Page 6 of The Kiss Principle

“I’m sorry we make your life so hard, Fernando. I’m sorry we’ve always been a burden for you.” She touched her eyes again. “I want you to be happy. You deserve to be happy; you’ve sacrificed so much for this family.”

The baby fussed some more, and I held her to my chest. Her little head settled on my shoulder, and she made a noise that told me I’d need to invest in some burp cloths sooner rather than later.

“And you’re right: you deserve to have a vacation. That’s something I can give you.” Her voice was thick as she added, “My perfect, perfect son. I don’t know where any of us wouldbe without you.” She kissed my cheek. “Cannon, take those bags back into my room, please. We’ve got a change of plans.”

Somehow, she unwedged the jackass, turned him around, and got him moving again. I carried the baby into the kitchen, bouncing her slowly. Her breath was soft against my neck, and she had that newborn smell I’d forgotten. She was so little. And I remembered how it had been, Augustus crying for a bottle because Mom was too busy rehearsing or doing her makeup or talking to a “friend.” One time, she had lined a laundry basket with a clean blanket and put him in the closet. She had been doing her scales, I remembered tiredly. My back was tight as a motherfucker as I rocked the baby against me. That was when she was going to be a singer.

I dug out my phone, looking out the window at the deck, the haze of pollution over the valley, the hard little tin-stamped city. Lots of people wanted to be actors, I thought as I typed out the text to Augustus. Lots of people wanted to be singers. And somehow, the world kept turning.

Something came up, I wrote.Change of plans.

4

Two days later, I was late for an appointment, and the nanny still hadn’t shown up.

More importantly, the baby was crying.

Those two days had flown by. Mom and Cannon were, according to her texts and, more importantly, my credit card bill, having a fantastic time in Vegas. I’d spent those days trying to (in no particular order) get settled with the baby, reschedule appointments and meetings, and find my junkie brother so that I could, once and for all, murder him myself.

It had been twenty-five years since Augustus had been an infant, and apparently, a lot had changed. Part of that was probably the fact that I was an adult, that I could go to stores and see what there was to buy—we’d never had money growing up, and basically everything Augustus had was either a hand-me-down from me or Chuy, or something a neighbor or friend had given us. It was eye-opening (maybe a better word would be ball-shattering) to walk down aisle after aisle of expensive strollers and car seats and pumps and swings and diapers and formula. Everything looked and sounded great—and was seriously fucking expensive. It was overwhelming. I caught myself in a kind of fugue state, stalled out in the car seat aisle, reading the specs on the tags and comparing crotch buckle depths (great name for a band, or for the next time I needed to yank Augustus’s chain), when I finally realized I was in over my head.

That first day, I bought pretty much everything I could put my hands on: diapers, of course; my weight in wipes; someclothes (those I got off the clearance rack—they had about eighteen of these hot dog onesies, and I bought all of them); a crib; crib sheets; blankets (I refused to call them blankies like the woman at the register); a baby monitor; a waterproof changing pad; a sleep sack, which was apparently a straitjacket for babies; bottles; a bottle brush; a bottle drying rack; baby wash; baby shampoo; a baby tub; baby nail scissors; burp cloths (I’d needed them, desperately, the day before); and so much goddamn formula.

I could return all of it, I figured, once I tracked down Chuy and found the baby’s mother.

The rest of that day, I moved or canceled all of my appointments, and I spent the time putting together the crib, figuring out the car seat (okay, figuring outbothof the car seats—I bought an extra because the crotch buckle thing threw me), and reacquainting myself with the types and quantity of things that come out of babies. She had three blowouts, I shit you not. No pun intended.

I’d forgotten about the nights. I swear to Jesus Christ himself, every forty-five minutes she woke up again. She didn’t want to eat every time. She wanted to be awake. And have me be awake. Every. Forty-five. Minutes.

