Eyes I could fall into.
Please don’t leave us. You’re the best thing to happen to my family. I love you. Please don’t go.
“I made the green stuff,” Aden explained.
“And I did this!” AJ held out a Lego creation, a two-story house, with a Christmas tree outside. She had inherited the design genes, quietly and thoughtfully considering how a building stayed upright, and watching whenever I was drawing something she liked. Aden was my adventurer, the one who’d one day climb Everest or explore space, and as for Anna, she was definitely going to be a politician, or a lawyer, or actor maybe, because she had the gift of persuasion with a touch of coercion, plus of course the pouting, down to a tee.
“It all looks amazing, I can’t wait to try a cookie.”
“Now Daddy!” Anna demanded.
“After dinner.” I stayed resolute despite three tiny faces staring up at me with their wide blue eyes. “I promise.”
“The tree!” Aden darted into the front room, the other two running after, and I started to follow.
“You want to eat first?” Paul touched my arm.
“Is that a trick question?” I forced a smile. I knew that the kids would want to finish trimming the tree with the handmade decorations and wouldn’t be that impressed by their dad delaying everything to eat dinner.
“I supposed you could eat as they watched you and waited,” Paul suggested, tongue-in-cheek.
I loved the way he smiled back and it reached his eyes, making them sparkle. Just being near him was too much for me right now, and I stepped back and away, ignoring his confused expression.
“Guess we’re trimming the tree first, then.” I pushed as much enthusiasm as I could into my tone. Not that I wasn’t excited about this time with the tree and the children, I loved the tree, I loved Christmas.
I love Paul.
Damn it.
He handed me a beer, along with a small bowl of chips, enough to keep me going, and then we watched the human chain that was the triplets as they passed handmade decorations from the kitchen into the front room, with AJ laying them on the scarlet rug which was now dotted with glitter and sparkles. I helped to hang the tiny creations, checking each name as I did, and commented on every one with added hugs and kisses. As I expected, AJ’s were structurally sound, Anna’s were flashy with glitter glue at random points, and Aden’s were decorated with hand-drawn star shapes. Each decoration was perfect, a reflection of my little family, and I was lost in the moment, teasing my babies, and laughing at Paul’s cartoonish attempts to get up high enough to reach the top of the tree as he pretended to topple over.
I almost forgot that I was losing him.
Almost.
The whole evening was perfect, with laughter and feeling good about life, and being with my family. Certainly not thinking about Maria telling me I should speak to Paul, or deliberating over the reasons why I couldn’t ask him to stay.
The children, hyped up on Christmas excitement, didn’t go to bed until nine p.m., and by that time I was exhausted but happy. The three of them shared one large room with separate beds, not that they needed to, because we had the rooms for them to have their own space. But the one time a few months ago that Paul and I had tried to introduce them to the new rooms, they’d all ended up back in this one, the largest of them all, and bundled into one bed, refusing to move. We’d shifted the other two beds into the one room again, which meant there wasn’t a lot of space for closets or toys, but who was I to split up triplets who’d never known time apart? The best time of the day was when I came to bed and stopped in to check on them, my little miracles, I would often sit in a chair and just watch them.
Sometimes, Paul sat with me, and we’d whisper about the things they’d done during the day.
Precious moments.
Now we had story time as we did every night without fail. They joined me when I crawled into the first of the three beds, hugging as I read stories, or made them up.
“Daddy.” Anna wrapped her arms around my neck. “Can we take a cookie to bed with us?”
“Case we get hungry,” Aden added, and Anna nodded in agreement.
“How many cookies have you eaten today?”
Anna held up a hand and tucked down fingers and thumb so just her index finger was visible. “This many,” she said without guile.
I bet one was just the beginning of the great cookie journey today, and I played the bad guy and tried to keep a straight face. “If you get hungry then we have bananas in the kitchen.”
Anna stared at me in horror. “I don’t like them.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I like cookies,” Aden piped up.
“More tomorrow,” I promised, then tucked each of them in with kisses to their foreheads. “Good night.” I turned off the lamps, the glow of night lights taking the edge off the dark, and then blew them all kisses before pulling the door shut.
Having them on my own had been a decision not many had agreed with, but I had done the very best thing of my entire life, having the triplets. One day they’d want peace from each other, but right now my babies wanted to be together. With the three of them finally settled I made my way downstairs, to find Paul spooning chili into a bowl before passing me that and another beer.
“Good day at work?”
That was how our evening conversations began, in that rare time when the children were in bed and it was just the two of us. When he’d first started working for me he wasn’t as comfortable, and the line between boss and manny had been delineated—it had lasted two weeks, before I’d asked him to watch a movie with me, and then it had just rolled into more. Movies, talking about books, about my day, the kids, and the places he wanted to visit. I could listen to him for hours, watch the way he would tilt his head in thought, the way he smiled, and the emotion in him when he talked about the countries on his bucket list. I’d miss his company in the worst kind of way, because it had become more. I didn’t know the exact date I’d fallen in love, but that was what happened.
“Work?”
“I thought you’d gone upstairs, but your car was gone, so I assumed…”
“Yeah, sorry, I had things to finish.” He didn’t call me on my lie, and why would he? As far as he knew I had been at work, he wasn’t to know I was avoiding him. “Maria shouted at me when she found me in the office.”
He chuckled and the sound sent all my blood south. Was this love I felt or just lust? I couldn’t even look at him without wanting to kiss him, but I also wanted to hug him, and lie down next to him. I want the kids climbing all over us. I wanted them to call him dad.
I wanted to call him mine.
Dejected and on the cusp of heading straight for bed, feigning a headache, I forced myself to sit on the sofa with my bowl of chili, and he dropped a pile of cornbread onto the small table next to me, taking a wedge to nibble on as we sat. He even fetched me three of the children’s cookies wrapped in a napkin, one from each of them. As far as I was concerned, this was heaven, even more so when Paul came into the living room with eggnog for both of us and curled up on the opposite end of the sectional.
It was up to me to start the conversation so I could stay away from talking about Iceland, or him leaving. “The cookies look good.”