“Play it again, Mo. I liked it.” Yael leaned in and kissed the side of my head. “Did you like it?”
“Yeah. It’s fucking crazy, but I’m probably going to watch this a few dozen times tonight. Not sure I’ll be able to get enough.”
We watched the video two more times, analyzing the movements and rhythm of the heartbeat. Murray was convinced he could see a penis, but Yael googled and read aloud things like “genital tubercle” and “nub theory,” and we all agreed not to talk about it anymore.
My sister squeezed herself next to me in my chair and circled her arms around my shoulders. “Let’s get the easy part out of the way. You are going to be a kickass dad. This is earlier than any of us imagined this happening, but I have zero doubts you’ll pull through, like you’ve always pulled through for me.”
“Yep.” Murray ruffled my hair, noogie style, before returning to his spot on the couch. “You’re like the dad of the band. I get it’s nowhere near the same, but you’re the guy who thinks shit through, makes sure everyone is okay, would give someone your shirt even if it meant you’d freeze. I’m pretty confident you’re going to have this.”
“Alex is correct.” Yael patted my cheek and slid out of the chair, plopping down on the couch too. “Agreeing with Alex is making me feel icky. Let’s talk about Michaela. From what I remember, she’s maybe...a little bit older?”
“She is,” I confirmed. “She’s in her thirties. She’s got this big, big career, and a tight family. But she wants this baby, and she told me I don’t have to be involved if I don’t want to be.”
“And you...what?” Yael raised her eyebrows, waiting for me to tell her how heroically I’d acted. Too bad that wasn’t even close to reality.
“I told her I wanted to be in the kid’s life, then I told her I had to leave.” With my elbows on my knees, I cradled my face in my hands. I had no idea what the correct response to the situation was, but mine wasn’t it.
Murray groaned. “You ran out on her?”
“Basically.”
Yael calmly got up, walked over to me, flicked my nose, then returned to her seat. “Don’t make me ashamed of you, Moses.” She took out her phone. “Tell me her address. I’m going to send her flowers.”
“No. I’ll do something for her,” I said.
“They’re from me, jackass. I’m going to be an aunt! I want to tell Michaela how excited I am about that.”
I was pretty surprised Yael wasn’t berating me right now. I’d expected her to give me a hard time, to question whether Michaela had trapped me, or any sort of cynical remark. What I hadn’t expected was Yael to be excited. Not in a million years. My sister was my best friend, but she was dry and reluctant to express many emotions beyond random flares of anger toward Murray.
“That’d be nice.” I rattled off the address for her.
“Add my name to the card,” Murray said, laughing when Yael flipped him off.
“I have to tell you something else,” I said.
Yael’s fingers paused as she looked up from her phone. “What?”
“We’re married.”
Yael’s face crumpled in confusion. “Wait, what? Didn’t you just find out about the baby today? Did you carry her over your shoulder to the courthouse?”
“I’m pretty sure this is the complicated portion of the story,” Murray said.
“It is.” Leaning back in my chair again, I scrubbed the scruff on my jaw. “When I was out in Vegas doing that charity concert, I ran into Michaela at this little hole in the wall bar. She was flirting with the bartender, and I just needed to be drunk.”
“Was this after the dick grabber?” Yael asked.
“That’s right. Anyway, I recognized her, we danced, flirted, ran away from Mac, watched the Bellagio fountains, and the whole time, we were talking in this real way. Not the way you talk to people when you first meet them, nothing surface level. Hell, I didn’t even have a clue where she lived until a couple days ago. But I do know her fears, what makes her happy, how to make her feel safe. She knows those things about me too. Or I thought she did. I’m not even sure how much of that night she remembers.”
And it killed me. I walked away thinking I’d found a person I’d know forever. Joke was on me. Turned out, I would know Michaela forever…through the child we were going to share. And while that was both cool and scary as hell, it wasn’t at all what I’d been counting on.
“What you’re saying is you got drunk off your asses, imagined you were having some spiritual connection, then made the whack decision to get married. I see,” Yael said.
Murray groaned, shaking his head. “Jesus, cool girl. Show a little heart.”
She arched an eyebrow in his direction. “I suppose this sounds all romantic to you?”
He shrugged, lazy and unaffected. “I’m not making any judgments. It’s what Mo says it is.”