Page 29 of Baby Blue
Anne chuckled. “Spoken like a dad.”
Blue laughed. “Guess I learn quick!”
“I think you do,” Anne said as she picked up a second load, Blue right on her heels. “Everyone was impressed with you tonight. And they thought Indigo was darling.”
“Thatisher middle name!” Blue said with a laugh.
“True!” When the last of the packages were deposited in the living room, Anne put her hands on her hips and looked around. “Wow. You made quite a haul tonight.”
“How do I thank all of them?” Blue asked, still confounded by everything that had happened. “Nothing I could do would be adequate.”
“I’ll help you. Amber wrote down all the gifts and who gave them. Polly and I can help you write thank-you notes on Saturday. We don’t have to mail them. I’ll take them to the hospital and give them to everybody,” Anne explained.
Blue shook his head. “That’s not enough.”
“Yes. It is. That’s all they would really want in return. Oh, that and to babysit every once in a while,” Anne said with a grin.
Dropping onto the sofa, Blue propped his elbows on his knees and let his face fall into his hands. He sat like that for a few seconds until he felt Anne sit down on the sofa beside him. “This is a strange new world I’ve stepped into. I really don’t know what to think.”
“Well, personally, I think you made a smart decision when you came over Saturday and got me. Smartest thing you could’ve ever done,” she said gently.
“I think you’re right. Listen, about before, I’m sorry for the way I’ve acted and?”
“No. Say no more. That’s in the past. We just move forward, okay?”
Blue nodded. “Okay. And thanks again.”
“You’re welcome. Now get some sleep. Looks like somebody else already is!” she said and pointed to the sleeping infant in the baby carrier portion of the car seat.
“Yeah. I didn’t know what ‘sleeping like a baby’ meant until she came along!” Blue said, laughing.
“I’ll be sleeping like a baby on the job tomorrow if I don’t get some sleep. Night, Brent. See you in the morning,” Anne said, rising and heading for the door.
“Can I ask you something?” Blue called after her. When she turned, he asked, “Why do you insist on calling me Brent? Everybody else calls me Blue.”
“Because,” she said. When he questioned her with his eyes, her voice was soft in reply. “Because Blue is a nickname fora high school boy. But Brent is a name for a man.” Without another word, she turned and left, closing the door behind her.
Blue sat for a few minutes, lost in thought.Blue is a nickname for high school boy. But Brent is a name for a man.He glanced at the sleeping baby again.
Okay, Wallace. Time to grow up, he told himself. After unbuckling Indigo, he carried her to her basket, then readied himself for bed. Tomorrow was another day, and he had to be at work. But he’d carry the memory of that evening with him. It gave him hope and strength. There were others who cared for him and his child, and he was pretty sure whatever came along, he could handle it all simply with the recollection of that one precious night.
Anne gotready for bed and crawled under the covers. As she lay there staring at the ceiling, she thought about the evening.
Blue had been completely overwhelmed. She could see it in his face. Had he really never had one single soul who cared about him? That was hard to believe. Surely in all his growing up years there’d been one foster parent or one teacher orsomeonewho’d shown him a little love and compassion. If they had, it must’ve been so brief that he didn’t even remember it, because he looked like he’d been punched in the gut as everyone smiled and offered him friendship that evening.
She rolled to her side and tried to close her eyes. When she did, she saw him standing there in his jeans and no shirt, and everything below her waist tingled. What she’d give to run her hands down that chest, feel those muscles under her palms, press her lips to his and…Stop it, Anne! He’s not interestedin you, and he never will be. Guys who look like that don’t go for worn-out, middle-aged moms.Then she realized something that made her very sad.
She wasn’t middle aged. She wasn’t even forty. Then why did she feel like she was sixty? The years, the work, the loneliness, they were all taking their toll on her, and there was nothing she could do about it. Was it wrong that she wanted a man to hold her close? Kiss her? Run his hands over her skin? Should she just give up on that idea and go on into true middle age as a mom and nurse and forget about the personal stuff?
Almost like she was drawn to it, she rose from the bed and headed to the window. When she pulled back the curtains a tiny bit, she could see Blue’s house, and into the living room window. There he was, the baby right there beside him, and he was sitting on the sofa, staring into nothing. A fleeting thought ran through her mind:Does he ever think about me?She knew the answer to that.
When he thought about women, the women he thought about sure weren’t her. They were younger, prettier, firmer, and didn’t look like ten miles of bad road. She wasn’t on his radar except as a nursemaid, but she wasn’t going to hold that against him. After watching for a minute or two, she crossed the room back to the bed and slipped under the covers. Loneliness had become such a part of her days and nights that she didn’t know how to live without it.
But she’d sure like to get a chance to try.
Blue sentAnne a simple text before she got off work on Thursday evening:You should come over for a sec when you get home.
He wasn’t sure if she’d even see it, but in seconds she answered:Is everything okay?
