Page 51 of His Holy Chaos

Angel's crying downgrades to a grumpy whimper the second she's against my chest. I rock her, humming first, then singing softly. Just a fragment of "Hallelujah," barely above a whisper. Her fist curls around the collar of my shirt. Her breathing slows. I can feel her heartbeat against mine, fast and tiny, gradually steadying.

Ford leans against the doorframe, arms crossed, watching us in the blue light. After a while, when Angel's breathing has gone deep and even, he speaks.

"When she was a newborn, she used to cry for hours. I cried too. My mom cried. We just didn't know what was going on with her."

"It can't have been easy," I say, feeling the weight of it. He'd just lost his sister. Martha had just lost a daughter. And here was this tiny, screaming person who needed everything from them while they had nothing left to give.

"It wasn't. But it was fast. In eight weeks, she was this happy, smiley baby. I knew all I had to do was hang in there and be there for her. Whatever I was feeling, she was feeling much worse. She couldn't communicate, she didn't know what was going on. She could only feel it. I knew it would get better, and it did." He pauses. "This taught me everything I needed to learn about life. That some people are hurting and can't communicate it to you. They can only cry. And that hard things are worth it, even when they're hard."

I look down at Angel, asleep now, her face slack and peaceful, her fist still gripping my shirt.

"But clear communication is everything," I say quietly. "And not everything needs to be hard to be good."

"I know. But some people try their best to communicate through words and fail. It's up to you to decide if you want to help them or not. And once you decide, you follow through. We can change our minds, of course. But we also have a responsibility to the people we have in our lives." He shifts against the doorframe. "Also, I never said easy things aren't good. Just that hard things are also worth it."

I stop, absorbing everything that means.

"Also, discipline doesn't wait for when you're up for it. No matter how you feel, you've got to show up, every single time. Just like I have to show up for Angel, no matter how, or when, or what I'm going through."

I think about that. I think about every morning I didn't get out of bed, every call I ignored, every meal I skipped, every friend I shut out. I think about all the people who showed up for me anyway. Noa with his pistachio ice cream, Glynn with their texts, Pierce with his stupid jokes, Callum with his arms open. All of them showing up when I couldn't show up for myself.

"This thing about responsibility to others," I say. "My mom and dad gave me this book when I was a kid. It's called The Little Prince, by a French author…"

"Yes. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry."

"So you know it!" I exclaim. He laughs.

"It's one of the most-read books in the world. In fact, Angel has it right here." He goes to Angel's bookshelf and takes down a copy. A special edition with gold foil and a hardcover. He means it. I take it, excited, flipping pages.

"Yes!" I find the quote I want. "'You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.'"

I wink at him. He knows exactly what I mean. He smiles at me in the half-dark of Angel's nursery.

"Can I ask you something?" I say. "Don't you think it's kind of contradictory? Being religious and being gay? The church literally says we're sinners. I never understood how you reconcile that."

I'm not trying to be rude. I'm genuinely curious. I gave up on religion a long time ago, not because I thought about it deeply, but because it felt like a door that was closed to people like me before I ever got to knock.

Ford is quiet for a moment. Not offended. Thinking. He does that.

"I don't reconcile it," he says. "There's nothing to reconcile. God made me exactly as I am. Every part of me. Including who I love." He adjusts Angel's blanket, his fingers gentle. "People tell me I'm wrong. God never has."

The simplicity of it catches me off guard. No argument, no theology, no justification. Just a man who made peace with himself a long time ago and doesn't need anyone's permission to keep it.

We go back to bed.

But the alarm goes off at five forty-five and I think I'm dying. Ford is already up, already dressed, standing at the foot of the bed with Angel on his hip, both of them looking at me like I'm the most pathetic thing they've ever seen.

"Rise and shine."

"It's not even six," I cry out.

"Angel's been up since five."

"Angel is a psychopath."

She giggles at me. She actually giggles, like she understands, and I drag myself out of Ford's ridiculous California king with its ridiculous thread count and stumble into the bathroom. The house smells like coffee already. Everything in Ford's house smells like something. Cedar, coffee, Martha's candles. My apartment smells like Monster Energy and regret.

Ford's house is nothing like the penthouse. Where the penthouse is glass and chrome and emptiness, the townhouse is warm and full. Wooden floors that creak, bookshelves that sag under the weight of actual books, a kitchen that smells like Martha's been cooking in it since the foundation was poured. There are baby gates at the top and bottom of every staircase. A basket of toys sits in the living room corner, half its contents scattered across a rug that probably cost a fortune and now has a mysterious stain on it that no one's bothered to fix. Family photos line the hallway, Ford and his sister as kids, Martha holding a newborn Angel, Ford at a piano recital looking maybe twelve and already serious. The penthouse is where Ford performs control. This house is where he actually lives it, messily, tenderly, with cheerios ground into the carpet and a mobile spinning above a crib down the hall.