I wanted to reiterate it one more time so he knew that I was really, really serious, but I doubted that would convince him of anything. Thankfully, Samuel got cranky five minutes later, giving me something to focus on. I grabbed the diaper bag and hurried over to sit on the other side of his car seat. I unbuckled him, and he arched his back, his little face turning bright red with frustration.
Samuel was a happy baby as long as he was fed. But when he was hungry, nothing would calm him. I wrapped my left arm around his chest and bounced him on my knee while I used my right hand to dig around in the diaper bag for a bottle and formula.
No amount of movement would appease Samuel. His little face scrunched up with frustration as I shakily dumped the powder into the bottle. In that moment I realized I didn’t have any water for him.
Normally, I made his bottles up at home. This whole touring with an infant thing was new to me. I glanced around.
Liam must have seen the panic on my face. He knit his eyebrows together. “Everything okay?”
I shook my head. “I don’t have any…” I glanced around again. I didn’t know what I thought I was going to find. This was a limo. They didn’t come with sinks. “I need water,” I finally admitted amongst Samuel’s wails.
Liam nodded and scooted forward on his seat. He reached over and pulled open a small door that was covered in the same leather as the seats. Inside were bottles of water.
“They’re cold,” Liam said as he pulled one out and held it up.
Samuel preferred warm, but with how loud he was screaming, I doubted he was going to care. “It should work,” I said. Sweat pricked my skin from anxiety. Thoughts of failure once again began to rise up inside of me. I was only a few hours into this assistant thing, and I’d not only fallen asleep on the job, but I was also failing as a mother. My confidence in being a successful businesswoman and a mom was faltering.
Abigail’s voice started repeating, I told you so, in my mind. Tears brimmed my eyes, and it required everything in me to keep them at bay as I took the water bottle from Liam.
He didn’t linger. As soon as I had the water bottle firmly in my grasp, he moved to sit across from me and then slid to the divider between us and the driver before he began talking to him in a hushed tone. Samuel’s wail drowned out their conversation.
I was in the middle of pouring water into Samuel’s bottle when the limo took a hard right and suddenly stopped. Liam didn’t speak as he slid across the seat and exited onto the sidewalk. He was gone with a slam of the door.
I sat in silence, startled by his sudden disappearance. Tears once again burned my eyes as I returned my attention to Samuel. He was crying harder now, his little voice growing raspy from the strain.
With Liam gone, I was no longer worried about trying to calm Samuel. If anything, holding him while trying to make a bottle was just slowing me down. I lifted him up and set him into his car seat and then turned my attention to the bottle. I finished filling it up with water to the designated amount and then tightened the top down before sticking my finger over the opening of the nipple. I gave the bottle a few good shakes. Just as I started to pull Samuel out of his car seat, the door opened and Liam appeared.
Confused, I watched as he climbed into the limo and pulled the door shut behind him. He sat down on the bench and held up a drink carrier full of insulated coffee cups. He had a goofy grin on his face.
I blinked as I tried to process what was going on. He’d stopped to get…coffee?
And then I felt stupid. Of course, he’d stopped to get coffee. With the way Samuel was stressing me out, I would have done the same. Liam wasn’t Samuel’s caretaker. I was. Liam was free to leave the limo to get coffee, while I had to stay. I had responsibilities. Responsibilities that Liam wouldn’t understand.
I returned my focus to Samuel and proceeded to feed the bottle nipple into his mouth. He took a few sucks before his little face scrunched up and his wail continued. I shushed him while bouncing him up and down a few times. I moved the nipple around in his mouth, hoping he’d give up and eat.
That just made Samuel more mad.
“Can I?”
I glanced up to see Liam had leaned in. I wanted to snap back at him. I wanted to do this on my own. I wanted to prove to myself that this was a problem I could fix. But Samuel was clearly rejecting this ice-cold bottle, and I was out of options. Dejected, I handed the bottle over to him.
“Sure,” I said.
Liam took the bottle and unscrewed the top before he opened the limo door. It was in this moment that I realized we were still parked outside of the coffee shop. I watched in dismay as Liam tossed the formula onto the ground before he shut the door. Then he grabbed one of the white cups from the drink carrier and popped off the top. He stuck his finger in the liquid before removing it and shaking it off.
I watched in horror as he poured what I thought was going to be coffee into Samuel’s bottle. But as clear liquid flowed from the cup, my body began to relax. Then he glanced over and gave me a sheepish smile. “I asked them to get me some warm water,” he said. Then he nodded toward the diaper bag. “Formula?”
I was in shock, but I managed to grab the container and hand it to him. He took it, scooped two servings into the bottle, and then returned the lid. After he shook the bottle like a cocktail shaker, he handed it over to me.
“There,” he said, looking quite pleased with himself.
I wasn’t sure what to do or what to say. I went from panicked that I’d just ticked off my new boss so much that he left his own limo to get away from me and Samuel, to shocked that he’d gone to get himself coffee while I was stressing out. And then I’d landed at paralyzed because he hadn’t gotten anything for himself. Instead, he’d done something for me and my son.
It was whiplash of the highest order.
“Thanks,” was all I could muster as I helped Samuel find the bottle’s nipple. After one suck he took in a few whimpered breaths and then quieted as he ate.
The limo fell into silence. After Liam told the driver to keep going, he settled back into the seat across from me with one arm draped across the back and his legs open and extended in front of him. He looked so at ease, and I wondered, for a moment, what that must feel like.
