Page 43

“You should really just let me do this and you watch,” I try to tell Elsie for the fifth time this morning, but from the stubborn tilt of her chin, I know she isn’t going to listen.

“I can paint, Beau.”

“There’s a lot more to do than just paint.

” The guest room, the room I slept in for far too many months, is going to be the nursery.

I moved all my stuff back into our room a couple of weeks ago, but the furniture is still in there.

It needs to be taken apart and moved out before we can paint and begin to set up the nursery furniture and decor.

It took three trips to bring home all the stuff gifted to us at the baby shower, and it’s all been sitting in random corners of the house, waiting for us to get started assembling and organizing it.

And as often as I’ve tried to convince Elsie that I can handle the heavy lifting, she refuses.

“I can move a mattress,” she says this with an eye roll, but I don’t miss the way she absentmindedly massages her lower back. She’s been trying to hide the pain from me for the last few weeks. Like I don’t know that she has a growing human sitting on her nerves and compressing her organs.

“Not according to your obstetrician.”

Elsie waves a hand dismissively, avoiding my gaze. “What does she know?”

I heave out a sigh and open the bedroom door. It’s been weeks since either of us has been in here, and it’s already developed a closed-off, musty smell that will soon disappear when I prop open the windows to let the summer breeze in.

It takes me a moment to realize Elsie has stopped in the doorway. I crane my neck over my shoulder to look at her as I push up the window. She’s staring at the wall above the bed.

“The paintings,” she breathes.

Only now do I remember them there. I can still feel the cold air of the attic as I climbed into it late one evening while she was still at the studio.

The cobwebs that clung to my clothes. The dust that had gathered on their surfaces.

I remember the tight feeling in my chest as I looked at them, unsure of whether we’d ever get back to the people who had painted them, drunk on cheap wine and handsy, laughing as we made love after returning home and hanging them on the wall.

We didn’t make our way back to those people, but I’m not sure I would want to. I like who we are now so much more.

I finish pushing the window open and turn to face her, feeling the breeze rush in, catching the curtains and wrapping them around my thighs. “I got them out of the attic,” I say, stuffing my hands in my jeans pockets. They’re worn, soft against my skin.

Her eyes peel from the paintings and settle on mine, bright blue in the light peering through the window. “Why? When?”

My shoulders lift in a shrug. Maybe I should be embarrassed that I wanted them back, that I wanted to fall asleep beneath them, but I’m not. “A few days after you told me you put them up there. I…” I trail off. “I missed them.”

Her eyes settle on the paintings once more, her expression softening.

She looks beautiful like this, her hair catching in the breeze, her skin golden from the sun, her entire body relaxing like she’s at peace, something neither of us was sure she’d ever be capable of feeling again. “Yeah, I think I did too.”

I move to stand beside her, the bare skin of her arm brushing beneath the sleeve of my shirt as I reach for her hand.

She entwines it with mine, and I can feel her pulse against my palm, beating in rhythm with mine.

We stare at the paintings for a long moment, and I wonder if she still looks at hers and thinks it’s ugly, or if she sees what I do.

If she remembers the way our teeth clinked together when we laughed in our bedroom after hanging them, too drunk to unbutton her jeans.

If she remembers ending up with my painted fingerprints staining her ribs because the edges weren’t completely dry.

If she remembers us touching up the paint on the wall in our apartment when we moved out for the same reason.

If she remembers what it felt like to make something together, to be the people we once were.

If she likes who we’ve become even more.

“We should put them back in our room,” she says.

My heart skips a beat, my chest filling up with something that feels like bubbly champagne, popping and exploding.

I try to steady my voice when I ask, “Yeah?”

She smiles up at me, so bright in this dark room, the one that always felt so lonely. The one that will never feel like that again. “Yeah. And maybe after the baby is born, we can have a date night and paint some terrible pictures of her to hang in here to embarrass her with until the end of time.”

