I was drowning earlier. Sometimes everything with Giuliana happened all at once, and it was like my brain just stopped working. If Javi hadn’t helped, I’m sure I would have managed—but it had been so much simpler with the help.
Dinner, too, had been nice. Unexpected. It had been a long time since I’d had an adult conversation that wasn’t with Mason asking about Giuliana or a work colleague pestering me about a project that I’d been working on remotely. It had been good food and good conversation with an unbelievably good-looking man. I felt relaxed in a way I hadn’t in a long time.
And grateful to Javi.
I dried my hands on the towel to go relieve him of baby duty and walked into the living room to see Giuliana fast asleep on Javi’s chest. Maybe I should have been jealous—after all, she’d only really been held by close family and myself—but instead of the green hue of envy, it just made me feel… right. Javi had offered help, but he’d done more than tick some boxes off a to-do list.
He’d brought peace to my home.
“I’ll show you where she sleeps,” I said.
I listened to Javi’s footsteps as I led him upstairs to Giuliana’s room. I expected him to hand her over as soon as we were across the threshold, but he didn’t. Instead, he moved in the low light of her nightlight to the crib, grabbing a blanket on his way.
Before I could protest and tell him no blankets in the crib, he began not to tuck her in, but to swaddle her. My body tensed, waiting for her to wake and shriek at being confined. Instead, she seemed to drop deeper into sleep, her eyelids twitching with whatever dreams she was seeing.
“I’ve never been able to do the swaddle,” I admitted as we left her to go back downstairs. “She squirmed too much and always busted free.”
Javi’s chuckle was warm and not mocking. “It took me a bazillion tries to get the swaddle right. I had a lot of practice. But it always seemed to make the sleep last longer.”
My heart skipped a beat at this possibility. A stretch of sleep that lasted more than two or three hours? “She won’t get too hot?”
We moved into my living room, where I tried to ignore the toys and various baby supplies scattered all over. I was doing the best I could on my own, and I needed to believe Javi understood that. Even if tonight only proved how much I was getting wrong—how badly I needed the help.
My couch provided a welcome respite. I sank onto it, only to startle at the feel of the cushions dipping with Javi’s weight.
“They d-don’t get t-too hot,” he said, “when you use a light b-blanket like that one. B-being wrapped reminds them of b-b-being in the womb.”
Javi’s cheeks flushed pink, and I hoped he wouldn’t clam up. He tended to keep his answers concise after stuttering, limiting his responses to as few words as possible. For a moment I wished I could tell him that it didn’t bother me—that I didn’t want him to feel nervous, or embarrassed.
But not only was I pretty sure that calling attention to his stutter would make it worse, or might even make him leave again, I was also dealing with why I didn’t want him to feel nervous—why I wanted him to stay.
“Do you have kids of your own?” I asked, trying to distract myself from Javi’s beauty and how much I wanted to touch him.
“No kids,” he replied.
“Then how are you so fucking good at this?” I knew a tinge of frustration was audible in my voice, but I couldn’t help it—Javi was such a natural while I felt like I was bungling things up daily.
“I was in foster c-care,” he said slowly. “From when I was a k-kid. There were a lot of families I lived with that had b-b-babies. I think most of the t-time I was b-brought in as a b-babysitter instead of a k-kid who needed c-care. I d-didn’t like that, b...b-b-but taking c-care of the b-babies was my favorite thing.”
It was grueling to listen to him—not because of how his story seemed to trip up his tongue more and more, but because of the flat way he told me. As if the way he was treated was okay. He was sitting on the couch, stiff and unable to relax, and I wanted to wrap him up in my arms, assure him