That went better than I thought it would.
I thought Laurel would shoot me down, for sure. I thought she would tell me it's been too long, we were never that serious, she doesn't feel the same. I thought she'd be more insistent about the weight of her baggage. I'm not put off by her kids. I wasn't expecting there to be another one, sure, but she'll have to try a lot harder than that to put me off.
I didn't mean to put it all on the table like that. My intention was to play it cool, to see where her head was at, to nose around until I could tell if she was remotely into me. Instead I scooped my heart right out of my chest and thrust it into her hands and she could have thrown it back at me, but she didn't. She tucked it into her pocket and now warmth floods the space my chest.
Today may not have been a date, more of a reconnaissance, but tomorrow is, surely. She's willing to try again. Willing to take it slow, starting with dinner at her house while her kids are away. At least, the ones capable of forming memories.
I still know the way to Laurel's house. It's ingrained in my memory, the route across town to her cottage less than half a mile from here, a journey that takes me past my mom's work. I left my car - well, my dad's car, which I'm borrowing while he's away - in the lot behind her office earlier when there were no spaces on the street outside Cowboy.
im here come outside ive got something to show you, I text as I get close. Ava's still sleeping in the stroller as I carefully push her down the sidewalks that are starting to ice over as the temperature drops again. I turn the corner and catch my mom right as she's coming out of the law firm where she works as a legal secretary, wrapping her thick cardigan tighter around herself, the wind blowing her hatless hair.
"Surprise!" I call out, waving one gloved hand. "Found you a grandbaby!"
Mom gasps. "Annabelle! What the hell are you doing? Have you kidnapped a child just to make a joke?"
I grin at her. "Yeah. Was it worth it?"
Mom looks down at Ava, back up at me, at the lack of any parental figures running after me. Confusion is knitted into her brow. "I don't understand."
"Remember Laurel Jacobs? I used to babysit for her?"
"Of course." Mom hugs herself even closer. The weather's on the turn again, the sky thick and heavy and gray an hour and a half before the sun is due to officially set.
"She must've known I'd be coming back because she made sure to have another job for me."
"That's Laurel's baby?" Mom points at Ava.
"Yup."
"She had another baby? I had no idea."
"Because you don't integrate with your fellow townspeople," I say teasingly, pushing Ava back and forth so she doesn't wake up when her body realizes I'm standing still. My mom loves her own company; she's never minded that Dad works away from home so much because it means she can absorb herself in her hobbies and her dog and appreciate Dad even more when he's around.
"Goodness me. I didn't know. I suppose I only ever see her in her bookstore, and so far I must've missed bring your baby to work day. How come you have her?" She looks around, as though Laurel's about to appear out of the fog. "Where's her mom?"
I fill her in. She bends down to peer through the plastic rain cover. "Oh, isn't she adorable? How old? What's her name?"
"Ava. She's..." I pause to do the math. Laurel didn't mention her daughter's age, but I know exactly when she was conceived. "Fifteen months."
"So sweet," Mom coos. "God, I'm getting all broody, seeing you with a baby."
"Mom."
"You know, with all the time you used to spend babysitting for Laurel, I figured the two of you were ... what is it, hooking up?"
"Mom!" She has no idea how right she is. Lying doesn't come naturally to me so I don't outright deny it. "You didn't even know that I'm a lesbian until, like, two years ago."
"Nuh-uh." Mom shakes a finger at me. "You came out two years ago, hon. Those are two different things."
I don't know what to say to that. I guess my queerness wasn't as subtle as I thought it was.
"Now you get that baby home before the poor thing freezes. Will you be home for dinner?"
"Yup."
"Okay. See you later, hon. Look after that little sweetheart."
I head off to Laurel's. I'll be back for my car later.
*
The house hasn't changed. It smells the same, the kind of scent I can recognize instantly but I can't place a single element of it. The shoes that fill the hallway are bigger and there are more of them, same with the coats that hang on hooks by the door, but everything else feels so familiar.
I park the stroller in the hallway and lift off the rain cover, taking the blanket off Ava now we're inside, and she twitches but doesn't wake. It's only three twenty. If Laurel's right, she'll be asleep for another forty minutes, so I leave her where she is and I slip off my boots, joining them with the pile of sneakers and sandals and slippers that are in a surprisingly un-Laurel jumble.
