I stayed until Saturday morning, had breakfast with her—I cooked the bacon while she made pancakes—and when I finally tore myself away from her to come home and pack, my sister was waiting for me.
“You were out late.”
“Yeah,” I say, a little sheepishly.
“You really like the children’s librarian, huh?” Quinn says, going into the kitchen to refill her coffee cup.
I follow her and get a cup of my own, saying, “I do. I never expected this when I took Chelsea to storytime, but it’s gonna be so hard to go back to Italy tonight.”
“Is there any way you can extend your leave?” Quinn asks just as Chelsea, apparently having heard her name, comes skipping into the room.
“Yeah, stay, Uncle Nash,” she agrees. “You can play hopscotch with me.”
I laugh and tug on one braided pigtail. “I really can’t stay—the military doesn’t work like that, and neither does life. You can’t always do what you want.” Not to mention the fact that I promised Nora we’d do things on her terms, and she’s expecting me to leave, to let her raise this baby on her own. I look at Chelsea, pouting. “But you’re still young enough that you don’t have to worry about any of that. I’d love to play hopscotch with you before I go. Get your chalk, kiddo.”
“Yay!” Chelsea coos, before dashing off again.
When we’re alone again, I consider telling my sister what Nora and I were really up to last night. She knows I like Nora, probably even suspects that I’m in love with her because I’ve never acted this way about a woman before. But it seems crazy to tell my kid sister that I tried my damnedest last night to impregnate a woman I just met.
Better to wait and find out if it actually worked to break that news.
Or, hell, maybe I’ll never tell my family. Not if Nora doesn’t want me in the baby’s life.
I let out a sigh and take a long sip of my coffee. Nora and I really did get carried away this week—we didn’t think about any of that. But it felt right, and I stand by my decision, impulsive as it was.
Chelsea runs back into the room with a bucket of sidewalk chalk under her arm, grabbing my hand and trying to drag me out to the driveway. All three of us go outside and Quinn and I finish our coffees while Chelsea draws the world’s longest hopscotch board down the full length of the driveway.
She numbers the squares all the way up to ten before she has to phone a friend, or her Uncle Nash in this case, to help her with the rest, then she gets a smooth stone from a nearby flower bed and hands it to me.
“Okay, Uncle Nash, do you know how to play or do you need me to explain the rules?”
I chuckle. “You better explain it to me.”
I know damn well how to play hopscotch, but she’s adorable when she’s teaching me things with her little four-year-old’s lisp. I can just see her becoming a teacher when she’s older, or a college professor. Maybe she’ll go into biology, or be a vet since she loves animals so much. The world is her oyster and I can’t wait to see who she grows up to be.
While she reminds me of the rules of hopscotch, then takes a couple turns herself to illustrate them, I think about Nora, and the baby that we may well have created last night.
Who will they grow up to be? A librarian like their mother? A military grunt like their dad?
No matter what, I know they’re gonna be a bookworm.
I catch my flight back to Italy that night just like I’m supposed to, and report to base sixteen hours later, weary from the long plane ride. Part of me is thrilled to be back, like always. As much as I miss my family while I’m deployed, I miss my brothers in arms every time I go on leave.
For once, I actually have a story they’d want to hear—about the curvy librarian I met—but I want to keep Nora all to myself. I don’t want to sully what we had together by turning it into bragging fodder, and I definitely don’t want all these hardened soldiers teasing me mercilessly if I confess how much my mind is still on her.
The truth is that not a day goes by—hell, sometimes not even an hour—that I don’t think about Nora, and the new life we may have created together.
Especially late at night, when I’m lying in my bunk and trying to fall asleep, I think about how it’s only early afternoon where Nora is and she’ll be getting off work soon. I wonder if she knows whether she’s pregnant yet, and if she’d want to tell me if she was.