january, age 28
From the moment Lucas and Asher had first moved in together, it had been difficult for Lucas to keep the house as tidy as he liked it when Asher was an impossibly messy soul, who seemed utterly unfazed by piles of clothes in the bedroom and dirty mugs in every room. For a long time, the stress of the mess had got to Lucas, until he had slowly come to terms with the fact that there would be tidy zones and not so tidy zones. No matter how fast he cleaned, the place always seemed to end up a little scruffy again, and he had resigned himself to life with a mucky partner.
Becoming a father had meant getting used to an entirely different kind of mess. No longer was he just picking up abandoned shirts and reorganising messy shoe piles, but now there were toys that Lucy left lying around the house; there were books scattered around her room and she wasn’t a fan of putting her clothes away. The television was almost permanently set to the children’s channel and each time she said she had no beakers left, Lucas only had to look around the sitting room to find five.
On Sunday afternoon, the house was looking as though a bomb had hit it. There was a trail of hay and sawdust leading from the back garden through to the sitting room, when Lucy had brought the rabbit inside for a cuddle, along with a trail of grassy footprints when she had forgotten to take her shoes off. The kitchen was a sight for sore eyes, so much so that Lucas couldn’t step foot inside the room without grimacing, his body physically repulsed by the mess.
Lucy’s friend Jack was over for a playdate, the day before they were due to go back to school after the Christmas break, and the two of them were making a cake. That was a generous description of the carnage they had created, though: rather, they were getting flour in every nook and cranny, splattered eggs and shells while Asher did the actual mixing for them. As it turned out, a pair of over-excited four-year-olds on a sugar high wasn’t the best recipe for a successful bake.
Leaving them to get on with it, and hoping that Asher would clean up when they were done – at least enough for him to be able to go into the kitchen without having an aneurysm – Lucas was in the dining room with his laptop, getting in a little bit of extra work before going to the office tomorrow. Bringing work home with him was inevitable when it involved so much reading, which he loved to do in bed, and he liked to get the admin side over and done with whenever he had the chance.
Asher popped his head around the door, his fingers leaving floury marks on the frame that he wiped off with his apron when he noticed, before Lucas could spot it. “Tea?” he asked, getting his husband’s attention with the one word that almost never had a negative response.
“Ooh, yes please,” Lucas said, tearing his eyes from the screen. He would need to take a break soon anyway: he was growing bored of replying to emails, his mind dulling with the monotony of the task that could wait until he was back in the office and being paid to scroll through his inbox.
“Fancy a biccie? We’ve got shortbread, bourbons, custard creams and … maybe some rich tea?”
“No, I’m alright. Just the tea,” Lucas said. “How’s it looking in there?”
“Like a couple of kids are baking,” Asher said with a teasing grin. “Don’t worry, it’ll be spotless before you know it. We just put the cupcakes in the oven and now we’re going to play the tidy-up game. Isn’t that right, Luce?” he yelled over his shoulder.
“What?”
“You and Jack are going to help me clean the kitchen, aren’t you?”
She appeared in the doorway, pouting at Asher and then Lucas. “Can we play first?”
Asher gave her an exaggerated eye roll. “What about the mess? Are you guys just going to make me do all the cleaning and you get to have all the fun?”
She grinned. “Yes!” When she clapped her hands together, a fine cloud of flour erupted into the air, which only made her laugh. “We’re gonna go and cuddle Jack.”
“Your friend Jack? Or the rabbit Jack?” Asher asked, raising his eyebrows.
“The rabbit, Papa!” she cried out, as though hugging her friend was inconceivable.
“Wash your hands first, hun. I don’t want you getting eggs and flour all over the rabbit or the foxes will think he’s supper.”
“Oh no!” Her eyes widened and she raced back into the kitchen, shortly followed by the sound of the tap blasting as she instructed Jack to clean up. Asher shook his head to himself and looked up at Lucas.
“I guess I’m cleaning today,” he said, folding his arms. “How’s it going in here?”
“Not too bad,” Lucas said. “Incredibly boring, but otherwise fine. I need a break though – I might come and give you a hand.”
Asher winced. “You … you don’t want to do that, babes. It’s a fucking blast zone in there right now, no exaggeration. Remember that time I dropped a whole pan of curry?”
“It’s worse than that?” Lucas’s eyes saucepanned and Asher gravely nodded.
