Shelter You (25 page)

Fifteen minutes later, I’m unlocking the front door and ushering Lily into our apartment. Well… My parents’ apartment that they graciously let us use when we decided to move to the city which allowed us to keep the house in Pennsylvania which we still use often.

“You want to watch a little TV while I start dinner peanut?” I bend down to unbutton her coat.

“Yes.”

“Okay.” I smile at her and touch the tip of her nose with my finger. I get her settled in the living room and head into the kitchen. A few moments later my phone chimes alerting me to a text message. I check the screen and see Mia’s name flash across it.

On my way home!

Mia is in her third year at NYU majoring in social work. After everything that she went through she wanted to be able to make a difference and help others. She realized the importance of having qualified professionals to assist people in need.

It took her seeing a therapist extensively to finally come to terms with the events of her past, to understand the effects of what she went through and be able to live her life free of fear and guilt.

Fifteen minutes later, I hear the front door open and the usual “Mommy!” cry. It makes me smile every single time; it never gets old.

“Hi Lily Bee.” I hear in response.

“Mommy, can I watch Yoyo Bears tonight?” My body shakes with silent laughter. If there’s one thing I can say for certain about Lily it’s that she’s relentless.

“Did you take a nap at school?”

“Do you and Daddy always say the same things?” she responds.

I shake my head, the kid is really a piece of work.

“Yes,” Mia says, and with that the conversation is over and I can pretty much guarantee that Lily plants herself back in front of the TV set with a pout on her face.

A set of arms slide around my waist from behind.

“Hi baby,” she says and rests her head on my back.

“Hi chief,” I reply, turning around so that we’re face to face. “I bend down and kiss her until her body relaxes in my arms. “How was your day?” I ask when I break the kiss.

“It was good. We had a review for my sociology final, nothing major.”

“How many more finals do you have?”

“Just two.”

“Have you gotten yourself registered for next semester already?” I ask, lowering the heat on the stove.

“About that...” She pulls back and looks up to the ceiling, and I immediately think that this can’t be good.

“What?”

“I’ve just been thinking a lot lately and…”

“And what?” I say, crossing my arms over my chest and leaning against the kitchen counter.

“Lily’s getting older now and as much as I love being in the city, I miss our home. I miss being around the family and I want Lily to go to a school where she can be safe on the playground and…”

“The schools here have safe playgrounds, Mia.”

“Well, I know but the city is just so loud and…big. We don’t have a backyard here for her to play in during the summertime s
he can only do that when we spend the weekends at the house and she really loves it there.”

I tilt my head and smile at her. For a long time after we got Lily back she’d always hesitate when it came to telling me how she felt. I think that maybe she was scared of my reaction, maybe she was scared that I’d reject her or get angry at her because it’s all she’d never known. I found that smiling at her always helped to relieve some of her tension, it made her see that I was a safe place for her to come to, someone who would love her instead of judge her.

“What are you saying?”

“You can transfer to the office in Pennsylvania can’t you?”

I nod my head slowly, still smiling at her. She really is adorable when she gets flustered like this. “I can do that, yes, but you have another year left of school. If we’re going to move back to the house in Pennsylvania shouldn’t we do it once you’ve graduated?”

“Our wedding is a month away.”

I throw my head back and laugh. “Why are you changing the subject?”

“I’m not,” she responds defensively. “I just miss our house, Logan.”

It’s funny how she’s never considered this apartment home. It holds special memories for both of us—we made love here for the first time but to her “home” is always the house in Pennsylvania where everything between us started out.

“I’ve just been thinking that once we’re married I’d like to spend more time with you at home, and that I’d like to spend as much time as I can with Lily before she starts kindergarten, which I would like for her to do in Pennsylvania.”

“So you want to quit school?”

“Well, when you put it like that,” she says rolling her eyes. “I don’t want to quit. I want to take a break.”

“A break so that we can move back home? What about when the break is up and you want to go back and finish? We’d be in Pennsylvania with a kid in school, and it’s not like we could uproot her at that point and I doubt that you’d want to commute into the city every day.”

“Trust me baby,” she says, running her hands up my arms and circling hers around my neck. “I spoke to my advisor and when I’m ready, I can finish my coursework online, and they’ll even help me find a place nearby where I can do my internship.”

“Why are you just telling me about this now?”

“I wanted to know my options before I said anything just in case it wasn’t possible. Logan, this isn’t home. You gave this to me because it was my dream at the time. NYU was my dream and it’s been great but sometimes dreams change and now I just want to raise our family in our pretty house in Pennsylvania. Plus, I miss driving my car. I’m sick of the subway and mass transportation.”

