24. Nate

TWENTY-FOUR

NATE

I ’d officially been a dad for three weeks.

Felt like three years.

Every day was 120 hours long.

I didn’t have anything to compare it to, but I supposed Frog was an easy baby. He was mostly content, and with Tabby breastfeeding, there wasn’t a whole lot for me to do besides stick around to make sure she had everything she needed.

Because, goddamn, could my kid eat.

We’d been to visit with a lactation consultation a few days ago because Tab was overproducing. Something that mortified her at first when it sprayed all over. But I’d done some research and purchased these cups she could wear to catch excess milk. We already had a bunch of bags stored in the freezer because my woman was a machine.

A beautiful yet exhausted machine.

My mom had come over three times, staying from morning until night each day, so Tabby could sleep and I could go to work. Those days, I made sure to stop at the store for groceries and two bouquets of flowers. One for Tabitha for baking and birthing the most perfect baby on the face of the planet and one for my mother because moms were superheroes. Pushed bowling balls out of their bodies and then got up and continued about their business like it was nothing.

Incredible.

The very least I could do was bring some flowers and do loads of laundry.

And get out of the house. Tabitha had spent the first two weeks pretty much horizontal, save for the appointments to the pediatrician and the lactation consultant. Between bouts of crying and feeding George, she hadn’t moved much from the bed. But the last few days, she’d been up and about. While I didn’t mind waiting on her hand and foot, it was good to see color in her cheeks and have her rolling her eyes at my dumb jokes.

We’d tested out the stroller Summer and my dad gifted us with some short walks around the neighborhood, and last night, Gen, Kennedy, and Brooke had come over to coo at the baby while giving one another manicures and pedicures. I stayed out of their way, knowing Tabby needed time alone with them, and it had been while I cleaned up the kitchen that I’d received my texts.

Jude

Meet us at Imagination tomorrow at 10.

Liam

Welcome to the club.

The dads club??

Dylan

don’t be weird about it

Do I get a badge or something?

Dylan

thats being weird

So, this morning, I packed the diaper bag with everything I might need and probably a dozen things I didn’t then carefully loaded Frogger into the car to spend a few hours with my bros while Tabby got to relax in the quiet at home.

After parking, I slid the diaper bag over my shoulder and carried the car seat in one hand, careful not to jostle my boy too much. He was asleep, and I didn’t want to accidentally wake him up.

I was the last to arrive, finding my best friends already seated on the bench in front of the doctor’s office. They’d all popped over to the house to meet George, but the three of them watched me with interested gazes as I set the car seat down at my feet and slid onto the end of the bench next to Liam.

He kept his focus on the baby as he asked, “How’s it going?”

“Okay, I guess.”

Dylan bent forward to meet my gaze. “How’s Tabby?”

“She’s good. She’s feeling a lot better the past few days.”

Jude grinned at me. “And how are you?”

I shrugged, rubbing my hand over my beard, thinking about the last three weeks. The last nine months. “Tired. Overwhelmed.” I looked at each of my friends in turn. “Really fucking happy.”

They all nodded as if it made perfect sense.

I stared down at George, his eyes closed, hands in fists on top of the muslin blanket with Winnie the Pooh all over it. So peaceful. I inhaled deeply, admitting to my friends what I kept from Tabby. “I have no idea what the hell I’m doing.” Lowering my voice, I met their gazes. “I’m afraid I’m gonna fuck it all up.”

Jude waved his hand. “None of us know what we’re doing.”

Liam agreed. “We’re all figuring it out as we go along.”

Dylan crossed his arms. “And don’t listen to anybody’s advice. Nobody knows your kid better than you do.”

“But also remember that nothing lasts forever, and as soon as you have it figured out, things will change again,” Jude amended.

“And vice versa,” Liam added. “It might be terrible, but it will eventually get better.”

I huffed. “So what you’re saying is none of you have anything helpful to say?”

Dylan removed his baseball hat to drag his hand over his head a few times. “We didn’t say that. We’ve got tons of helpful shit to say.”

I circled my hands, waiting for this sage advice. “Like…?”

He shrugged and thought for a few moments. “Like don’t watch Blippi. It’ll make you want to break things.”

