Asgard was actually quite accepting of my intuition and offered me some quite generous maternity leave, with a promise to hold my job for me when I was ready to come back. Which only told me how vital I was to them as an employee. Or even if it was a decision driven entirely by the bottom line, at least I knew they were doing the right thing for the wrong reason.
I also happened to know they already had a good staff daycare, making me think it was at least a little altruism. There shouldn’t be any trouble on that front. I also had all the support, of every flavor, from Jonna and Seth. It was kind of weird to think our babies would be cousins, but that was just how genetics worked.
Between it all, I would be okay being a single mom. It wouldn’t be easy of course, but parenthood never really was. No matter the situation, there were some things that never really changed.
I still missed him. Not just in the emotional sense, of wishing he were there, which was certainly a factor, but thinking he was. Not often by occasionally I would walk into the bedroom and expect to see him there.
Or would wait to talk and even pick up the phone before remembering I didn’t know his number anymore. I’d tried it a couple of times only to be told by a recorded voice that it was no longer in service. I never knew his email, so that was out, as was Skype. Despite my instinct toward independence and going it alone as much as I reasonably could, there was so much I wanted to say to him.
That I loved him, that he made my life more exciting as well as better, and I would never regret the time we had together. Even if it was brief. The brevity had been at least partly on my end.
I had no way of knowing where he saw us going, or if he considered me a girlfriend or a fling. All I knew was that I loved him, and having him gone would be physically painful, like losing a part of me. I didn’t even end up going to the last show, even though it was my last chance to see him before he went away for months.
It was best to make a clean break. At least so I’d thought before I’d actually tried to do it. It was almost like he had died, and, in addition to the broken heart, I was in grieving. Not only for the loss of Ragnar, metaphorical as it might have been, but for the life I’d always thought we could have together, despite my ultimately foolish concerns.
What did it matter what other people thought of us? We didn’t even know there would be any trouble at all. It wasn’t the 1990s anymore. People were a lot more accepting in general, and even those who weren’t tended to at least be quiet about it.
The familiar beep-boop-drip of an incoming video call echoed down the hall, like a submarine was passing my office. Old instincts kicked in, ones that drove me to answer every call, just in case it was important, no matter what obstacles might be put in my way.
At that moment in the space-time continuum, the greatest challenge was getting up off the couch with a nearly fully developed infant inside me. Nearly six months could be an exceptionally long time, depending on the circumstances.
Hauling the dead weight and heft to generally where I wanted to be, I sat in the ergonomic office chair, tipping back a bit further than I meant, and answered the call.
I’d never seen a ghost before. Aside from the extended Halloween that constituted the most extreme stretch of Jonna’s Goth phase, my experience with the supernatural and non- corporeal was pretty much nil. Yet, there he was on the screen, like a ghost trapped in a digital afterlife.
“Hi,” Ragnar greeted me with a tentative smile.
“Um, hi, where are you?”
“Germany.”
“That explains the music.”
“Oktoberfest, really big deal around here. We wouldn’t have gotten a hotel had Seth not booked months in advance. I’m surprised anyone is coming to our show at all. We do expect drunkenness, however. There’s also fairly good security so things should even out.”
“Glad to hear it.”
Feelings once again collided like passing, the jolt to my heart, not to mention much further down, that occurred every time I saw him, overtaking all of them. Despite everything else, it all fell away when I saw him again. Even if it was just on a computer screen.
“I have something to tell you,” he said, returning to default serious mode.
“O-okay.”
“Stephanie, I love you. Truly, weirdly, illogically love you. I’d be the first to admit that we shouldn’t work on paper, but fuck paper. My lived experience tells me we do. These last few months have been hell, and I can’t take it anymore. It hurts to be away from you and, if you agree to try, I would like to be with you. Officially, openly no more semi-secret meetings or wondering what anyone else might think.”