Page 125 of Pregnant in Plaid
They walk in. Survey the carnage. Exchange a look.
"Did a tornado hit?" Patrice asks.
"We're assembling furniture," I say with as much dignity as I can muster while sitting on the floor surrounded by Allen wrenches and defeat.
"How's that going?" Tessa asks.
Gage gestures weakly at the crib. "It's mostly assembled."
"It's leaning," Patrice points out.
"It has character."
"Our daughter is not sleeping in a crib with character." But she's smiling again, that soft smile that makes my heart kick. "You two are disasters."
"Disasters who love your daughter and bought her everything she could possibly need," I correct.
She picks her way through the debris and sits next to me on the floor. "Thank youfor trying."
"We're not done trying. We're just... regrouping."
"How about you regroup after some sleep? Tessa and I will tackle this later today."
"We can do it," I protest.
"I know you can. But right now, you both look like you're about to pass out." She kisses my cheek. "Go to bed. We've got this."
Gage is already asleep on the floor, using a bag of onesies as a pillow.
"He has the right idea," Tessa says fondly.
Patrice helps me up—which is humiliating because I'm significantly larger than her—and steers me toward the bedroom. "You're a good dad," she says quietly. "Even if you're terrible at furniture assembly which is ironic based on your chosen career." She laughs.
"Brooklyn's going to grow up thinking her dad is useless."
"Brooklyn's going to grow up knowing her dad tried to buy out an entire store and stayed up all night building her furniture. That's not useless."
I pull her close, gentle with her. "I just want to get this right."
"There is no right. There's just showing up and trying." She looks up at me. "And you're really good at showing up."
Through the living room doorway, I can see the disaster we've created. Five thousand dollars in baby supplies. A crib that leans. A changing table with three legs. A demonic swing.
And somehow, standing here with Patrice, I don't feel like a complete failure.
Close, but not quite.
"I'm keeping the three-legged changing table," I say. "It matches the leaning crib."
"You're not keeping either of those death traps." But she's laughing as she steers me toward the bedroom. "Tessa and I will fix your disasters tomorrow."
"Our disasters," I correct.
"Fair enough." She kisses me, and for a moment, the chaos doesn't matter. The five thousand dollars doesn't matter. The furniture carnage doesn't matter.
In a few days, Brooklyn comes home.
And we still have no idea what we're doing.
