lookin’ real good, y’all.”
I look at Julia. A single tear slips quietly down her temple.
She’s smiling.
She looks at me. Eyes all soft and earnest and so beautiful I’m suddenly the one who’s struggling to breathe. She reaches out and grabs my hand, giving it a quick squeeze. Hers feels small and warm in mine.
Warmth that I feel moving up my arm into my chest. I sniffle, blinking hard.
Julia’s smile gets bigger.
“Looks like we won’t need David Bowie. At least for the time being,” she says.
“That’s a relief,” I reply. Still blinking, because these goddamn tears won’t clear up.
“You good?” she asks.
“Yeah.” I look away and swallow. “How about Charlie Brown or Lucy?”
“What?”
“The Peanuts. You know, the cartoons? What if we nicknamed our baby Charlie or Lucy?”
She’s still smiling. “I like that. Charlie Brown.”
I don’t want to think about the last time I cried. But I think it’s safe to acknowledge that this kind of crying feels different. Better.
I can’t remember the last time something good happened outside of work. For me. In my personal life, I mean.
Granted, I haven’t allowed good things to happen, because that’s how people get hurt.
Why then, is this good thing going down right now?
Why do I feel this good—why do I get to be with a woman who makes me feel this good—when I fucked up so bad?
The cynic inside me can’t help but wonder when the other shoe is going to drop.
But for the first time in a long time, I want to let myself have this moment. Feel it. The relief and the happiness and the hope.
I want to feel alive, fully. Julia’s kind of alive. The kind that makes you dance to eighties music while washing dishes.
Because it feels so. Damn. Good.
But there’s no way I can forgive myself that easily. I can’t just decide I’m done with the guilt. The shame. I have to earn forgiveness. And honestly, my crimes are such that I’ll be working to balance the karmic scales forever.
