"I need to go get him dressed, and then I'll come back out and we can talk," Jess said.
I nodded, but she was already taking the laughing child down the hallway. I held the box of pastries up towards Reggie. "I brought some stuff from the bakery."
Reggie took the box. "They smell delicious. Let me go put these on a plate. I have some coffee; would you like a cup?"
Absently, I nodded. "Thanks."
Reggie left the room with the bakery box, and Jess was off dressing the little boy. I was in the living room alone trying to grapple with the strange feeling in my chest.
I distracted myself by looking around the room and was drawn in by some photographs on a bookcase. One was a picture of Jess and the child. I studied it, and that unsettling feeling in my chest began to expand down to my gut. I moved to another photograph taken of the child sitting and grinning with an ice cream cone.
I studied the photo closer. The boy staring back at me brought an incredible sense of familiarity with the bright eyes and blonde hair. My brain was in a tug-of-war because he looked almost exactly like I did at that age. But that was crazy thinking, wasn't it? It had to be my brain looking for any excuse for Jess to be with me. And yet, I couldn't pull myself away from the child that held many of the same features that me and my brothers had.
"Here's your coffee. I'll just set it here on the coffee table with a plate of pastries,” Reggie said from behind me.
"Thank you," I said, still not able to take my eyes off the photograph.
"That's Tanner."
Tanner. I ran the name through my head.
The child, Tanner, came running into the living room and screeched to a halt when he saw me.
He looked up at me. "Are you my mommy's friend?"
I had no clue what to say because I wasn't sure what Jess and I were anymore. "Yes," I said, for a lack of anything else.
"Did she look pretty last night? I helped her be pretty."
Jess appeared in the room and I looked up at her. She had looked pretty last night, but of course, I had always thought she looked pretty. Even on that cruise when she had too much to drink and was sick, I thought she was pretty.
"Why don't you go get some of your toys and play while I talk to Carter, okay?" Jess said to Tanner.
The boy looked up at me for a moment, and then he ran off to the corner of the living room where there was a toybox. "Okay."
For a moment Jess and I just stared at each other as emotion began to well in me. It was a mixture of terror and longing. Fear of what that boy might be to me, and a yearning for him to be exactly what I was thinking he might be.
I found my voice. "How old is he?"
Jess let out a shuddering breath. "He's three."
I felt a profound sense of disappointment because our cruise had been four years ago, which meant he couldn't be mine, right? But then I remembered that there would've been a nine-month pregnancy, which would put it close to four years.
Jess came to stand next to me and looked at the picture. "I realized about five weeks after the cruise that I was pregnant."
My breath stalled in my lungs.
"I contacted the cruise line to see if I could locate you, but they weren't any help at all. Privacy issues, I guess. So, I couldn't tell you."
I closed my eyes as the ramifications of what she was saying moved from a possibility to reality. "I'm his father."
She nodded. "Yes."
I turned away from the picture, and instead watched the little boy playing with the fire truck across the room. He was so fucking perfect. The emotion that welled in my chest now was love. How amazing was that? Here was someone I didn’t know a few minutes ago and now I knew I loved him unconditionally. Then again, that's about how fast I'd fallen in love with Jess four years ago and even this time.
Everything I wanted was here with me right now. The woman I loved. The child that I would die for. There was only one problem.
I turned to look at Jess as new emotions filled my chest. New emotions that w