What's the protocol here? When I babysat in the past, Otto was always around and seven-year-olds don't nap, so I was never alone with no-one to talk to. This is unprecedented. I double check the front door is locked behind me and that Ava can't wriggle out of the stroller if she wakes up, and I go to the kitchen. Make sure I know where the snacks are. Check out the magnets on the fridge. Glance at the schedule on the wall. Most of it is written out in Laurel's slant, with the occasional addition from her children. Otto's writing is sharp and messy. Hannah uses fat printed letters. I fight the urge to make my mark on the calendar.
The layout is similar to my house, the spacious kitchen and the open plan downstairs and the cozy living room. I don't venture upstairs. I already know it, and it feels wrong to leave Ava, so I park her stroller in the doorway to the playroom and I take my book out of my bag. The queer romance I bought from Jacob's Ladder, which Laurel described as funny, heart-warming, and deliciously sexy.
I started it on Saturday night, but I've only managed a couple chapters since then. Speed-reading isn't my thing the way it is Laurel's. I don't seem to take anything in if I don't spend at least a minute on each page, if not more, and it's hard to get stuck in when I keep looking up to see if Ava has woken up.
I needn't check. She lets me know the second she's awake when she lets out a whine and throws one of her toys across the floor. I leave the book upside down on the sofa, open to page forty-one, and I grin at Ava as I crouch down to let her out.
"Hey there, Sleeping Beauty. How's it going?" I check the time. Three fifty-eight. The girl has a good internal clock. "Your mom says you get snacky. You want a snack?"
She babbles at me. I set her feet on the floor and she stands on wobbly legs, clutching both my hands in her little fists.
"Let's go get a snack," I say, slowly leading her to the kitchen. There's a highchair in the corner, books and magazines piled on top of it. On one of the chairs at the table is a booster seat. I grab a banana and sit Ava on the booster seat and she tries to grab it as I peel it.
"Confession time," I say to her. "Your mommy is trusting me a lot right now, but I don't actually know much about kids your age. Your sister was two when I last did this, and I think every month counts when you're so little, huh?" I squish the banana between my fingers to check it's soft enough before I break off a piece and hand it to her. "You better help me out."
"Ba." She stuffs the banana in her mouth and chews happily
"Great. Glad we're on the same page." I break off another piece.
"Ba."
"You're gonna have to try a little harder if you want us to have a conversation," I say. "Your mom says you're not talking yet, so if you're about to say banana, can you keep it to yourself for another hour?" I give her another piece. This is not the way to serve a banana. My fingers are slimy and mushy. Ava agrees, clearly, because she lurches forward, almost toppling off the booster seat, to take the entire banana off me.
"Ba," she says again, happier this time, chowing down on it.
My babysitting skills are rusty. I never had the chance to exercise them in Seattle and I haven't spent that much time with my nephew, but we get through snack time without a hitch after a banana and a sippy cup of milk and Ava comes to life when we move to the playroom.
"Ba," she says again, this time crawling over to a ball sticking out of a toy chest.
"I thought we were getting somewhere earlier. You're telling me ba doesn't mean banana?"
She grabs the ball. "Ba."
"Either ba is for any word that starts with those letters, or it's the only word you know," I say. "Can you say mama?"
Ava gives me a blank stare. She drops onto her butt and clutches the inflatable ball in both hands. I sit a few feet away from her and pat the floor between my legs.
"Let's play," I say, showing her my hands. "Roll it to me."
I'm not sure if she understands the command or if it's a game she plays with Laurel, but she rolls it to me and her little face lights up when I catch it and roll it back.
"You're good at this," I say once we've passed it back and forth a few times. "Great hand eye coordination. Have you considered pursuing professional sport? You like the ball, huh?"
"Ba."
I grin at her predictable consistency. "So," I say, "if ba is your only word, you're not gonna repeat anything I say to your mom, are you?"
Ava giggles and claps and nods at me. She catches the ball, slapping it with both hands, and bounces it on the carpet before rolling it back to me.
"I don't think I ever stopped loving your mom," I confess. "You don't know how lucky you are, Ava. She's something special. I know we weren't together long, and there are plenty of people who'd say that three months isn't long enough to fall in love, but I did."
I hold onto the ball too long and Ava frowns at me, making grabby hands in my direction. She chatters away but it's all just nonsense syllables. I doubt she's going to find her words overnight and say, "Hey, Mommy, this new chick is, like, embarrassingly into you."
I feel bad. Not for telling Ava – she isn't going to remember this – but for getting over Holly so easily. When she broke up with me, although it came out of the blue, it also wasn't a surprise. It didn't knock me off my feet. It's as though I was just passing time with her, like my heart was never really in it because on subconscious level I knew I would end up here.
