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“We named him Greyson Parker Montgomery IV. A little much, we know, so we’re thinking we’ll call him Parker.”
The twist tightens as I smile down at the baby, eyes still stinging.
“Y’all, he is perfect,” I say with a sniffle. “Even with Grey’s nose.”
“Hey.” Grey nudges me. “What’s wrong with my nose? You have the same damn one.”
“Yeah, Dad. I have the same damn one too,” Bryce repeats. “And I am beautiful.”
The room erupts in laughter, and even though my daughter just cursed, for a second I think my heart is going to burst it’s so full. My family is pretty fucking great, and it just got all the better with this new arrival.
I do my best to bite back my smile, instead giving Bryce a quick but firm lecture on why her confidence is admirable but her cursing is not.
“So what do you think of your new cousin?” I say, leaning down so that Bryce can get a better look.
She clings to me like her life depends on it, staring down at the baby. She blinks once. Twice.
“Well?”
“He’s all right I guess,” she says, and this time I let myself laugh. Such a Bryce line.
“Just all right? C’mon. He’s going to be your best friend.”
“You know she’s going to be the ringleader between the two of them, right?” Grey says under his breath. “She’ll steal your booze and teach him how to drink it.”
“Yup.” I give Bryce a kiss. “No stopping this one. You make daddy so proud, bun.”
We get the go ahead from the nurse to pass the baby around. After we wash our hands, Mom holds him first, then Dad, then me. Despite being very skeptical at first, Bryce is eager to hold him. We prop her up on the bed with Julia, and she helps Bryce cradle her cousin for the first time.
Tears are slipping out of my eyes left and right as I take about fifteen hundred pictures with my phone.
“Can I call him Boo?” Bryce says.
Julia looks up at me and smiles. “Well, his name is Parker.”
“I like Boo better.”
“All right then. Boo it is.”
This finally coaxes a smile out of Bryce. Seeing my baby smile with a new baby in her lap—
“Mom, do you have any tissues?” I ask, sniffling.
Mom, being Mom, whips one out of her pocket and hands it to me with a smile. “So sweet, isn’t it? It’s taking me back to the day Bryce was born.”
It’s taking me back, too. I can’t help but wish that it was me experiencing that glow all over again. The newborn phase is tough, don’t get me wrong. But I miss when Bryce was that little. She was such a good baby, with smiles for days and these delicious little rolls on her thighs.
It’s so true what they say about babies—that you forget all the hard parts and only remember the good ones. Mom always said it’s a form of evolutionary amnesia. Nature wants you to forget the difficult stuff so you’ll do it all over again.
I am feeling that amnesia something fierce right now.
And my heart keeps twisting. Maybe because I can’t help but think of Eva. I think about her all the time. I’m totally falling for this girl, despite the fact that she promised me nothing beyond fun.
Despite the fact that we have a major difference of opinion when it comes to a pretty big life choice.
This choice. The one about kids.
Even if Eva did change her mind—again, it is not my place to encourage her to flip on such a huge issue—would she ever want to have a baby of her own?
“You all right there?” Greyson asks, giving me a look. “Why don’t you and I go get something to drink from the vending machine down the hall?”
I nod, grateful for the distraction.
“It’s Eva,” Grey says definitively the second we’re out of the room. “You guys got up to some funny business on your boat, and now you’re in over your head.”
I cut him a look. “It’s mostly seeing our perfectly beautiful babies meet for the first time. But yeah, maybe it’s a little bit Eva, too. More than a little bit.”
“Is it serious?”
“It’s not supposed to be.”
We stop in front of a pair of vending machines. Grey jangles some change in the pocket of his very tight sweatpants.
“Dude,” I say. “I thought we talked about the tight pants. You scared everyone at that wedding with your whole…situation.”
A couple months back, Grey got some new suits made. He was going for a more tailored look, but ended up with pants that were so tailored they were basically plastered to his junk. You could see everything. And I mean everything.
Same as you can see quite a lot in these sweats right now.
Grey just shrugs. “Julia likes ’em. And when the woman who carried my son for nine months like the rock star she is says she likes something, she gets it. Hence today’s sweatpants selection.”
