Chapter Twenty-Three: Thomas

I walk into my house to find a Sophia at the counter concentrating very hard. She’s looking at paint samples for the nursery. Our son is due in two weeks and she’s not happy we don’t have his room ready. Aurora babbles at me happily from her playpen in the corner. She is always happy when I come home.

Our house is away from the craziness of the city and rarely are there any rogue fans or cameramen trying to snap pictures of us and the children. After Aurora was born it had been completely insane, but now it’s calmed down a bit. They’ve moved onto some other scandal like Rosa being pregnant and mister party boy leaving her. I can’t help but feel a little triumphant knowing that, but I’m happy so I hope someday she can be too.

I pick Aurora up and she grabs onto my hair sticking a thumb in her mouth.

“Dada,” she says causing my heart to melt through my chest. My little girl is everything. She’s got her mother’s eyes and my smile. It’s like she’s the perfect mix of both of us and I can’t wait to see what my son looks like.

“I have good news honey once you get a minute,” I say. Sophia hasn’t looked up from the paint samples. She’s chewing on her nails.

“Okay babe. I’ve just been terrible at making decisions this pregnancy. You look and see which ones you want to put in the room.”

I look at the samples to find six different colors of gray and six different colors of blue. They all look like the same color.

“I have a solution. We’ll let Aurora pick.”

I bend down to the princess of my world and she points to one color and then grabs all the samples from me. A gray one goes into her mouth and the others spill to the floor.

“She likes this gray,” I tell Sophia pulling the spit-soaked sample from her mouth. I put her down on the floor and she toddles to one of the blue ones and puts it in her mouth. “And this blue one.”

“Well, baby girl, that’s perfect. You’re already such a great big sister,” she coos.

“It’s date night, you know,” I tell my wife as I kiss her softly.

“Yes, I know. My mother will be here shortly. You have your questions ready?”

“I do.”

Sophia and I have kept our pact to have continuous first dates. We always go somewhere nice and rapid-fire questions while we eat. It’s how we’ve stayed so connected throughout our relationship and marriage. Having Aurora, of course, made us closer, but really checking in with each other has been the key to keeping it together.

“I have a really spicy one to ask you,” Sophia says as she kisses Aurora on the cheek and puts her in her highchair.

“I’ll bet you do.”

She doesn’t know it, but I’ve rented The Bistro out again for the evening. We’ve not had a proper date night in a while and I wanted to do something special for her. She’s such an amazing mother and caring partner.

“Your father called today, he wanted to know if we were coming for dinner on the mountain next week. I don’t know what that means.”

“Oh, I do. He’s taking that little camper up that small hill down the road from our old house. He wants us to picnic.”

“Delightful,” she says and gets out the babies’ dinner so she can cut it up for her. “He says Julia and Steven will be joining us as well.”

“That’s the guy she met at the PR firm?” I ask. Julia has really turned everything around. She got out of her parent’s house, got a job, and stopped pining for me. Sophia and her have actually become friends.

“No, this is the guy the PR firm hired to DJ the charity ball they had.” She says. “The other guy moved to England or something strange and sudden like that.”

“She’s dating a DJ?” I’m surprised by that.

“He seems really nice,” she smiles at me. “I think you’ll like him. I met him when we went to spinning the other day.”

“Good for her,” I say. I mean it too. Julia deserves all the happiness in the world.

My mother decided after her insane attack of Sophia that she needed to go to treatment for her alcoholism. After she came out of the program, my father and her separated. I am not inheriting anything from my father and that’s how I like it.

Dinah is getting a trust fund like I had and he’s still donating, but with my mother planning to draw this divorce out as long as possible, he must keep some resources.

I am making my own money and can live quite comfortably with my salary and what’s left in my trust fund. He’s happy camping all over and being free as a bird. He didn’t get rid of all his money though despite separating with my mother. He told me it’s because she’s going to take him to the cleaners when they divorce, and he needs to be ready.

Happily, the partners at Baxter and Church have started really taking me seriously as someone who can provide value to their company. I’ve been able to not only land some huge clients but head up two huge campaigns complete with billboards and commercials on television.

“Who would have thought a hookup in a bar bathroom could actually turn out to be your dream guy,” I say as I wrap my arms around Sophia and kiss her neck.

“I certainly wouldn’t have.” She smiles and feeds Aurora some peas. My daughter makes a face like she’s tasted something bitter and spits them out.

Yep, life is just about perfect now. Baby giggles, a sexy mama, and my dream job are all I could ever ask for.