“Oohhh mass transportation. The horror!” I mock her. “How could I ever have subjected you to that all these years?”

“Don’t be a jerk,” she says with a giggle.

I get serious for a moment because as amazing as being back home sounds I need to know that this is really what she wants to do.

“I’ll give you anything you want, you know that. As long as it’s what you really, truly want. I think going home would be great for all of us.”

She lets out a squeal and tightens her hold on me, pulling me in for an all-out hug.

“Do you think the break is really necessary though? If you’re going to be finishing up your degree from home anyway why not just get it over with?” I question.

I think a part of me is just scared that if she settles into being a stay at home mom she won’t ever finish her social work degree. It’s not that I would mind her staying at home to raise Lily if that’s what she really wanted to do, but I know that her dreams stretch far beyond that. I know that she has a deep need to help people, especially young women and children.

“Yeah. About that.”

“I cringe every time you say that.” I sigh.

“Well, there’s just something else that I think you should know.”

I roll my eyes at her now. “Oh God Mia, I love you babe but just spit it out already.”

“I’m pregnant.”

I open my mouth, then close it again unsure of what to say. I look around searching for cameras or any other indication that this could be some type of hoax or sick prank. I look back at her and she’s still grinning at me.

“You’re full of shit.”

“I’m not,” she says with a gleam in her eyes.

“How?” I question skeptically.

“Well Logan, it all starts when a man and a woman...”

I cover her mouth with my hand and grin at her. “I know how smartass but
how?
I thought you were on the pill.” I uncover her mouth and she lets out another giggle.

“How quickly we forget huh? Remember a while back when I told you I ran out of my pills and had to get a new prescription?”

“Vaguely,” I respond. It’s a lie, I totally remember her telling me that.

“And remember how you said. ‘Oh don’t worry babe, I’ll just use condoms until you get that squared away?’”

“That might sound familiar.” I can practically recite the conversation verbatim. I did tell her I’d protect us until she got back on the pill.

“Only you weren’t exactly consistent with that.”

I can’t help but to chuckle, what man in a monogamous relationship ever really wants to use a condom. I was most likely horny and didn’t want to wait so I said what I had to say to get some. “Well did you ever go back on the pill?” I ask trying to deflect some of the blame.

“Yes. But evidently the damage had already been done.”

“Well, aren’t you just a mess?” I grin.

God, I love her. I don’t know that I was doing before she came into my life. I thought that I was happy with the way things were, I enjoyed being a cop, I liked being single and having no real ties to anyone but once she stepped foot in my house it was like she absolutely belonged there. It wasn’t until she stepped foot in that house that it really became a home.

“What am I supposed to do with you now huh?”

“You’re going to marry me?”

“A shotgun wedding?”

She smacks me on the arm. “We’ve been planning this wedding for a year it’s hardly a shotgun wedding.”

“You’re a real troublemaker you know that?”

“Yeah, but I’m worth it.”

And she is… worth it, worth everything I have. I’m just glad that she understands it herself now, that she understands how much she means to me. That my whole world begins and ends with her and Lily and now this baby.

“You know I’m happy, right? I love you and I’m excited to be a dad again. I’m excited to get to experience this pregnancy with you and I’m sure as fuck happy that you’re not going to have to go through this one alone…”

“But—”

“But, I just want to make sure you’re okay with it. You’re only twenty one and you already gave up a lot of your wild and crazy years in order to keep Lily. I just want to make sure that this is what you really want.”

She scowls and smacks me across the head,

“Enough with the abuse already,” I say with a laugh.

“Of course it’s what I want. I’ve gotten to do a lot of those things over the last few years. You’ve given me the freedom to make friends and go out and experience college life, and I’m pretty sure I can remember stumbling in here drunk off my ass a couple of times.”

“And I took advantage of those times.”

She giggles again and places a kiss on my lips. “My point is that I’ll be forever grateful for what you’ve given me but at this point in my life there’s nothing more important to me than my family. A new baby will only add to that and you’re right, we’re going to get to experience it together and it’s going to be amazing.”

“Alright,” I whisper in her ear.

“Alright?”

“Yup, let’s go home baby,” I say pulling her back into my arms where she belongs. The truth is, we could stay here in this apartment in the city forever. We could go back to Pennsylvania or move somewhere else, I don’t care. Home isn’t about shelter, home is where Mia is; it’s wherever Lily and our new baby are.

Nothing else matters, nothing else even comes close.

Alice Montalvo-Tribue lives with her husband and daughter in New Jersey. She has a bachelors degree in communications and is currently working on her masters degree. She spends most of her free time reading, writing, and when the weather permits sitting on the beach sipping a margarita. 

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