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My heart was racing, and I wondered if she could feel it against her face. If she wondered why this made me so fucking nervous. Why this gutted me so thoroughly.
My nose was hot and uncomfortable, my eyes dry and full of sand or something. It felt like someone had punched a block of dirt down my throat, and I couldn’t swallow past it no matter how hard I tried.
And Itried.
It was anchored right there, in my eyes and nose and throat and heart. Things I didn’t want to name, grief that I’d shoved down, and all my fears were wrapped up in one tiny package, hell-bent on choking the shit out of me.
If I dared move, I might be tempted to break something, just to see if it would release some of this tension.
But I wouldn’t, I realized. Not for the world.
It was inevitable, I suppose, that this tiny little girl would be the thing to knock over the first brick, to shove through all the mortar and bindings keeping the bricks in place.
All along, I’d been so terrified of Zoe because she’d been in the back of my head for bloodyyears. But I’d been afraid of Mira too.
That was probably why I’d resisted moments like this. I couldn’t breathe, not with the sweetness trying to push through my lungs. I felt like Mira was suffocating me with all that pure, innocent love.
Whatever I felt for Zoe was complicated. It was hemmed in by all the history between us. But this, with Mira, wasn’t. Not really. Not once I’d set aside all the bullshit fears clouding my head. They were still there. They were always there. But right now, in this singular moment, I could ignore them.
She’d taken a bath after dinner, and when I pressed a featherlight kiss onto the top of her hair, I tried to imagine a world in which that soft smell wouldn’t remind me of her.
You didn’t think too much about the responsibility of raising a child until they were there in your arms. There was no committee telling you what to do. No coach screaming in your ear about how you could improve. No binder or training manual that could guarantee you’d one day be able to send this person out into the world as a self-sufficient, non-asshole human being.
There were so many of those—the assholes. It was highly likely that I was one of them, a product of my own upbringing and history. And I refused to let Mira become a victim of that.
She’d be a good person, because she was born from good people and had at least one other good person with a hand in raising her.
All I could do was not make things worse and do what I did best.
Fucking destroy anyone who got in the way of Mira having the best life in the entire world.
Her breathing was even and slow, and I gently rubbed circles on her back to see if she stirred. I tilted my head and sighed.
Eyes closed.
Mira had been sound asleep during the middle of my emotional epiphany.
“Fucking hell,” I whispered. “You’re killing me, kid.”
But I kissed the top of her hair again, then settled my head back against the couch. My eyes closed after a few minutes and stayed shut until my back protested the position.
Slowly, I shifted Mira in my arms until we were stretched out on the couch, a pillow wedged under my head and the soft weight of her body tucked against my chest.
Just a few more minutes,I thought to myself.
It was hours later when I woke, the house dark around us, the two of us covered with a big fuzzy blanket.
I grabbed my phone to check the time, and Mira stirred slightly.
It was after midnight, and there was an unread text on my phone.
Zoe:Thank you for making me go out.
Zoe:And I promise that your secret cinnamon roll side is safe with me.
She had attached a picture, a dimly lit snap of Mira wrapped firmly in my arms. My face looked calm in sleep, but when I saw the way I held her, my chest went tight and my ribs hot, a strange, undefinable ache growing underneath them.
I didn’t know how to do any of this, didn’t know where to put all the feelings growing out of this situation. How to pretend like I didn’t want the things I wanted.
