Page 18 of Wrong Number, Right Soldier
All that to say: you can’t blame me for wanting another girl. Evelyn is the most excited, but I’m not sure if it’s because of the cake, or what we’re about to find out once we cut into it. She is bouncing on her toes, bursting at the seams.
“Team Blue!” one of Saylis’s best friends, Stasia, yells out.
“Pink, all the way!” Kim yells.
“It’s kind of pinkandblue, both at once until y’all cut into it, like Schrödinger’s cat…” Cleo muses.
“What?” my buddy Sergio asks, completely confused.
“Maybe if it’s boy-and-girl twins…” Stasia considers.
“NO!” Saylis and I both shout in unison.
Then Kim starts to explain to Sergio what Cleo meant about the cat, but my mom interrupts her. “Y’all, go ahead and do the honors, before little one over here keels over from excitement, yeah?”
“You ready?” I murmur to Saylis. She slides me a smile.
“Ready.”
I wrap my hand around Saylis’s around the knife, and we drive it down into the soft cake.
Blue.
So blue.
My heart doubles, no,triplesin size in my chest. I wanted another girl, prayed for a girl, threw every intention out into the universe hoping for a girl. So now, why am I so fucking over the moon to find out it’s a boy?
Evelyn’s face is immediately smeared in blue cake.
“Evie, sweetie, are you excited?” Saylis asks our daughter in her singsong voice, her eyes brimming with unshed tears of joy. She said she’d be happy no matter what, but Iknewit’s what Saylis wanted, deep down. “You’re gonna have a babybrother!”
Evie mad-dogs her face at her mom, and then the loudest sound I’ve ever heard out of her mouth: “WHAT?!”
“That’s what that means”—Saylis points—“it’s blue.”
And promptly, Evelyn bursts into tears.
“She’ll be fine,” my mom tells us, completely unbothered. “I cried, too, when I found out I was having a boy.”
“You did not,” Saylis says, a scandalized look on her face.
“Oh yeah. Had a hell of a time trying to think of a name, too.”
“Well, I think you did good with Trey.”
“Yeah.” Mom smiles. “I know I did.”
Saylis spins toward me, her smile big and bright. Not at all affected by the anxiousness I’m sure is written all over my face.
“I have zero ideas for names for boys,” I admit. I was too sure we were having another girl.
“I have dozens!” Saylis declares.
“All stolen from literature, no doubt,” Stasia chimes in.
“Maaaaybe,” Saylis replies, all sassy.
“You pick, sweetheart,” I tell Saylis.