That was something she said when she ended it. She felt that I wasn't one hundred percent invested in our relationship, and I couldn't even come up with a convincing rebuttal because she was right. Our time together had run its course, and she had to be the one to bring it to an end because it was her place and I had a good thing going.
"Guess what?" I say to Ava.
She tilts her head to one side, her eyes widening as if to say go on.
"I didn't even realize that I'm a lesbian until I started college." I roll the ball back and put a bit of spin on it. It makes Ava giggle when it bounces against her foot and she almost faceplants the carpet when she lunges for it. I wonder how long it'll be before she's bored of this game.
"I spent all of high school trying to fit in," I say, "and then I got to college and I realized something was different, but again I was trying to fit in with all these new people and I didn't know which version of me they wanted."
Ava nods along as though she knows exactly what I'm talking about. Maybe she struggles to fit in at daycare, what do I know?
"The summer after my junior year, I came back here and I met your mom – and your brother and sister – and something clicked into place." I laugh to myself. "Twenty-one years, I tried to force myself to have crushes on boys and then I met this beautiful older woman, and I'm not kidding, Ava, it might have been love at first sight. Your mom put an ad out for childcare help and I answered, and then minute I saw her I was like ... whoa. Is this love?"
"La."
"Hey, that's a new one," I say with a grin. "Love?"
"La," she says again, giving me an adorably toothy grin. Her teeth are so little and she is so fucking cute.
I mimic her linguistic stylings and say, "I la your mama, Ava."
"La!"
"Can you say mama?"
She pouts. Apparently not. But she can shriek like a banshee when she's suddenly bored of the ball and she rolls it across the room, away from me. All good things come to an end. Game over. Clear boundaries. I like that.
It's only when the smell crosses the room that I realize why she's done with the ball. Ah. Time to see if I remember how to change a dirty diaper.
*
When Laurel's car pulls into the driveway a few minutes after five, I'm sitting on the sofa in the playroom with a picture book in my lap, the kind with thick cardboard pages and all sorts of sensory textures. Ava's sitting next to me with a fresh diaper, stroking a wooly page of the book on farmyard animals.
The front door opens and a cold wind blasts into the house along with a clatter of three people's footsteps and shoes being kicked off and then Laurel's voice calling, "We're home! Where's my Avie baby?"
She pokes her head into the playroom and I've never seen her smile so wide as she takes off her scarf and grins at her baby. "There you are. Have you had a good time?"
Ava looks up at her mom's voice and she loses all interest in the book, throwing up her arms and crying out, "Ah! Ah!"
Laurel scoops her up and snuggles her and plants kisses all over her face. I guess ah is Ava speak for up. She presses her little hands to her mom's cheeks and returns the kisses and fuck, now I'm broody. Don't tell my mom. Laurel shifts Ava to her hip and her eyes fall on me. Elsewhere in the house, I hear Hannah and what must be Otto.
"How was it?" Laurel asks.
"We really bonded," I say, getting up from the sofa with a big stretch. "Ava's been telling me all about how much she las bas."
Laurel looks bemused. "She ... what?"
"I'm brushing up on my toddler speak. If I'm right, la is love, and ba is both bananas and balls, both of which she seems to really dig."
"Oh." She laughs. "Yeah, bananas are her favorite at the moment. Did she grab it off you? I never get the chance to cut it up anymore."
"She did indeed. And we spent, like, a straight twenty minutes sitting on the floor rolling the ball. She's a pretty easygoing kid."
"She really is." Laure kisses Ava's cheek again and blows a raspberry and sets her on the floor. "Thank you so much, Annie. I can't tell you how helpful that was."
I give her my most winning smile. "The pleasure's all mine. We had a great time together, didn't we, Ava? Or should I call you Little Miss Poopy Butt?"
Laurel grimaces. "Oh, no. Poop explosion?"
"Lil bit. Not the worst I've dealt with." That award goes to my nephew, Toby. The one time I babysat him when he was a few months old, he pooped so bad it came out the neck of his onesie. "I guess it's her way of making sure I'm up for this."
Whatever this is.
Laurel bends over to take Ava's hand, helping her to her feet. I follow them to the kitchen, where Otto is looking in the fridge and Hannah's sitting at the table swinging her feet as she goes through her schoolbag and digs out the day's homework.
