Page 234 of The Encore’s Crown

I lean down and kiss her forehead.

“Let me do this.”

Some of the fight leaves her face.

“Fine. I’ll send you a picture of the kind I want.”

The pharmacy is ten minutes away. I spend the entire uber ride waiting for panic to take over. It should. I should be terrified. I should want to throw up every time I pass a parent pushing a stroller. My hands should be shaking while every memory of Dad reminds me why I never wanted this.

Instead, beneath the fear for Natalia, there’s something strangely calm. At a crosswalk, a man carries a baby against his chest. The kid has one tiny fist wrapped around his shirt and a round cheek pressed beneath his chin. Before I can stop it, I imagine a little girl staring up at me with Natalia’s enormous brown eyes.

“What the fuck?” I mutter.

Inside, the family-planning aisle has more pregnancy tests than any reasonable society should need. Digital. Rapid. Early response. Pink dye. Blue dye. Two packs. Three packs. Tests claiming to know six days sooner than the body carrying the kid. I pick up the exact brand Natalia sent me. Then another. Then one of every kind on the shelf. I add condoms because I’m not taking any further chances with modern science if she's not pregnant after all, not after seeing her reaction.

By the time I reach the counter, I have two full baskets. The clerk looks at the tests, then at me. His eyebrows climb.

“Can’t be too certain with these things,” I say.

He scans them without answering. A woman in line behind me snorts.

On the way back to the hotel, I’m more confused than I was when I left.

A baby would change everything.

Touring. Recording. Sleep. The relationship we’re still learning how to have in public. Natalia’s work. Her family. My family. She’s twenty-three. She has an entire life she hasn’t gotten to live yet, and I refuse to become another man who turns her body into a cage because of what he wants. But the thought of the baby itself doesn’t feel like a cage. That’s the problem.

It doesn’t feel like the end of my life.

It feels like another version of it.

When I return with two bags full of tests, Natalia stares at them. Then she starts laughing. A full-body, gasping laughter that bends her over on the bed. She reaches into one bag and pulls out three different boxes.

“This is the craziest thing you’ve ever done. There are twelve tests in here.”

“Seventeen.”

She looks up at me. She laughs for another full minute before standing and choosing one of the digital tests. At the bathroom door, she turns back.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

She kisses me, then closes herself inside.

Five minutes.

That’s all it takes for an entire life to build itself in my head.

Rithy holding a baby like he’s been handed unstable explosives, then refusing to give her back to anyone, insisting that Uncle Rithy is her favorite. Rafe buying a tiny leather jacket. Ronan teaching her words we’ll spend years trying to make her forget. Ma rocking a fat grandbaby in her arms. A child sitting on the kitchen counter while Natalia and Ma argue about dough. Little hands the same warm shade as mine, covered in flour. Ma singing to her in Khmer. Natalia rolling her eyes because I’ve bought the kid another instrument she’s too young to play. Me standing in a doorway, looking at all of it.

Proud.

Not afraid. Well, maybe a little afraid, but there anyway.

What the fuck is happening to me?

The bathroom door flies open. Natalia’s smile answers before she does.