Page 67 of Regancy & Savior
I pursed my lips. “I’ve only been ‘on my shit’, as you so elegantly call it, because I actually worry about you. You have been a little short and in your head, lately.”
“I’m making sure we’re good an?—”
“There’s no need to explain it to me. I get it. That doesn’t stop me from worrying about you and all that you do.” I looked at him seriously. The day he called me from the hospital, telling me to get dressed and meet him there, my heart dropped from my chest. I feared the worst, and the entire ride was hell for me. It was as if my mind had conjured up the most fucked-up things and brought them forth for me to fear.
He didn’t respond. Instead, he kissed my temple and held me closer for the duration of the ride. That was his way of silently comforting himself and me. I knew it wasn’t that simple for him just to tell me everything would be fine, because then I’d still have questions, or I’d still worry. The thing about worry that I had learned over the years was I had no control over it. If I worried about a person, then that was what it was. I could tell him I was worried about him until I was blue in the face, but that did nothing. I’d still worry about him, and he’d still do the thingshe did. It was simply human nature, and I accepted it and him. I just had to catch myself and focus on other things instead of worry.
Once we boarded his boat, of course I went to get Kale set up in the den while he sat out on the deck with a glass of brown liquor in his hands. By the time I returned, he was deep in thought, and I just wanted to be up under him. It was funny because if I didn’t want to pick with him, then I wanted to be all in his face. Savior was the type to live in his mind most times, so that alone made me wanna crawl in that motherfucker with him most days.
“You think too much.” I used his words on him.
He chuckled and accepted my body crawling into his lap. I loved invading all of his personal space. In his space was where I found the most comfort.
“We gotta talk about something before you get all comfortable.” His hand gripped my bare thigh as he set the glass down and grabbed the manila folder from the side table. When he had the folder in his hand, he dropped it on my lap. “This shit is new to me, but if you let me, I plan to give all three of y’all every part of me and some. I know you probably feel like we could be rushing into this, but it ain’t that at all. Life is too short to do things in time or put anything off for another day.”
I listened to him speak as I opened the folder, and the paperwork in front of me brought tears to my face. They were the necessary papers for him to legally adopt Kale as his daughter. I didn’t even know what to say to him. I was speechless.
“I tell you I got you because I do, and this right here is just the beginning of everything we—” My lips against his halted his speech.
“I swear I love you so much,” I said as tears now cascaded down my face. These were happy tears brought on by the emotions he pulled out of me. Savior knew nothing about relationships, but day by day, the way he loved and supported me had no bounds. He had this way about him that not everybody got to see. It was pure love, and it poured from him like faucet.
“Mommy, why are you crying?” Kale’s voice broke the eye contact between Savior and me.
I looked at her and smiled. “These are happy tears, baby girl.”
She didn’t believe me, so she walked closer.
I chuckled a little. I guess now was a better time than any since I still hadn’t told her about her impending sibling taking over my uterus. “Remember why I told you that you were special?” I maneuvered out of Savior’s lap and onto the cushion so I could pull her closer to me.
She smiled and nodded. “Because you told me that I had a village around me that loves me, even though I don’t have a dad.”
I nodded, but I didn’t get a chance to speak, because he spoke. I guess he sensed that I didn’t know what to say. He sat up like he was about to give an inauguration speech or something.
“Is it alright with you if I become your dad?” he asked in the sincerest tone.
She didn’t respond for a while. Instead, she just looked at him. In typical Kale fashion, she was studying him. Then, after what felt like an entire eternity, a mile-wide smile appeared on her face, and she nodded excitedly. “That means I get to call you Dad, right?”
He nodded his head. “That means I’m your father Kale, even though biologically we don’t share blood.”
“I like that idea. Is that why you were crying, Mom?”
I nodded. “There is also something else.”
Now she was giving me that look like I was about say something to annoy her. I swear she got that shit from my mama. “Now what, Mama?”
“In a few months you’ll be an older sister.”
She screwed her face up. “To what?”
“A baby, Kale.”
“A real one?” she asked.
I swear I didn’t know what I was gonna do with this this child.
Savior laughed. “Yes, Kale. A real baby.”
“Oh, well, okay, I’m going to go watch cartoons. I’ll be back in a little bit, Mommy and Daddy.” The shit slipped off her tongue with ease.