A grin splits my mouth and the warm bubbly spreads from my chest, invading every part of my body until it feels like sunshine in my veins. “That sounds perfect.”

We take the bed apart, and I manage to move the mattress on one of Elsie’s frequent bathroom breaks.

She acts like she’s annoyed, but I know she isn’t, not when every time I look at her, she’s holding back a smile.

I know she thought we wouldn’t get here.

Us, but mostly the baby. That this pregnancy would end the same as the last. That she held herself back from being excited, but that she’s finally allowing herself to now.

It pours out of her, filling the room with its warmth.

We chose a muted blue color for the walls, one that matches the summer sky outside.

It was Elsie’s choice, and I couldn’t have been happier with it.

This room felt so dark when I lived in it.

The walls were a medium gray color that we had never gotten around to changing after we moved in.

The furniture and decor were mismatched pieces we’d acquired over the years.

Nothing about it felt intentional or personal. It felt lifeless.

And I couldn’t be more excited to bring new life into it.

Elsie paints, and we both pretend I don’t notice the way she stops every few rolls to place a hand on her lower back. I have to suppress a smile each time, knowing that she won’t stop, no matter what I say.

I cover three walls in the amount of time it takes her to do one, but we don’t acknowledge that either.

We talk as we paint. I ask her about the lunch she had with her mom last week, the one Diana initiated.

It surprised us both, and I offered to go with her, but she went alone.

It went better than either of us expected.

There’s still tension between them. Diana still thinks she knows best, but she’s trying, and that’s more than she did before.

We discuss baby name options. We haven’t found anything that sticks out to either of us, and I think we both thought we would by now. Elsie says she feels like time is closing in, but I tell her I think we will know when we meet her, so we leave it at that.

She asks if Cooper has been acting weird and tells me about her conversation with Jade. I tell her about the comment Dad made, the way Cooper brushed it off. We both agree something is going on, but that Cooper will tell us when he’s ready.

Time moves at an easy pace, and before we know it, we’ve finished all the walls, the color making the entire room feel like summer.

We settle on the carpet that will need a good cleaning before we begin to move in furniture and admire our handiwork.

It already looks better in here, and the sight of it soothes that part of me that was broken for so long.

Elsie leans her head on my shoulder, sleep tugging at her eyes. She hasn’t been sleeping well the past few weeks, and she’s gotten progressively more uncomfortable as her hands and feet have been swelling, but she refuses to slow down.

“Let’s take a picture,” she says. Mumbles, rather. She mentioned something about a headache earlier, and I wonder if it’s lingering despite the pain reliever she took.

I pull out my phone from my back pocket. “Of what?”

Her head moves on my shoulder, her gaze catching mine. There’s a slight tilt to her lips, a tired smile. “Of us. We don’t have any pictures during the pregnancy.”

I smile back and lift the phone to snap a photo of us. She looks so exhausted, but she’s beaming too, the sun slanting through the window and making her skin look golden.

She takes the phone from my hand, examining the picture, expression wistful.

“I wish we had taken more. I’ve taken a few bump pictures, but I…

wasted so much time during this pregnancy.

I didn’t document it because I was too stuck in my head.

” Her voice is small, regretful, and it makes my chest feel tight.

My hand covers hers, retrieving the phone to click on an album before returning it to her.

“I’ve been documenting it.” I watch her as she scrolls through the album.

There’s a look on her face I can’t quite decipher and silver lining her eyes.

A fat drop crests her eyelid, rolling slowly down her cheek.

The album is full of photos and videos, candid ones I’ve been taking of her for months. Memories for us, sure, but also living proof for our daughter that even when things were rocky between us, that even if we had never figured things out, she was always loved.

Elsie stops scrolling and clicks on the first video in the album.

My voice fills the empty room. “Hey, baby, it’s me, your dad.

I wanted to introduce myself now because you’ll never know me when I’m not a dad.

And you’ll never know your mom when she’s not your mom.

She’s going to be the best mom in the entire world.

