time. A baby that wasn’t wearing a diaper. Beside her, was the stuffed animal that Jonah had brought over the night before but hadn’t gotten around to giving her.
“It’s easy, but you have to be fast now that’s she rolling over.” It was Peter, the smaller one of the two, who spoke as he pulled a diaper out of nowhere like a magician. “You lift her bottom—” He held two feet together and lifted said butt in the air an inch before sliding the opened diaper beneath the bare butt. “—spread it out, fold the front over, and put the tabs back down, and you’re done.”
Jonah, I couldn’t help but notice, was watching him like a hawk as he kneeled beside what looked like two balled-up baby wipes right by his right knee.
“She’s eating real food now. That gets messy, but it’s still simple,” Peter said as he helped Mo sit up.
“How did you learn? With Lenny?”
“No, she was using the bathroom on her own by the time we met.” I watched Peter’s nearly black eyes flick toward the man beside him and saw the protectiveness hidden in them even from across the room. “We took a class and watched some videos to learn how to do everything.”
Jonah made a subtle startled face. “Videos?”
“Yes,” Peter confirmed, stealing another quick glance at the other man before looking back down with a frown. “Len couldn’t sleep much at the end—in the last trimester. We looked up everything then to be ready. We learned together.”
Something flashed across Jonah’s face as he gazed down at the baby. Regret? He might have been faking that too. How the hell would I know?
Peter kept talking though, his gaze shifting back to Mo so that he couldn’t see what I was seeing. But that fiercely protective look on his face didn’t lighten up. It didn’t go anywhere, and it made my heart grow a few sizes. Maybe this other idiot hadn’t liked me enough to even keep being my friend, but Peter would always have my back. Our backs. Always.
“If you’re planning on staying,” Peter said, “you’ll figure it all out. It’s easy. Madeline won’t get mad if you do something wrong. She doesn’t have anything to compare to, and she doesn’t know a bad mood unless she’s hungry. She’s a good girl. She’s tied with her mom for being the best two girls in the world… aren’t you, Mo? Aren’t you good and special and smart? Just like your mama.”
“I didn’t know Lenny was… pregnant. If I had, I wouldn’t….” He swallowed and seemed to struggle for a second to find the right words… or the right lies. “I would have been here. Or maybe… maybe Lenny would have been with me, I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I still can’t believe she… exists.”
Me be with him. Ha. Something that could have been anger or sadness swirled around in my chest.
He continued talking quietly to Peter. “I’ve missed out on heaps. I know it doesn’t change much, but I want you to know that I wasn’t avoiding my… her… Mo.” He closed his eyes for a moment before gluing them back down on the figure on the blanket. His expression startled and nervous and just… heavy. “Wish I could take back the mistakes I’ve made.”
I had no right to let those words make me feel nauseous. I knew that.
I had no right to imagine what those mistakes were—him disappearing for months and having sex with a ton of women, him doing drugs, having another child somewhere, getting married, getting involved with the wrong people—but I ran through all those possibilities in my head anyway.
I hadn’t looked him up in months. The only information I had been caught up on was how his rugby team had been doing over the season, and that was only because of the articles that every so often popped up on my home screen page… from all the previous stalking I’d done before Mo.
I had no idea what he’d been doing with his life. Because it wasn’t any of my business. Because I wasn’t going to look it up.
Jonah and I hadn’t exactly been in a relationship. We had been friends. Who liked each other a lot. Who were attracted to each other, at least I had thought.
But I hadn’t been his girlfriend. I had never been anyone’s girlfriend.
If he had done something after we’d gone our separate ways, it wasn’t like he had cheated on me.