Something Blue

'That's a great truck-lorry-you have there.' I lowered myself further, sitting cross-legged.

Max glanced at me again, slightly longer this time. He gripped the cab of his truck and pushed it a few inches toward me. 'It has big tires. See?' he said, almost as if he were testing me.

'It sure does. Some really, really big tires.'

Max didn't seem too impressed with my answer. I tried to dig up any scrap of information I had stored in my memory on trucks. 'My brother, Jeremy, had a red lorry just like this one,' I finally said. 'Only the steering wheel was on the other side!'

'On this side?' he asked, pointing to the passenger side.

'Exactly!' I said, resting my hands gently over his and trying to remember the throaty sounds that Jeremy used to annoy me with when he played with his trucks. I cleared my throat, hoping that I could get them right.

'Vroom,'l started, realizing that such a noise belonged more to a sports car. I tried again. 'Grrrrrrrr. Grrrrrrrrrrr,' I growled, easing the front wheels over my right knee. I felt slightly foolish, like a man must feel when prompted by his daughter to play with a Ken doll.

Fortunately, Max seemed to approve of my sound effects. I saw the corners of his mouth twitch into the smallest of smiles. This gave me confidence. So I made more motor noises, followed by the sound of an engine idling. 'Buh. Buh. Buh. Buh.' That had been one of Jeremy's favorites.

'Do it again,' Max squealed.

I did, forgetting that Geoffrey was watching, perhaps even critiquing me.

'Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr,' I said more robustly, as the rear wheels completed the bouncy climb over my leg. Then, I slipped off my socks, balled them up, and stuffed them into the cab of the truck. 'Here. Some… cargo for you to drive… to the factory in… Liverpool,' I said. It all sounded feasible, and I felt relieved that boy games might be easier and more fun than I had once thought.

'The factory in Liverpool,' Max repeated happily.

And from that moment on, Max and I were fast friends. He didn't stop saying my name in his adorable English accent, leading me around by the hand, showing me his toys, even insisting that I take a tour of his bedroom. I basked in his acceptance, feeling thrilled that Geoffrey and I had cleared the final hurdle.

Later that night, after Geoffrey put Max to bed, he rejoined me in the bedroom, all smiles. 'Well. You did it! He loves you.'

'He does?' I asked, wondering if his father loved me too.

'Yes,' Geoffrey said, grinning.

'Does that make you happy?' I asked, snuggling up to him.

'Over the moon,' Geoffrey said as he smoothed my hair away from my face. 'A million miles over the moon.'

twenty-six

Geofrrey invited me to go to the Maldives with him and Max for Christmas, even offering to buy me a plane ticket.

I hesitated before asking, 'Where are the Maldives exactly?' He gave me the sort of affectionate gaze Dex had given me in the beginning whenever I confessed ignorance. 'In the Indian Ocean, darling,' he said, stroking my hair. 'Think white-sand beaches, crystal-clear water, palm trees swaying in the breeze.'

As tempting as a vacation in the sun was and as eager as I was to push things even further along with our relationship, I politely declined the invite, telling him that I thought he should spend quality father-son time with Max. The truth was, I didn't want to leave Ethan all by himself in London. He didn't have the extra cash to fly home for the holidays, and Sondrine was going to Paris for the week, so I think he was counting on spending time with me. Part of me was even excited that it would just be the two of us. I figured it might be our last hurrah-and our last flurry of sleepovers-before things really took off for each of us on the romance front.

I think Ethan felt the same way because on Christmas Eve morning, he went to Sondrine's to say good-bye and returned home in high spirits, suggesting that we go buy a tree together. 'Better late than never!' he chirped. So we put on our warmest clothes and strolled over to the nursery near his house. Of course, the best trees were long gone, so we had to settle for a small fir with mangled branches and several bald patches around the base. As we dragged the tree home, it lost even more needles.

But between Ethan's ornament collection and a few pairs of my most sparkly chandelier earrings, our little tree became more than respectable. Ethan said the transformation reminded him of the tree in A Charlie Brown Christmas. I agreed and told him that it was the prettiest one I had ever owned, even though I had always made Dex buy grand eight-footers for our New York apartment.

We dimmed the lights in the living room and then switched on the white tree lights, spending the longest time just gazing at the tree, listening to Harry Connick Jr. croon Christmas carols, and drinking hot apple cider. After a long, cozy stretch of silence, Ethan turned to me and asked me if I had come up with any baby names.

I told him that I had a short list, but nothing concrete. I rattled some of them off. 'Trevor. Flynn. Jonas. What do you think?'

'Honestly?'

I nodded.

'Hmm… Well, let's see… a guy named Trevor got caught stealing clothes from the dryers in my dorm at Stanford. Flynn sounds like phlegm, and Jonas conjures whales…'

I laughed, and said that I'd have to go back to the drawing board.

'Don't change on account of me.'

I shook my head. 'Nope. I want you to love my names.'

He smiled and then suggested that we exchange our presents.

'Okay,' I said, clapping excitedly.

He got up from the couch, sat cross-legged on the floor next to the tree, and handed me a large box wrapped with silver paper. 'You first,' he said.

I sat down beside him and carefully sliced open the paper the way my grandmother always did, as if to save it for future use. Then I opened the white box and the turquoise tissue paper inside to find a beautiful gray cashmere sweater coat from Brora, a store I had passed many times on the King's Road.

'It's not technically a maternity sweater, but it's quite roomy, and the lady at the store said that lots of pregnant women buy them,' he explained.

I stood up and tried it on over my sweats. It fit perfectly, with room to grow, and the cashmere was positively luxurious. 'I love it, Ethan!'

'See? It's belted,' Ethan said earnestly. 'So you can just loosen the belt as you get bigger… I thought you could wear it when you bring the boys home from the hospital. It will look really nice in photos.'

'I will definitely do that,' I said, loving that Ethan cared about photos. He was one of the few guys I knew who bothered to put them in albums. I looked at him and asked if he'd be there to take those photos.

'I wouldn't want to step on Geoffrey's toes… but I'd like to be there. It's your call.'

'Geoffrey understands our friendship,' I said, not knowing whether that was exactly true, but hoping that it was the case. It was the only way our relationship would work.

Ethan smiled and said, 'There's another gift under there.' He pointed to a white envelope. On it, he had written, 'To Darcy, Baby A and Baby B.' Inside was a small square of blue paper. I studied it, puzzled. 'What is it?'

'It's a paint swatch,' he said. 'I want to paint your room that color. For the nursery. I was going to just surprise you and do it, but then I worried that blue was too obvious for you. Would you rather do something more… unexpected?'

'I love this shade of blue,' I said, feeling all warm inside and thrilled that Ethan wanted me to stay with him even after the babies arrived. I had been wanting to broach the subject for weeks, and now I had my answer. I threw my arms around his neck and kissed his cheek.

Ethan went on to tell me that he had measured a crib at Peter Jones and had determined that two would fit along the long wall. And that we could put a pad on top of that bookshelf and use it as a changing table.