I just know it, baby. But I want you to see her now, too, when she’s just the best woman in the world. ”

The camera flips, and then Elsie is on the screen, humming as she cooks dinner. She’s so inside her head that she doesn’t hear my whisper. “Isn’t she beautiful? I can’t believe she’s growing you right now .”

The video ends and Elsie clicks on another. This one was taken at her studio. In the video, she’s demonstrating something to Maya, and the girl watches her with rapt attention, soaking in her every instruction.

“Hey, baby, it’s me, Dad,” my voice says.

“But enough of me. Look at your mom. She’s dancing.

I wish you could have seen her dancing on the stage, but I think she’s even better here.

She’s the best dancer in the entire world.

I know she probably wishes you could have seen her dancing in a company, but I’m glad you’ll get to see her like this, the way she lights up as she teaches these kids about the thing she loves most.”

She scrolls through more photos and videos, dozens, her tears falling freely now. When she speaks, her voice is thick. “I can’t believe you were doing this the whole time.”

I wrap my arm around her, pulling her body into mine. She fits so perfectly here. It makes me wonder how we went so long without it, how we ever felt whole when we were apart.

“I was…terrible to you,” she says, voice tinged with something like regret. “And you were making videos, talking about how perfect I am.”

“Elsie,” I breathe, and turn my body so I’m facing her fully. Her cheeks are tearstained, her eyes red. She looks heartbroken. “You were never terrible to me.”

“I was,” she says, nodding vigorously. “I asked you to leave and then I let you come back, but I still didn’t let you in.

I held you at arm’s length for so damn long and you still loved me.

I don’t—” She sighs, wipes hard beneath her eyes.

They’re bloodshot, the skin around them red. “I don’t deserve you.”

“Elsie,” I say more firmly, needing her to understand. “You were hurting, and grieving, and broken .”

She just shakes her head again, pushing to her feet and pacing the room that smells like paint. “That’s not an excuse.”

“No, it’s not,” I agree, propping my forearms on my bent knees as I watch her. Her hair is falling down her back in messy waves from the clip she was wearing. Her feet are bare and her T-shirt doesn’t fully cover her protruding bump. “But it’s the truth. You were hurt and you hurt me.”

She stops pacing, her eyes connecting with mine, hard and so unforgiving toward herself. There’s a crack in her voice when she says, “I was broken and I broke us.”

I stand and move closer to her, but she backs away until she has nowhere else to go, her body just a hairbreadth from the wet walls. I have no such qualms. I place my hand beside her head, blue paint staining my palm, and lean in until we’re nose to nose.

“You were healing and you put us back together.”

“It doesn’t erase what I did,” she whispers, voice cracking again.

“Maybe not,” I say. “But we’re past it now. I’ve forgiven you. Now you have to forgive yourself.”

Her eyes meet mine, blue as the skies outside the window. “I don’t know if I can.”

I drop my hand from the wall to land on her lower back, pulling her closer to me, erasing the last little bit of distance between us.

“You want to know what I thought when I saw those paintings today?” I wait for her nod, then continue.

“I was thinking about how, when I hung them up in here, I was praying we could get back to those people, to the ones who made those paintings.”

“Me too,” she says, and it sounds raw, like it was scraped out of her.

I shake my head, her nose brushing against mine with the movement.

“But then I realized I don’t want to be them again.

I love who we are now, who we’ve become through all of this.

It hurt, but we’re better for it, Els. You have to see that.

We may have broken, but when we put ourselves back together, we made something more beautiful than what we were before. ”

She blinks up at me, looking wrecked, but I see a sliver of hope behind her eyes, how desperate she is to believe what I’m saying. “Do you really believe that?”

My lips find hers, pressing against them in the barest touch, letting her feel my words as I say them. “I do, Els. I really do.”

She nods, mouth brushing mine. “Okay.”

I pull back enough to see her eyes, enough for her to be able to read the sincerity in mine. “You’ll be able to forgive yourself. It might take time, but we have endless amounts of it.”