“Maybe you need a bit of aversion therapy – if you’re surrounded by mess for long enough, it won’t bother you anymore.”
“Because it’ll kill me.”
Asher laughed and stood straight. “Well, we don’t want that. I’ll bring you a tea and get cracking in there. Before you know it, it’ll be as clean as you.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” Lucas teased. No room could ever be as clean as him, as meticulously tidy as he was. It was obvious which side of the bed was his: the lamp was tucked perfectly into the corner of the bedside table, a stack of three books arranged at a right angle in size order, and there were two coasters that never moved: one for tea and one for water.
He shut the lid of his laptop when he couldn’t face another email. Asher held up his hand when he saw that he was about to make a move.
“I mean it, Lucas. You’ll never be able to look at the kitchen the same way ever again if you see how it looks right now.”
Lucas laughed and shook his head. “I was going to head outside,” he said. “One of us should be keeping an eye on the kids. Especially when there’s a rabbit involved. I don’t want Lucy’s next bedtime story to be the one about the happy animals on the farm.”
Cleaning his glasses, he glanced out of the window and caught a glimpse of Lucy and Jack heading out to the shed where the rabbit lived in the cold weather. She had begged her parents to let her keep the bunny in her bedroom but that was a step too far for Lucas, who was happy to deal with it when it was outside but he didn’t fancy adding sawdust, hay and rabbit poo to the current mess in his daughter’s room.
“Want an apron?” Asher asked, holding one out for Lucas. He took it, looping it over his head and tying it tight, much to his husband’s amusement, before he headed out into the back garden.
“Your tea will be waiting for you!” Asher called after him, watching for a moment before he returned to the kitchen with a resigned sigh and began the process of cleaning up. It would be a slightly futile effort when as soon as the cupcakes were ready, Jack and Lucy would be right back in there to decorate. No doubt the kitchen would get frosted too.
“Look, Daddy!” Lucy beamed at her father as she snuggled the rabbit, which she had somehow managed to get out of the cage even with the tricky lock. Jack stood next to her, scratching the rabbits head and stroking it’s smooth, soft fur.
“Clever you, Lucy. Was he easy to pick up?”
She nodded, snuggling the rabbit against her chest. “He loves me. He likes cuddles,” she said. “Wanna hold him?” She turned to Jack rather than her father, whom she knew wasn’t likely to want to hold the bunny. She was an astute girl, who always seemed to know which of her fathers to go to with various problems and questions.
“Yes please,” Jack said quietly. He looked up at Lucas. “Can I?”
“Of course you can,” he said, giving the little boy an encouraging smile. Jack was a shy thing who pretty much kept to himself around the adults, though he and Lucy could be raucously loud when they played together. Like Lucy, he seemed to enjoy playing make-believe and they liked the same cartoons, rewatching old favourite episodes when they’d taken a break from playing to have lunch. They had become fast friends on the first day of nursery and now, four months later, he was the only one who had been over more than once.
“Take a picture, Daddy,” Lucy said. She loved photographs, whether she was in them or not, building up an album of experiences. Lucas had thousands of photos backed up on the cloud, hundreds of which were blurry selfies of his daughter as she tried out the filters on his phone and giggled at each one.
It wasn’t long before it got too cold to be outside and Lucas shut away the rabbit and ushered the children inside, shutting out the chilly wind that had built up. January was so much colder than December, the sky hardly ever seeing the sun. It had dipped below zero a few times, a would do so again tonight, but there was no sign of snow. Instead, just sheeting rain during the day that turned to deadly black ice overnight when the world froze over.
“Looks nasty out there,” Asher said, glancing out of the kitchen window. The clouds were darkening. It looked as though a storm might come before night fell, thunder brewing above the rooftops.
“Disgusting,” Lucas said. He curled both hands around the cup of tea that Asher handed him and he took a grateful sip. It warmed him from the inside out as though the steamy plumes blossomed in his stomach, spreading to every fibre of his being. “Thanks for this.”
“What time’s Jack’s mum coming over?”
Lucas glanced at his watch. “I think she said four. Maybe five.”
It had just gone two.
“Well, as long as they’re still having fun, I suppose it doesn’t really matter. Gives me time to clean up a bit before she gets here,” he said, glancing back into the kitchen, which Lucas was still avoiding. It disheartened him sometimes to see how easy it was to cause chaos, no matter how long he spent tidying, but it was therapeutic to put everything back in its place.
