Page 4 of The Kiss Principle

Not a cat, a distant part of my brain observed. Chuy had left the door open, and a baby had wandered in.

But that wasn’t true, of course. The car seat. A diaper bag. Someone had brought this baby into the house. And then, apparently, left.

The infant’s screams penetrated the fog in my head, and I looked around. Someone had to be here, right? Somebody this baby belonged to. I jogged to the windows in the living room, but there was nobody parked out front. I opened the back door and stuck my head out. Nothing. The baby was still screaming, and I raced the length of the house and threw open Chuy’s door.

His bed was empty.

Drawers hung open, clothes spilling out of them.

I stared for a moment, as though Chuy might pop out and yell,Surprise!But this wasn’t the first time he’d packed a bag and bolted, and I recognized the signs. He was gone. The piece of shit junkie motherfucker was gone. And he’d left a baby.

It was like something out of a fairy tale, out of those Golden Books I used to read Augustus. Or something out of a nightmare.

“Mom,” I shouted, “I need you!”

She didn’t answer, but maybe God was being merciful because the baby was screaming too loudly for me to hear whatever was happening inside her room.

The baby’s desperate cries finally jarred me into action. Nobody was here. Nobody was going to do this but me. I went back to the kitchen. I unbuckled the car seat straps—I didn’t remember Augustus’s being this complicated, and it took me a few tries, but that also might have been because my hands were shaking. I got the baby out, caught a whiff of pee, and touched wet fabric. The plain white onesie was soaked through.

“Okay,” I whispered as I shifted the baby to one arm. My body remembered this, the movement that was somewhere between rocking and bouncing as I pawed through the diaper bag with my free hand. “You’re okay. Hey, somebody’s got a good set of lungs.”

Somebody was trying to puncture my ear drum.

By some miracle, the bag held not only a clean diaper and wipes but a bottle and a container of formula. Diaper first, I decided. I stripped the baby out of the onesie, tossed it on the floor, and threw the dirty diaper in the trash. That answered one question: the baby was a she. It took me a few fumbling tries to get the clean diaper on—I swear to God, they’d moved the little tape-tab things, because it definitely hadn’t been this hard with Augustus—and then, for lack of anything better, wrapped her in a clean towel. She was screaming even harder now, if that was possible.

I heated water in the microwave and, somehow, got most of it into the bottle. I scooped. I measured. It was starting to come back to me, and I even screwed the top of the bottle into place one-handed. I shook it, and then I tested it against the inside of my arm. Maybe a little on the cool side, if anything. Better than burning her mouth.

When I brought the nipple to her lips, she let out a final, whimpering cry and took it into her mouth. Then she ate like an animal, still shaking now and then as the force of her crying slowly drained out of her body. I held the bottle, rocking her slowly as I walked around the kitchen. It was easier than I remembered; I’d been a lot smaller when it had been Augustus, and he’d felt heavy even when he’d been a newborn. This little girl hardly weighed anything. I’d need to burp her, I thought, but it was like thinking through a haze. And she’d need to sleep. How long had she been in that car seat, wet and hungry? How long had she been alone? How long since Chuy had put her there like a sack of groceries and then shoved his shit in a bag and run?

The click of a door opening made me step into the living room. The boy toy emerged from Mom’s room first, his face and neck still flushed from his nut, a nineteen-year-old’s cocky grin plastered across his face, the kind of look teenage boys have, like they invented fucking. He spotted me, and his grin widened. A mop of blond hair under a Dodgers snapback, a white T-shirt, black shorts. His Vans looked new, but like he’d tried to make them look well worn. “What up, Fer?”

I looked past him. “Mom, get out here.”

“Yo, where’s my hug at?” the boy toy asked as he came toward me.

“Fuck off. Mom!”

She appeared a moment later. Gabby Lopez was beautiful; she ought to have been, considering how much of my money she spent to look that way. Out of all of us, Augustus probably looked the most like her; the little turd had good luck that way. Today, she wore a green romper, and she bent to adjust one strappy sandal, one hand on the boy toy to steady herself. When she straightened, she said, “What is that?”

“It’s a baby, Mom. You squirted three of them out of you, remember?”

The boy toy snickered. Mom gave me a look, and then one for the boy toy, and I wondered if he noticed how similar they were. “I meant, is it yours?”

“Yeah, it’s mine. Surprise. My imaginary girlfriend and I couldn’t wait to tell you.”

“Thank God. We have enough mouths to feed already.”

While I was still trying to figure out thewein that sentence, the boy toy said, “Bruh, babies are so dope.”

“You’ll be able to share toys,” I said. “How’s that fucking sound for dope?”

“Watch your language in front of the—” Mom apparently didn’t want to say the word. Maybe she was worried it was a disease and she might catch one herself. I made a mental sign of the cross; I couldn’t raise a second Augustus, I honestly couldn’t.

“You know what?” The boy toy’s eyes lit up. “You could, like, totally get a girlfriend with that baby. Bruh, then she wouldn’t be imaginary!”

I opened my mouth to tell him what I thought of that particular brain-fuck, but before I could, Mom said, “Cannon, my suitcases are so heavy.”

“I’ll get them!”

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