“For me?”
I’ve been trying to learn guitar. It’s really fucking hard—my left hand won’t do shit since I got shot in the shoulder, but it turns out that most songs only have about four chords anyway. I don’t think I’ll ever play a diminished seventh. Fuck it.
And I stand up to go get the guitar before I lose my nerve.
I’ve been practicing while Caro has been out. Sometimes it sounds okay; sometimes it sounds like crap.
I walk back into the living room, but I can’t meet her eyes.
I position my fingers over the strings and take a deep breath. Fuck. My mouth has gone dry.
Here goes.
Just when I’d seen it all
Just when I’d heard it all
And the road got weary
I heard you call.
I thought I knew it all
I thought I called the shots
No colors in my life
So far to fall.
Filled with sunshine
That’s in your smile
Always loving
I’ll walk that extra mile.
No place to call my home
No woman of my own
But then you rescued me
And your love is the key.
Filled with sunshine
That’s in your smile
Always loving
We’ll go that extra mile.
The last note dies away and I still can’t look up.
The silence hangs in the air.
She stands up and takes the guitar from me, and lays it carefully on the table. Then she sits on my knee and my arms automatically curl around her waist.
“You made me cry,” she says, softly.
“Oh no, baby. Was it that bad?”
“Idiot!” she sniffs, between her tears. “It was beautiful. Oh, Sebastian, it was just wonderful. I love it. And I love you. So much, tesoro.”
Relief floods through me and all the tension drains away. She loved it.
I stand up with her still in my arms.
“Good, let’s go to bed.”
She snuggles into my chest, and lets me carry her into the bedroom.
I’m really looking forward to unwrapping my next present and seeing her in all that fucking sexy red underwear.
I put her down on the bed and yank my t-shirt over my head.
Oh, crap! I think I heard the seam rip again.
“Wait!” she says, loudly.
I stare at her, puzzled.
“I’ve got another present for you yet, Sebastian.”
“I know, baby, and I’m looking forward to unwrapping it.”
She rolls her eyes.
“A different present.”
“You got me something else?”
I can’t help smiling.
Fuck. I love getting presents—I’ve never had that many before. I kinda get why people like Christmas now.
She opens the drawer of her bedside cabinet and pulls out a small envelope, and hands it to me.
“What is it?”
“Sebastian, the whole point is that you open it,” she says, with a smile twitching at her lips.
I toss the pillows behind me and sit propped up against the headboard.
I tear open the envelope and pull out a small photograph. I have no fucking idea what I’m looking at. It’s a weird black and white, swirly picture. For all I know it could be a Klingon vessel attacking the Starship Enterprise.
One.
Two.
Three.
“Oh fuck!”
Four.
Five.
Six.
“Caro?”
Seven.
Eight.
“Is this?”
Nine.
Ten.
“Yes,” she says. “We’re going to have a baby—you’ll be a father. Merry Christmas, Sebastian.”
My wife is the only person in the whole fucking world who can make me cry. And tonight, for the first time in my miserable fucking existence, I cry tears of joy.
* www.wandasummers.co.uk
EXTENDED EPILOGUE 2
maybe, baby
Three Years Later
Marco really is a beautiful little boy. I know every mother says that or at least thinks it about their own child, but in Marco’s case it’s true. Just last week, I was approached by a woman who said she was a scout for a modeling agency, and that she was sure she could get plenty of work for him: catalogues, magazines, even TV commercials.
She was pretty pushy, and couldn’t believe that I wasn’t interested in making money out of my two-year-old son. I took her card out of politeness, but I really wanted to tell her to shove it where the sun don’t necessarily shine.
My language skills have plummeted since my marriage to a certain potty-mouthed former-Marine named Sebastian Hunter. Two and three-quarter years of marriage haven’t managed to curtail the habits picked up from his ten years in the United States Marine Corps. He swears like a drunken sailor on shore leave—and he doesn’t even notice he’s doing it.
But I think the fact that Marco is starting to talk and understand whole sentences, might have a more salutary effect than all of my nagging. But I’m not holding my breath: if Marco drops the f-bomb at Kindergarten, I’m blaming his father.