Lucy and Jack had gone to play upstairs, their childish giggles floating down from her room, and Lucas smiled with a sigh. He loved the sound of his daughter’s laughter. He had been brought to tears the first time he had ever heard her laugh, after a tricky few months of her settling in. Now, she spent her life laughing as she twirled through each day.
Even when her world had been thrust into silence when her hearing had failed her six weeks after starting school, she had kept a brave smile on her face for the weeks it had been before and after her surgery. Now she embraced her cochlear implants, proud that she matched her papa. She had the advantage of youth and despite her fathers’ fears, she had taken it a lot better than expected: she was proud to be different, and Jack said that it made her a cool robot. She liked that.
“Well, I say we put our feet up with a cuppa for a minute,” Asher said. “The kitchen can wait a few.”
Lucas didn’t protest. After a couple of hours of solitude with his laptop, he quite wanted to sit down and decompress with his husband but before he could sit down, he felt his phone buzz in his pocket and took it out with a sigh. It continued to buzz, a call rather than a text, but his reluctance to answer disappeared when he saw that it was Tom calling him.
“Hold on a sec,” he said to Asher, nodding at the phone as he swiped to answer. “Hi, Tom.”
“Hi,” Tom said, and even the solitary word sounded happy. “She’s just like her mother.”
“What?”
“She’s beautiful, she’s right on time … she’s perfect, Lucas.”
Lucas frowned for a fraction of a second before realisation hit and he gasped. “Oh my goodness, Mika had the baby? Did she?”
“Mmhmm. And she’s incredible. They both are. We’re home now, if you want to come and meet your cousin.”
“Yes! I’d love to,” he said, his heart racing to think that Mika had had the baby, that everything had gone ok.
Over the last eighteen weeks, ever since he had found out that she was pregnant, he had been paranoid on her behalf that life would find a way to screw her over once more. When she’d had a fall at thirty weeks, she had been hysterically fearful that she had hurt her baby, but everything had been ok. Everything was fine.
“Come over any time,” Tom said, then his voice went a little distant when he asked, “Is that alright, darling? If Lucas comes over?” A moment later, he returned to the phone. “Whenever you want, Lucas. Mika said she’d love to see you – and Asher and Lucy, of course.”
“I’ll be right over,” Lucas said, excitement buzzing in his veins. “See you soon!”
Asher was on the edge of his seat, his eyebrows up. “Everything went ok?” he asked. “They had the baby?”
“They did,” Lucas said, grinning. He looked up momentarily when he heard Lucy and Jack laughing hysterically. “Do you mind if I go and see them?”
“Of course! Go and see your cousin, babes. This is so exciting.” He grinned and stood, pulling Lucas into a hug. “Give them my love, ok?” He glanced down at his phone and added, “If you hurry, the bus leaves in about five minutes.”
“Right, right, I’m going to go. Oh my goodness, I feel so relieved.“
Asher chuckled. “I bet they do too.”
Abandoning his tea, Lucas hurried out into the hall and pulled on his coat, stuffing his feet into his shoes before heading out into the horrible weather. He had forgotten his umbrella, the rain speckling his glasses, but he didn’t let it hold him back as he battled towards the bus stop. The number five would take him all the way to the end of Tom and Mika’s road, a few miles away, and it pulled up moments after he made it to the stop.
Farnleigh was dead. The bus was almost empty, the suburban roads quiet on the way to the other side of town. The weather seemed to have turned people away, forcing them to tuck up in the safety of their homes away from the brutal wind and ordinarily, Lucas would be the same. He hated the rain and the cold, and he despised the dark January skies that were just waiting for night to fall, but for once he struggled to care about that as he impatiently waited for the bus to pull up at his stop.
In the years that they had lived there, Tom and Mika had turned their cookie-cutter little house into something that felt so different to the others it sat between. The little square of front lawn was bursting with colour thanks to Mika’s hard work, and every room inside felt like a slice of their personalities. The house was a proper home, warm and comforting and dressed for the season. Mika had hung up deep red curtains for winter, decorating the place with candles and pot pourri, and Lucas was hit with the most divine scent as soon as Tom opened the door.
“Hi,” he said, an uncontrollable grin on his face. He wheeled back to let Lucas in before shutting out the cold and he led him through to the sitting room. “Come and meet her.”