But even with the brain fog, day two was actually easier. Things started to click, my body (and my brain) remembering little things that had worked with Augustus—how he’d liked to be rocked, or the best way to burp him (honestly, trying to replicate any of Neil Peart’s drum solos worked like a charm), or the fact that sometimes babies were fussy and nothing you did would make them stop crying. I remembered the blessedness of naps, and we shared a few of those. And, of course, I spent a lot of time on my phone, reading, because I realized that there were probably some better ways to take care of a child than whatever an eight-year-old had cobbled together. I also spent alot of time on the phone, trying to get a nanny, which turned out to be harder than expected. I ended up having to agree to an outrageous service charge (“rush processing” like I was calling QVC, for fuck’s sake), but it was worth it, because I had to get back to life.

The next night, she only woke me up three times, which I considered a win.

Only now it was the morning of the third day, and the nanny still wasn’t here.

I changed the baby. I got her dressed and fed. I burped her, and only after I was sure I’d cleared the danger zone did I jump in the shower and get ready for work. She watched me from the floor as I buttoned up my shirt.

“You’ve got your dad’s eyes,” I said as I scooped her up. “Let’s hope that’s all you got from that miserable son of a bitch, huh?”

She fit right in the crook of my arm, which was perfect for pacing and looking out the window and, every five minutes, calling the nannying agency and getting a busy signal.

I was getting ready to call Dr. Phan and cancel (which would be better, in the long run, than not showing up) when a knock came at the door. I threw it open, a few choice words already rising in my throat. I was pretty sure that ripping someone a new asshole and then entrusting them with a child wasn’t the best course to follow, but that advice occupied a small part of my brain in the moment.

Then I forgot what I was going to say because a dude was standing on the doorstep. He had surfer hair—windswept, dark except where the sun had lightened it, a perfectly tousled mess of texture that was long enough to cover the tops of his ears. He was tall and well-proportioned, athletic, but toned instead of bulky. Almost as dark as I was, I thought, but I couldn’t tell how much of that was the sun. In the cool of the April morning, hewore a Baja jacket and board shorts, and where the shorts hit him at the knee, I could see an angry red scar.

“Hi,” he said, a hint of an accent that marked him, for me, as Latin. “My name is—”

“Don’t care,” I said and pushed the baby into his arms. “I’ll be home by five. She just ate. You should have everything you need, but if you think of something—” I checked the curb and saw a weathered Buick LeSabre (maroon). Its tires were bald, and paint was peeling off the hood, and something about the car, even motionless, suggested the possibility of sudden and complete spontaneous combustion. “—get it delivered, and I’ll reimburse you. Phone number is on the fridge. Call me if there’s an emergency.”

He stared at me, and I figured he fell into the same category as most boy toys: pretty and a bit touched in the head. But he was rocking the baby, and he seemed to know how to hold her, and the agency had sent him.

“Mister—”

I checked my phone; I could still make the appointment with Dr. Phan if I drove like Satan was eating my ass. I sprinted toward the garage and called back, “Only if it’s an emergency!”

The last thing I saw when I looked back was the nanny—I guess they called them mannies—standing on the porch, cradling the baby and staring after me. Well, there was a reason he was a manny, I decided. A bit simple. And maybe he was only a temp.

On the drive out of our neighborhood, something felt off. The Escalade was too quiet, so I turned on the radio, got a talk station with what sounded like a man shouting inside a phone booth, and turned it off again. I tried Spotify, and because Augustus wasn’t within a hundred miles of me and my back was bitching at me and I’d had my life turned upside down and gotten approximately twenty-seven minutes of sleep over thelast three days, I put on Destiny’s Child. The sky was a wide, clear plate of blue, and the day would be dry and mild. Relax, I told myself. Relax. You don’t have a baby to feed or change or snuggle. You don’t have laundry to do. (My God, how many clothes and towels and blankies—blankets—could one child go through?) You don’t have anyone to take care of except you. So, relax.

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