I’d ever seen, then the tiniest long-sleeved shirt I’d ever seen. It had little pockets on the end that flipped over to cover her hands, so she wouldn’t scratch herself, the nurse told me when I’d asked. Tiny socks, tiny hat, and then she was wrapped up like a burrito in an ugly, scratchy blanket and carted back to my sister.
The doctor and a nurse had something red and slick in a metal bowl. Curious, I leaned in, trying to figure out what it was.
“Want to see the placenta?” the doctor asked when she noticed me lurking.
I spun away from her like a tornado. “Nope. No, thanks. I’m good.”
Ivy laughed, looking up from the bundle in her arms. “I’m gonna keep it. Put it in the freezer and fry it up with some onions.”
I gagged, swallowing back my lunch. “That has to be a biohazard or a CDC violation or … you cannot take that home, Ivy.”
“I’m kidding,” she said. “I don’t even want to see it, never mind eat it. You’re welcome to it if you want it though.” Laughing again when I shook my head, she looked to the doctor. “Could you make sure that’s gone before my boyfriend gets here? As much as I hate that he wasn’t here, seeing that without the context of the rest of it just feels wrong.” She bounced the baby in her arms. “That’s right. Because Daddy will be here soon. Won’t he, Lila?”
I checked my phone. “He’s in the building,” I promised with a smile, leaning over the baby.
She was beautiful, even all smooshed up. Under her cap, which was pulled down to her eyebrows, her hair was dark and curly. Her lashes were thick, and when her eyes occasionally cracked open, the irises were a deep, strange shade of blue. Her toothless mouth sometimes opened to mewl, but since finding her way back to Ivy, she was mostly quiet, wiggling every once in a while.
Dean burst into the room like there was a fire, his eyes wild and gigantic chest heaving. With a swipe of his hand, his beanie was clutched in his fist, his gaze fixing on Ivy and the baby. His dark eyes filled with tears, and his lips curled in the most reverent of smiles.
A happy sob burst out of Ivy as he floated toward her, and I stepped out of the way, fingertips to smiling lips and tears sliding down my cheeks.
They cried and laughed and hovered over their child. They kissed and held each other, and when Ivy passed the baby to him, he cradled his daughter in his arms with more care and wonder than I’d ever seen a person possess.
They were three, their love creating another, a bond between them that couldn’t be broken. Their lives would forever be full of love, full of joy. Full of pain too, because that was the nature of life, after all. But I knew without a doubt that they would cling to each other just as they did now, with all the hope and love they held in their hearts. Which was a lot.
I was struck again with a longing, a moment of wishing for that other life, the one with the easy Sundays and the abundance of kisses. I added a new daydream to the reel, one just like this.
And there was only one man I could imagine it with.
I felt myself approach a moment, a precipice. A cliff face where I was given a choice. The wind of change whipped my face, beckoning me closer to the edge where I’d have to decide—fly or flee. The life I had or the one I dreamed of.
I knew what I wanted to do, but what would I sacrifice to do it? Could I have it all, the life I wanted and the one I was living? Was there an in-between, a middle ground, or was I destined to have one or the other?
And how much did I even want what I had?
I didn’t know the answer, not yet.
But the wind carried me closer to the edge all the same.
22
Girls Like Her
KASH
I smiled down at my phone where a picture of Ivy and her baby smiled back at me.
“Lemme see,” Luke said impatiently, reaching across the worktable where we’d perched that night, the display I’d been helping him build finally ready for Tess’s finishing touches.
When I passed my phone over, his face went all gooey.
“Man, would you look at that? A baby. Ivy has a baby.”