The house was so warm and inviting, from the log fire burning beneath the mantelpiece to the voluptuous Christmas tree still dripping with decorations, and a multitude of Christmas cards hanging from tinsel that was strung above the fireplace. But Lucas hardly took any of that in when his eyes were trained on the sofa, where Mika was sitting next to Mason as he held his tiny baby sister.
“Oh my goodness,” he said, his voice hardly more than a breath. “Congratulations, guys. Wow. She’s perfect.”
“Thanks, Lucas,” Mika said quietly. She wore a happy glow despite how tired she looked, wrapped up in thick pyjamas at nearly three o’clock in the afternoon. “She really is, isn’t she?” She put her arm around Mason’s shoulders and kissed his head, looking over his curls at her baby.
“She’s going to be a drama queen,” Tom said. He could only just tear his eyes from his family to look up at Lucas.
“Huh? How come?”
“We were at physio yesterday morning,” he said. “Right as I managed to walk unaided for the first time, Mika’s waters broke. I think Kira wanted to upstage my big moment.”
“And she didn’t hang around,” Mika said with a laugh. “She was born midday yesterday.”
“Oh, wow,” Lucas said, so much information thrown at him that he didn’t know where to start. “Wait, you walked?”
Tom nodded, a proud smile on his face. “I’m getting there,” he said. “It was only a few steps. But it was something.”
“That’s incredible!”
“It’s wonderful,” Mika said, nodding. “I’m going to need you back on your feet now,” she added with a dry laugh, taking the baby from Mason when she began to squirm. She soothed the baby with ease: motherhood really had come naturally to her.
“And her name’s Kira?”
“Mmhmm.” She pressed her nose into her daughter’s dark hair and breathed in deeply, swaying her a little. “Officially Akira – I wanted something Japanese that would work as an English name too.”
“It’s perfect,” Lucas said. “She’s already going by her nickname, huh?”
Tom nodded. “Well, so do we,” he said. “I’m not sure anyone’s ever called me Thomas. Or Jung-min,” he added with a laugh at his father’s error in completing his birth certificate.
“And no-one ever calls me Sumika,” Mika said.
“I … I forgot that was even your real name,” Lucas said. He stared at the tiny baby, nestled against her mother’s dressing gown. “She’s amazing. Wow. I can’t believe she’s yours.”
“Neither can we,” Tom said, “but she really is. And now we have everything.”
“My boy and my girl,” Mika said quietly, cuddling Mason with one arm as she held Kira. “And my rock.” She leant forward a little towards Tom, giving him a tired kiss. He took the baby from her when her body seemed to sag.
“How’re you doing?” Lucas asked.
“Tired,” Mika said. “I’m so unbelievably tired.” She let out a long sigh and sank back on the sofa, resting her head on the cushion. Lucas sat down next to Mason.
“Hiya,” Mason said with a smile. He loved Lucas, and would one day be confused that the man he called uncle was really his cousin.
“Hi, Mason,” he said. “This is exciting, huh? You’ve got a baby sister!”
“She’s mine,” Mason said, reaching out to his father. “I wanna hold her, Daddy. She’s gonna be my best friend.”
“Why don’t we let Uncle Lucas hold her first? He’s come all the way here to see Kira.” Tom cradled his baby, who lay awake in his arms, hardly making a sound, and handed her to Lucas.
His heart swelled with adoration when he held the tiny girl in his arms and she stared up at him with huge dark eyes. “Hi, Kira,” he whispered, stroking her soft cheek and her silky hair. “You’re the luckiest girl in the world, you know. You’ll learn that one day.”
Mika began to cry as she watched Lucas, covering her mouth to soften a sob, and Mason bounded over to her with distress in his eyes.
“Don’t cry, Mummy!” He held her cheeks in his hands, their faces just a few inches apart. “Be happy! There’s a baby!”
“I am happy, baby. I’m so happy.” She hugged him, holding on tight. “These are happy tears.” She kissed his soft hair and swayed him as though he was the baby, as though it was him who needed comforting rather than her. “I’ve got you and Kira and Daddy, and that’s everything I ever wanted.”
*
It was hard to tear himself away when the house was so warm and bright, everything that outside wasn’t, but there came a point when Lucas and Tom were the only ones left awake and after chatting for a good thirty minutes, he left to let Tom embrace his family, complete at last.
