“You t-take Sammy out and he’s going to w-wake up hungry,” Peck warns.
I look around at all the junk. “Are you doing meals on wheels again?”
Star shakes her head. “We went baby shopping.” She grins.
“You’re barely pregnant,” I scold.
“It’s not for me, dummy,” Star says. “It’s all for Tag and his baby.”
I wave my hand over the piles and piles of stuff. “You bought all this for that little thing in there?” I jerk my thumb toward Tag’s room.
“Well, Tag didn’t have anything with him. We thought he could use some stuff.” Star shrugs.
“Wait a minute!” I cry. “Aren’t you supposed to be on your honeymoon? Why the fuck are you out shopping instead of screwing that amazingly sexy husband of yours?”
She winces. “Oh my god,” she breathes. “My vagina is sore already. I couldn’t go one more time on that swing.” She grins. “Well, not until tonight, anyway.”
“So the swing was a hit?” I ask.
“Oh hell yeah! You can do some crazy shit with that thing. Upside down. Right side up. Backward. Forward. You name it.”
Sammy starts to cry, and Peck holds out her arms to take him from Wren. “I w-warned you,” she says. Then she sits down and lifts her shirt. He makes a sweet little humming sound as he finds his breakfast. Wren rubs his head. “Be quick about it, dude,” she says. “Aunty Wren wants to play with you.” He pops off Peck’s boob long enough to grin at Wren. Then he turns his head and dives back in.
A noise sounds from Tag’s room.
“Oh, another baby! I’ll go get that one!” Wren cries.
“There are entirely too many children in this apartment,” I grumble.
Wren comes back carrying Benji, and she has the back of her hand pressed against his forehead. “Does he feel warm to you?” she asks. She lowers him like she wants me to take him.
“Oh, hell no,” I say.
“Take him. Feel his forehead,” she insists.
Begrudgingly, I take him from her and set him in my lap. He looks up at me and immediately starts to cry.
“She makes me feel like that too,” Star tells him.
“Here, you take it.” I hold him out toward Star. She has baby fever, so I assume she’ll take him, but she jumps up and starts to sort through bags of baby stuff instead. “Hel-loooo,” I cry. Everyone ignores me.
I feel a little wobbly with him in my arms and I’m afraid I’ll drop him, so I pull him closer to me. He settles his little head against my shoulder and I look down my nose at him. The weight of him in my arms feels awkward.“He does feel warm,” I say. “You don’t think he’s getting sick, do you?”
Star unwraps little sleepers and blankets and then takes them to put them in the wash.
“Shouldn’t you ask Tag if he wants that stuff?” I say.
“It’s just some used crap that my neighbor was throwing out.” Star grins at me as she comes back into the room. She hides all the empty packages in the trashcan, burying them deep. “And it’s not like he doesn’t need it. I don’t think he has much.”
“Except for Wren’s fifty thousand dollars,” I remind her.
“I used that to get Benji from Julia,” a deep voice says from behind me.
I jump, and the baby jumps too. I pat his back to calm him down.
“Who’s Julia?” Star asks.
“His mother,” Tag answers. He’s wearing a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, and he doesn’t have shoes or socks on. He rubs a towel across his wet hair, chafing it briskly.
“Where is she?” Star asks.
“I have no idea.” He sits down next to me on the couch and smiles at his son. “I didn’t think you like babies,” he says to me.
“I don’t,” I grumble. But the baby’s being so still and calm. I hold him, because I want to hear the story about the mother of Tag’s child.
“Well, babies like you,” he says. Then he tweaks the end of my nose with the tip of his finger.
I reach up and cover my nose. I can’t believe he just did that. I catch my sisters looking at one another with shocked expressions. “Shut it,” I say to them all.
Peck pops her baby off her boob and switches sides, all beneath a blanket that Star handed her from her bag. “So she’s not coming b-back?” Peck asks.
He shakes his head. “No.”
Star asks softly, “Do you want her to?”
“I did. Even after all that happened, I wanted her to come back. But she’d moved on. It was my own fault, I think.”
So you just offered her fifty thousand dollars and she gave you the baby?” I ask.
“No.” He scratches his head. “There was a little more to it than that. But to make a long story short, I’m broke and I have Benji.” He shrugs. He looks down at Benji, who is starting to fidget in my arms. “Does he look warm to you?”
Benji is still fretful, so Tag gets up and fetches a bottle. I expect him to take the baby from me, but he just warms the bottle and then hands it to me. I look up at him like I’m lost, because I am.
Tag adjusts Benji in my arms so that he’s reclining a little, and he sticks the bottle into his mouth. Tag grins at me. “I had to figure it all out too,” he says. “I’m still learning.”
“I don’t particularly want to learn,” I grumble.