“How would we…” Luna whispers, picking up where we left off. “How would we tell him? I don’t want him to think we lied to him or tricked him.”
“I think we could have dinner. Order something…”
“We’ve been doing a lot of ordering. I don’t want to spoil him.”
“Alright, I could make something,” I offer.
“No! We should order something. Or we can have PB and J.”
“I’ll order something. Something regular. Not a treat.”
Luna rolls her eyes. “Fine. So we order something, then what?”
“Then we just tell him the truth. I don’t know. If we rehearse the words, it might come out like a disaster.”
“But if we don’t rehearse it, it will come out like a disaster.”
“Alright, so we figure out what we’re going to say.”
Her throat works as she swallows hard. “I’ll figure it out. You can just sit there for silent support.”
“Milo likes me as his nanny, but will he like me as his dad?” Genuine fear and all the insecurity that exists creeps into my question, but I don’t mind one bit, which is not like me at all.
“If you keep paying him to clean his room and spoiling him with takeout, he’ll like you as anything.”
“Fair enough. Will he like my family, though? This is…we’d have to…”
Luna grasps a set of pliers, but she doesn’t look like she wants to use them on me, thank the stars. “We can talk about all that later. He’ll have questions, and we’ll have to find answers. I’ll figure out what to say, but after that, we’ll just have to put in the time and effort into making it work. Also, come up with plans as we go and adapt because I don’t think we can rehearse those bits.”
The bracelet burns so furiously in my pants that I consider whipping them off, which would decidedly send the wrong message. “Thank you.” It’s all I can say at the moment, and I need to get out of here before my pants start smoking. “Thank you for being so…just for being you. I never did deserve you. You know that, Lu?”
Her knuckles go white from gripping those pliers, but she doesn’t hurl them at my head. She doesn’t even look like she wants to. However, she does duck her head before I can read her expression, but not before I see how sad her eyes are. She doesn’t even give me hell for using the name she told me never to use.
“I’m just…I’m going to head up.” I point upstairs like a dork. “I’ll have something ordered for six, and we can sit down then if that works for you?”
“Yeah.”
I’m pivoting around, and she’s bending back over her work, but then her voice stops me. “Toren?”
“Hmm?”
The bracelet is now so hot that my nuts are in imminent danger. I’m not sure I want to have other children as I’m still in disbelief that I have a son, but at this rate, it could be dangerous for my sperm count. I’ll have to invest in tight pants to get it back up after this. Or is it loose pants? How is it that I don’t know what kind of pants are good for sperm? For producing more of it? This is awkward, even in my own head.
“He’ll love your family, just so you know. Especially your grandma. I’ve wanted them to meet him for a long time. I…sometimes…I thought about you meeting him too, what it would be like. I always imagined you’d love him the instant it happened, even though my head told me it was impossible. I thought it was a sort of fantasy since I knew it couldn’t be like that for real.”
“But I did love him. I mean, I do love him. Not the same way you do, since you’re his mom, and also because you’ve had years to perfect it, but I do feel it. It was instant. And I would do anything for him.”
“Then…” Luna’s voice grows thin, and she ducks her head again, picking up the pirate eyepiece thing. “Then, that is what I feel. And for Milo, I’m glad.”
We have so much more to talk about, so much more to say. I know she wouldn’t welcome it, but I do still want to walk over there, pluck Luna off the stool, and hold her in my arms. I want to make up for five years of apologies, five years of everything I missed, and five years of joy and sorrow, passion, folly, scrapes, laughter, life, and love.
Even when Luna was mine, I didn’t take the chance to hold her often enough. But I can’t very well take that chance now. Things are different. She’s not mine anymore, and right now, what we’re doing is treading some deep waters, just trying to stay afloat. I don’t need to be the reason one of us goes under or the reason that a shark or a vengeful lobster or something tugs us under. Hey, it could happen. We did eat that lobster’s brethren at lunch the other day, kind of. Anyway.