“Hey gorgeous ladies, I hate to interrupt, but I’ve got a little man here that wants to get in on this.” Kage pops his head past the door, his bright blue eyes being matched by a slightly smaller pair that shine back at me with all the love I’ll ever need.
“Hope! Hope!” I’m literally his mother, and does he go running into my arms? Nope. I’m old news now, the blonde scooping him up before resting him to lay right between us.
“How are you so precious, cutie?”
“Because he takes after his dad, obviously.” I try to turn around so I can slap him, but Hope beats me to it, leaning right across my body and flicking him on the nose like a naughty dog. “Oh, so this is how it’s going to be now, huh? You two tag-teaming again?”
You better fucking believe it.
I didn’t know it was possible to be this happy.
“I think you just take too much credit.” Hope snuggles her nose with Teal’s, Craig only looking a bit put out as he takes the seat behind her. You jealous of the toddler there? “The Johnson might be strong with this one, but it’s the Parker in him that’s going to make his story an adventure.”
Oh God, I don’t know what the future holds for my little ocean, but with those eyes and my genetics, I can’t imagine he’s going to stay out of trouble forever.
Should be a good read.
Just when I thought Craig couldn’t look anymore in love with her, she gently tickles her fingers down Teal’s arm, making him giggle before softly playing with his baby bracelet. “Did you get this for him for his christening?”
I’d completely forgotten her dad got her one like this when he had her christened.
“No, Valerie got it for him, it's just like Kage’s from when he was a baby.” She smiles down at the delicate silver against his milk chocolate skin. “I never actually got him christened.”
“You didn’t?” She raises her eyebrows at me. “Your granny would not be happy with that.”
“I know.” I laugh, sensing my grandmother tap her foot at the bottom of the bed with fury. It’s not that I didn’t want to, it's just that... “I just couldn’t do it.”
“Why not?” I really don’t want to cry again today, I think I’ve done it enough for this entire year, but then I have to go and fucking look at her.
Brie offered to book the church, Mama T said she'd throw the party, but every single time I told them no. I couldn’t get him christened... For one reason and one reason alone.
“Because I couldn’t let anyone else be his godmother.”
I have so many beautiful women around me, all completely worthy of that title, but there was only one I wanted. Kage wasn’t here, I was on my own, and as much as I love my sister and my brothers, if anyone else was going to raise my baby, there was only one other woman in the world I wanted him to look at as a mum.
“You couldn’t...” I sign the words again, but I don’t think she missed them the first time, reaching across Teal to take my face and kissing it with tears on her lips. “You... You...”
“I-I needed it to be y-you.” We had a plan, we were going to be there. I accepted I had to lose a lot of the hopes I had for us, but that one, that one I just couldn’t.
After I tried to overdose, there was this moment when me and Hope were alone on my bed. Milo was downstairs, so fucking angry, ripping into every person and blaming them even when I didn’t. I knew I needed to go down there, I needed them to hear it in my voice, but I just wasn’t strong enough. She knew that, she took my head in her hands just like she is now, she looked into my eyes, and she said words that I have tried to repeat to myself every day ever since.
‘Your future needs you, your past doesn't.’
She is my future.
“You w-waited for me?”
“I’ll always wait for you.” Because you aren’t just my soul sister, you're my soulmate. These two guys around us are fucking important, and we couldn’t live without them, but in the end I know who my destiny always was.
And she has been, since she lay on a bouncy house with an angry girl and told her it was okay, that she didn't need to be like all the other kids, that it didn’t matter that she couldn’t concentrate or that she couldn’t keep still, because now she had a best friend to run with her.
I found my soulmate that day.
Teal looks at the tears on Hope’s face, before trying to wrap his arms around her waist, but when his head rests on her stomach, that just makes her cry more.
Talk about destiny in the making...
“He’s so s-special, May.” Craig drags his chair right to the side of the bed, trying to place his hand on Hope’s stomach, but Teal just keeps pushing it away and putting his head there instead.
“I think you’ve got competition.”
“I can still win.” Someone’s determined to have a daddy’s girl.