“And try to avoid YouTube as long as possible. Pretend it doesn’t even exist,” Jude told me.

“Miss Rachel is good, though,” Liam said.

Jude tipped his head in acknowledgment. “For cartoons, Bluey’s the best. Brooke says it’s the most feminist show on TV.”

Liam pointed at him. “Agreed. I could write a thesis on the excellence of Bluey.”

I made mental notes. “Okay. What else you got?”

Dylan sliced his hand through the air. “No slime, no play dough, no glitter.”

“But watch out, because other parents will send bags of crap home with your kid because it was their kid’s birthday, and if they see the slime, play dough, or glitter in those bags, it’s a fight to the death,” Liam warned.

Jude shook his head as if imagining it. “There’s also a fight to the death about food. Everything they liked as a baby, they’ll hate as a toddler, and everything they ate as a toddler, they’ll throw away when they’re older.”

“You said you wanted chicken nuggets for dinner. Here’s your chicken nuggets,” Dylan said, pretending to hand his hat over as a plate of food before pitching his voice to a squeak. “No! I wanted pizza!” He rolled his eyes, leveling me with a glower as if I were the one demanding pizza over nuggets. “Sends me through the roof every time.”

“It’s the absolute worst,” Liam muttered.

Jude eyed me seriously. “And don’t be fooled by the well-behaved first child. The next one will be a savage.”

“Got that right,” Dylan grunted.

Liam lifted a careless shoulder. “Unless the first one is Finn. Then you’re fucked.”

I stared at my friends for a second, letting all that soak in before I dropped my head back, laughing.

The answer was there was no answer. I’d mess up. I’d get mad. I would definitely make mistakes, so I guessed all there was left to do was love my boy.

I’d do everything I could to protect him and help him and teach him everything I knew, and hopefully, thirty years from now, he’d think I did the best I could.

I leaned back against the wall. “I get it. Kids are hard. Buy a helmet.”

“Take it one day at a time,” Liam said, his attention focused on Finn, playing with some random child in the grocery store.

Jude leaned forward to slap my knee. “The only thing you really need to worry about right now is Tabby. Postpartum is tough.”

I nodded, thinking of the long nights when Tabby could barely sleep, plagued by worry and doubt. “Yeah.”

Dylan finally replaced his cap on his head. “In all seriousness, you’re doing great. You’re a good dad.”

“He’s right.” Jude grinned. “You were made for this. Like I always said.”

I felt a swell of gratitude for their faith in me, and I rubbed at the knot in my chest, where all my love for George resided. “Thanks, guys.”

It was at that moment Scarlett noticed me, and she screeched in joy. Dylan and Gen had brought Scarlett and Tucker over to meet their new cousin, and it had been practically impossible to pry her away from him. She raced right over to me, accidentally knocking into the car seat. All the other kids followed her, so George fluttered his eyes open to not only Scarlett but Sebastian, Amelia, Tucker, and Finn. All of them talking over one another and asking their dads questions about holding him and how old he was and what babies liked to eat and when they got teeth.

“Hey, all right.” Liam pulled Finn away, his finger dangerously close to George’s face. “Give the baby some room.”

“I wanna hold him. Can I hold him?” Scarlett folded her hands, pleading at me with her big brown eyes. “Please?”

“How about I hold him, and you can each take a turn holding his hand?” I suggested, starting to undo his straps.

He fussed a bit but settled when I had him in the crook of my arm, holding him away from me a little so each kid could get up close and personal.

“He’s so cute,” Scarlett cooed. Even Sebastian—too cool for school—seemed taken with the little guy.

“Here!” Finn thrust a cookie—a real cookie that I suspected came from somewhere on the floor—at George’s mouth, making him squirm and whine.

“Buddy, don’t do that,” I said, nudging Finn’s hand away.

Liam scooped up his son. “Where did you find this cookie? It’s garbage.”

Finn stuck it in his mouth, and Liam rolled his eyes up to the ceiling, his mouth forming words I couldn’t hear but understood clearly, nonetheless.

I smothered a laugh as I brought Frog up to my shoulder, telling the kids, “Go on and play. You’ll have lots of time to hang out with him later.”

They scattered, and my friends all nodded at me.

I smiled. This dad thing was totally easy.