It had just passed four o’clock when Lucas arrived home with the sunset, the sky a deep and murky grey that would soon be black. He walked with his hands deep in his pockets and his chin tucked against his neck, wishing he had thought to bring gloves and a scarf for the five minute walk in two degrees. With a shiver, he shook off the cold when he let himself into his house and made a mental note to buy more candles: even in the whirlwind that came with a new baby, Tom and Mika’s house smelled of cinnamon and spiced apple.
“I’m back,” he called out, shrugging off his jacket and slipping out of his shoes. “Asher?”
It was suspiciously quiet inside, hardly a peep to be heard, and he stood a little straighter when he headed into kitchen to find that his family hadn’t disappeared: they were just being uncharacteristically quiet as Lucy and Jack sat side by side, sticking their tongues out as they hunched over their cupcakes with tubs of frosting and a variety of decorations Asher had picked up from the shop down the road.
“It’s so quiet in here, I thought you’d all been kidnapped,” he said. “Looks like you’re having fun in here.” He headed over to Asher, slipping his arm around his waist and kissing him before he turned back to the kids, who hadn’t even acknowledged that he was back.
“Well, it takes an awful lot of energy to decorate cupcakes,” Asher said, before he added, “Hey,” and he stood with his arm around Lucas. “How’s Mika? How’s the baby?”
“They’re great,” he said, so relieved that he could say that. After everything they had been through, everything really was great, at last. Mika had the two children she had dreamed of, her boy and her girl, and the husband she had wanted to marry before she even really knew what relationships were.
“Come on, tell me everything!” Asher said, reaching back to flick on the kettle. “Does she have a name? Is she a cute baby?”
“She’s a baby – of course she’s cute. All babies are adorable,” Lucas said. “Her name’s Kira and she’s so precious. She’s … about twenty-eight hours old, and Mason seems to love her. Tom and Mika really have it all now.”
“God, I’m so glad for them,” he said with a sigh. “They deserve this. They deserve everything. And Tom’s alright?”
“He’s great. Completely over the moon, and a little overwhelmed, I think. In a good way. Oh! And he walked for the first time yesterday, right before Mika went into labour.” He beamed. “It’s all go for the Langleys.” With a happy sigh, he dropped his eyes to the kitchen table, ignoring the mess around him. It wasn’t as bad as he expected: he imagined Asher had spent the past couple of hours trying to make it look a little more presentable.
“These cupcakes are looking great,” he said, pulling up a seat next to his daughter. “Can I have one?”
“No, Daddy!” Lucy cried out with a gasp. “Don’t touch them! They’re not ready!”
“Sorry, hun!” He pulled his hands back and held them up in surrender. “Can I have one when you finish?”
“Maybe,” she said. “We wanna show Jack’s mummies first. Can you take a picture?”
“Sure, hun.”
“Not yet. When it’s finished.” She returned to her frosting, her and Jack bunched up together around one corner of the table.
“Well, they’re looking fab so far, guys. I love your decorations, Jack.”
“Thank you,” he said as he added silver balls to a bright green cupcake. Lucy copied him, watching every move he made.
“Aren’t they adorable?” Asher murmured when Lucas stood to make tea, his voice low enough that the children couldn’t hear.
Lucas nodded and smiled. He loved to see his daughter so happy with her friend, to see how happy she was at school. In just a few months, she had become a bright spark in her Nursery class, beginning to make progress with her reading and writing, and Cora didn’t need to be family to report that she was an angel of a student.
“Hey,” Asher murmured.
“Yes?”
“I think we need to talk.”
“About what?” He pulled his eyebrows together, lips pursed, and sipped his tea.
“Well … kids. I know we said we’d just have Lucy but, I don’t know. I kind of want another. I want her to have a sibling. Is that something we can talk about?”
Lucas took a deep breath, watching how Lucy and Jack worked together, and he thought about the smile on Mason’s face when he had held his sister; he recalled his own wish to be a brother when he was Lucy’s age. He swallowed a mouthful of tea and met Asher’s gaze. “I think it is.”
+ – + – +
one more chapter to go … later today! i don’t like to do double updates but nanowrimo starts at midnight and i’ve been incredibly lazy. i had planned to finish this book in august … that did not happen. also, i’ve been rewatching the secret life of four year olds and i definitely underestimated how well these kids can speak! anyway, i’m excited to complete another novel and to start turning point! time to put my growing nano wall to good use
Comment