Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 104050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 520(@200wpm)___ 416(@250wpm)___ 347(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 104050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 520(@200wpm)___ 416(@250wpm)___ 347(@300wpm)
She’s quiet, for now. There’s a bottle of breastmilk balanced in my hoodie pocket, sweating in the heat. My phone is wedged between Ethics in Higher Ed and the battered copy of Emerson’s Essays I keep telling myself I’ll read for real this time. The air smells like wet grass and sidewalk chalk—leftover from whatever summer camp they ran on this quad in the morning.
For a minute, I can almost convince myself I belong here. Not as a cautionary tale or departmental punchline, but as a woman who is, against all odds, keeping it together.
Then Emmy lets out a noise like a deflating tire, and my moment is gone.
I wipe the drool from her chin and check the time. Still twenty minutes until my TA meeting, and I’m supposed to have finished annotating a hundred pages of Kant before then. I manage five, maybe, before the world comes back into focus in the form of Liam’s shadow gliding across my table.
He’s carrying two coffees—one black, one with a swirl of oat milk on top, foam stenciled with a clumsy heart. He’s traded his suit jacket for a cardigan, but the effect is still the same: alpha male disguised as gentle intellectual, all muscle, broad shoulders and a penetrating blue gaze. His eyes sweep the garden, the books, the baby. He smiles, and the lines around his mouth deepen, evidence of too many late nights and too much laughter.
He hands me the coffee first. I can feel the heat even before it lands in my palm. He leans over, brushing his lips against my forehead, then lowers himself to Emmy’s level. She locks eyes with him, the way only babies and predators can, and he returns the gaze, solemn for a heartbeat before breaking into a goofy, side-of-the-mouth grin.
“May I?” he says, already unfastening the Moby wrap with one hand.
I surrender her, and she goes without protest, her head lolling against his chest as he settles onto the bench beside me. He kisses her temple, then mine, and the smell of his aftershave cuts through the leaf mold and earth.
“You look radiant,” he says, and I snort, because I’m pretty sure I’ve got spit-up on my hoodie and at least three different kinds of pen marks on my hand.
He glances at my notes. “Master’s finals?” he asks.
I nod. “The existential terror is real.”
He sips his coffee, watching a bee orbit the wisteria above us. For a second, we’re just two people pretending this is what they always dreamed about—a family picnic in the sun, not the aftermath of a year-long collision.
He bounces Emmy gently, and she lets out a blissed-out sigh. “She’s going to sleep through the night soon,” he predicts. “I can feel it.”
“Keep dreaming,” I say, but there’s no malice. We’re both too tired for irony.
He shifts, arranging Emmy more securely on his lap. “We should talk wedding plans,” he says. “The sooner the better, before Andie gets too into it.”
My laugh is a little too loud. “You’re not wrong. She wants to do it in a Catholic church, with all the pageantry. Full lace, incense, the whole nine yards.”
He gives me a sly look. “You could pull off lace.”
I shake my head. “I was thinking something more casual. Outdoor. Maybe here, actually.”
He looks around, considering the possibility. “The North Garden has a certain dramatic appeal.”
“It’s where we met,” I remind him.
He smirks. “We met during office hours. You weren’t wearing panties, if I recall.”
I roll my eyes.
“I meant the first time you saw me as a person and not just a sex toy.”
He relents, raising his cup in a mock-toast. “To non-hierarchical romance that involves lots of sex toys.”
We clink our paper cups, and for a moment, everything is easy.
He leans back, stretching his arm behind me on the bench. “My family’s lake house is always an option. Fewer prying eyes, more plausible deniability.”
“Less likely to get Andie arrested for public intoxication,” I add.
He grins, takes a long drink, then watches Emmy’s chest rise and fall, slow and steady.
“Do you ever regret any of it?” I ask, and the words come out before I can stop them.
He looks surprised, but not offended. “Regret? No. I’d do it all again. Even the part where you almost killed me in the hospital lobby.”
I flush at the memory, but he squeezes my thigh, reassuring.
He’s quiet for a second, then says, “You know, when I started paternity leave, I thought it would be an excuse to work on my book. But it turns out, all I want to do is stare at her. Or you.”
He makes it sound romantic, but I know he’s struggling. The poetry hasn’t come easy lately; the days blur together in a fog of diapers, nap schedules, and endless, hungry hours.
I brush a petal from his shoulder. “You’ll get back to it. It’s just a season.”