"Dinner's in an hour so don't ruin your appetite," Laurel says to her son as he digs around in search of a post-soccer snack.
"Couldn't ruin it if I tried," he says, and when he turns around and spots me, recognition dawns on his face. Shock dawns on mine. There's no way this tall, gangly teenager is the same seven-year-old I used to play board games with. His voice is deeper and he's taller than me and he has the awkward, wispy start of a mustache. It's been a while, I know, but seriously?
"Annie!"
"You remember me," I say. I can't help but smile. "Your sister didn't have a clue."
"Hey!" Hannah protests. "It was ages ago. I was a baby. Don't hold that against me."
"'Course I remember you," Otto says. "We need a Monopoly rematch now that I actually know how to play that game."
"Yeah, we never played by the actual rules," I say with a chuckle. "I used to make them up as we went along."
Otto gasps. "I knew it."
"I'm permanently free at the moment, any time you want that rematch," I say. "You got plans this weekend, or are you around for me to beat you again?"
"We're at our dad's this weekend," he says, nodding at Hannah. Shit. I forgot about the whole shared custody thing. He wanders over to the calendar I was looking at earlier. "How about the sixteenth?" He glances at his mom and says, "We could have a game night?"
Laurel looks from him to me, her eyebrows slightly raised. "Sure. If Annie wants to."
"Annie would love to," I say. "Prepare to lose, Otto."
He laughs and says, "I bet I've played way more games in the last eight years than you have, Annie."
I purse my lips. "I would not take you up on that bet, 'cause I'm pretty sure I'd lose."
"Knew it." He grabs a hunk of cheese from the fridge and bites into it like an oversized mouse, pulling out a chair across the table from Hannah, who says, "Can I play?"
"The more the merrier," I say. Hannah beams, like she's just happy to be included.
"Are you staying for dinner?" she asks me.
"No, I've got dinner plans with my mom." I sneak a glance at Laurel, expecting her attention to be on Ava or dinner, but it's squarely on me. "I should get going."
"You'd better practice your Monopoly skills," Otto says as I leave, pointing his pencil at me. "Next weekend it is game. On."
Laurel walks me to the door and follows me outside, pulling the door shut behind us. The cold hits me like a truck, even through my coat and my earmuffs. My car is probably a frozen block of ice. By the time it's defrosted I could've walked the mile home.
"Was that alright?" I ask. "Sorry, kind of invited myself over to beat your son's ass at a board game."
"It's fine." She's smiling. That soft smile, the one that makes me want to slip my hands inside her coat and feel the warmth of her body and press my lips to hers. But we're taking things slow, so I just return her smile. "I can drive you home."
"No, it's fine, my car's at my mom's office, it's only a couple minutes away."
"Okay." She hesitates a moment before she pulls me against her, her arms strong around me, her hair in my face. When she steps back after far too short a hug, she drops her voice and says, "I thought it'd be so much harder, seeing you again."
"Harder?"
She hugs herself and shrugs. "I missed you when you left. A lot more than I thought I would. There were times I resented you for leaving."
Resented. That word cuts deep. I flinch against it as though each letter has reached out and slapped me. "Ouch."
"It was a weird time for me," she says softly, glancing over her shoulder at the house, at her family. "After you left, once I did my best to get over us, I hoped I wouldn't see you again."
"Fuck," I murmur to myself. Laurel shakes her head and reaches out, her fingers closing around my wrist.
"No, not like that," she says, her words a waterfall. "I just ... I knew it would be difficult to see you again when I spent so long trying to get over you. When I caught a glimpse you in the coffee shop last week, I thought it would be impossible to see you again without stirring up all of those emotions."
"But it's not?"
Her hand is still around my wrist. She pulls me close again. "I'm just glad you're back, Annie."
She holds my gaze. With her back to the house, I can't see where her pupil meets her iris, but I'm standing in the light. She can see every inch of me. The red of my nose and the winter chap of my lips and every freckle on my face. I want to kiss her so badly.
But I don't. It's not the time or the place. It's her move to make.
"Goodnight, Laurel," I say, using every inch of restraint to step away. I have never played it cool in my life, but I need to. I can't mess this up. Her fingers slip from my wrist.
"Goodnight, Annie. See you tomorrow."
Tomorrow. I'll be back here in twenty-six hours, and we will be alone. Just Laurel and me and a sleeping baby. The way it was so many times before.
*
i hope you liked this chapter! laurel's kids will feature plenty more in the future!