Even Hope laughs, Kage giving everyone some snacks before putting on a movie we both know I’m never gonna watch. I’m too busy watching them, both of them looking at my son like he hangs the stars, the sparks flying through them when their fingers touch no matter how much they try to fight it.
“You two are cute.”
“May!” You’re knocked up with his kid! Are we still supposed to be pretending there’s nothing going on here?!
She tries to move away from him out of habit, but I’m not having that.
“Kage, tell the nurses we don’t need them checking on me, or any visitors. It’s family night.” I look at Hope. “No interruptions.”
They have to be a secret everywhere else, but with us, they can just be themselves. No secrets needed.
‘May, we don’t know what we are.’ Maybe you don’t, but he does.
‘That’s okay, fuck labels.’ Craig tests the waters by gently placing a kiss on her shoulder, one that makes her shiver, before Kage starts snuggling himself into my neck. Not that long ago we were all sitting on a rooftop trying to pretend we couldn't feel any of this, look at us now.
“We should take a photo.” I look like crap, I haven’t washed my hair in days, but I want to have this memory forever. “I haven’t got any of us all together.”
“What do you mean? We took loads in Italy.”
“Yeah... neither of our phones made it out of there.” Not having a single photo of me and Kage together after I thought he’d left this world was one of the most heart breaking things about losing him. I had nothing, I started to convince myself he could never be as beautiful as I remembered... but of course he is.
“Fuck, really?” Hope reaches for her phone, flicking through it and smiling. “When I landed in London the first time, I sent all my photographs to my laptop just in case I fucked something up between all the travelling... I still have these.”
Right at the moment when I think I can’t love her anymore, she proves to me I can.
All the photos I thought were lost, ones from every night we spent together in Italy, ones of me and Kage I thought I’d never get to see again, just right here.
“You kept them?”
“Yeah... I couldn’t delete them.” She couldn’t do it, no matter how angry she was.
There are so many beautiful ones, some I don’t even remember taking. I try not to laugh at all of the ones where Elba is clearly staring at Hope’s rack, or the ones of Craig looking ready to kill her for it. There’s one of me dancing on Kage’s lap that has his nails digging into my hip instantly. Down boy.
She gets to the last few, they’re mostly of me and her laying on the grass, ones of all four of us on the roof the night they left... Then finally, the one that makes Kage wrap his arms around my body and tug me to him.
“Fuck.” It’s us on the court, playing basketball, him putting my sneaker on like I’m fucking Cinderella. We’d kissed then, one time, that was it, and now I feel like the stupidest person alive that I couldn’t see how we were looking at each other already.
“Shorty... how is it possible that you're even more beautiful now?” He kisses my neck softly. “I remember looking up at you that night and thinking you could be the end of me, or the beginning, and I didn’t care which as long as I got to find out with you.” We were both. That was our end and our beginning, and you know what, I wouldn’t change it.
“Thank you...” Hope strokes the tear from my cheek.
“I’ll make sure you get them all.”
Teal falls asleep with his head on her stomach, our boys keep us warm with their touch alone, we finish every scrap of food before Hope melts into a puddle as Craig takes my little ocean into his arms for the night.
Look at him, total pushover dad already.
I wrap myself around her, resting my head on her shoulder as she shows me more of her photos. She’s done so much, and I need to know it all.
“Tell me everything, your whole life, everyday I’ve missed. Start from the beginning.” She doesn’t even realise she’s tickling Craig’s arm, or that he's turned his back on the tv just so he can have Teal in one arm and pour his love through his hand into her stomach with the other.
I need to know what part of the story I’ve missed, but I know from this day forward, I won’t miss a fucking moment of them. They still have such an incredible one to tell, and do you know what? So do we.
Thelma and Louise are back, baby.
“Okay... so my first day at the company was good, apart from this guy that seemed less inclined to teach me how to dance and more interested in getting my bra size!” She moves six inches away from me when Craig tugs her closer. “Then I met Shaniqua, I guess she was the closest thing I had to a friend there.”
Fuck Shaniqua. I hate that bitch already.
For fucks sake. I’m one of them, aren’t I?