Page 133 of Use Me Up

“That’s nice,” says Callie. “I like that.”

We nod at each other over the strollers.

Callie’s always going to be important to me. I can’t have a life without her in it. But it’s been good that we haven’t been actively bad for each other lately, I have to admit. It’s been good that we’ve each got our own romantic relationships, our babies, our separate lives, and we don’t, I don’t know, contaminate each other.

After our walk in the park, I take our little girl home to her mother, who has not, much to my sadness, become a milkmaid as a profession. For whatever reason, those pumps just don’t work on her. The manual ones work marginally better, but the best way to get milk out of her breasts seems to be our daughter’s mouth. I guess that would make sense.

I also have been kind of monumentally disappointed in the fact that all the nursing seems to mean she has very little sensation in her nipples. It’s way less hot to try to suck milk out of them if she’s getting nothing out of it. So, all of that has been mostly relegated to fantasy world. That’s fine.

Fantasy is fine and all, but I’d take reality over that any other day.

And, as weird as this might sound, I’d rather have our baby than a lot of hot, kinky sex. I like sex, obviously, but it’s temporary. It’s this buildup, a crest and a release, and then it’s over. The joy from being a pack, from having a child together, from our love and togetherness, it’s slow and enduring. It’s nicer than a burst of gratification.

She’s texting Gatlin, as per usual. The two of them, I swear, they are both gifted with about forty percent more words than either Kane or I have in a day. Luckily, they have each other to say them to, because if I have to listen to either of them, I end up out of words, and just staring slack-jawed, uttering mono-syllables. They can talk a blue streak, though, and I’m happy they have each other.

“How’s Gatlin?”

“He’s good,” she says. “He says to say hi to our little squishikins.”

I kiss our baby on the forehead. “Hear that, squishikins?”

Our daughter gurgles, and then she hones in on Hannah and makes a little noise of distress.

“Do you miss Daddlins?” croons Hannah. “Daddlins misses you.”

We have a bunch of weird names for ourselves that all are diminutives of Dad. Gatlin is Daddlins, I’m Daddy-o, and Kane is actually Daddy, full stop, but I think this is mostly because Hannah enjoys calling him that.

Our daughter begins to fuss now, in earnest.

“I don’t think it’s about missing Gatlin,” I say to her.

“Oh, of course,” says Hannah, taking the baby from me. “Hello, sweetheart. It’s me, the milk lady.”

I snicker. “You know, she likes you because you’re her mom.”

“She likes me because I’m food,” Hannah counters.

“Not just because you’re food, though,” I say, and I kiss her temple.

We lounge on the couch and watch stand-up comedy while Hannah nurses the baby to sleep and the afternoon sun slants in out of the windows and it’s very much just calmness and comfort and nothing that exciting, and I love it.

Hannah rests her head on my shoulder, and I lean over and kiss her forehead. “How’s Callie? Did you fuck her?”

“Fine, and no,” I say.

“Someday, you’re going to.”

“Nah,” I say. “I think it’s really done. I do.” I look down at the peanut butter tattoo. I look over at my daughter. It’s funny how easily she feels like mine when I know she’s Gatlin’s.

Sometimes, I think about the compound, how our dads treated us differently if they knew that they weren’t biologically our dads, and I find it baffling. They must have been that way because they were desperate, I think, or because they felt as if they were constantly competing for their omega’s attention, and they saw each of the babies that weren’t theirs as some threat?

“I know this,” Hannah says, her tone going impish, “has all just been an elaborate plan to make Calliope jealous.”

“Well, I’ve really shown her up,” I say. “I mean, she gets one alpha, and I get two, plus a beta. And she has a baby, but we’re going to have way more babies than she does.”

“Are we?” says Hannah. “Just volunteering me for that?”

“I thought this was your life’s mission, to be a tradmatewife or whatever and you were going to be part of something, and your contribution to everything was going to be to get bred constantly, and I was going to get to watch you take Kane’s knot, and I was going to get you pregnant with my kids. I was planning on coming in you so much that I knocked you up with triplets.”