135

135
DREW
I was sitting at the kitchen island, papers spread in front of me and my laptop open, when Camille walked into the house. She kicked off her
shoes at the door, dropping her coat and purse before she entered the kitchen. Saying nothing to me, she yanked open the fridge and pulled out a can of whipped cream, spraying some into her mouth before putting the can back in
the fridge.
“You’re home early,” I said as she turned around.
“Yeah,” she said, humming as she grabbed chicken out of the freezer and tossed it on the counter to defrost. “I’m making chicken butternut squash soup for dinner. Are you going to want any?”
“If you’re making enough for the both of us.”
She opened the freezer and took out another chicken breast, tossing it on the counter beside the first. “Am now.”
I watched as she opened the fridge and pulled out several vegetables, setting them beside the cutting board before washing her hands. She continued to hum to herself as she washed the vegetables and started slicing them up.
“A little early for dinner, isn’t it?” I asked, closing my laptop and gathering my papers.
“It is. I want to get this chopped up and then I’m going to toss it all in the slow cooker and let it go for a few hours while I take a nap.”
“Long day?”
She shrugged. “It wasn’t that long but the doctor’s appointment was a lot.
Hearing the baby’s heartbeat for the first time was something else.”
It felt like she had knocked the air out of my lungs. When I thought about having a child, I thought that I would be there for the doctor’s appointments. Not once had it occurred to me that she wouldn’t want me at the appointments.
That’s because you haven’t been acting like someone who wants to be a father. You keep acting like a child. It’s time to grow up.
“How did the appointment go?” I asked as I forced down the disappointment at not being there myself. I got up from my seat and rounded the island, taking the knife from her. “Go sit down. I’ll get dinner ready.”
She raised an eyebrow and I could see the argument on the tip of her tongue. After another moment, she nodded and relinquished her spot at the counter to sit on one of the barstools. I took the vegetables and the cutting board to the island, watching her as I chopped.
“The appointment went well. The doctor gave me a list of vitamins and things I have to take and another list of things to avoid. The baby is healthy and strong.”
“Do you know what the gender is?”
“Not yet,” she said, running a hand through her hair.
For the first time, I noticed the dark circles beneath her eyes. She looked like she’d barely been sleeping. It wouldn’t surprise me if she wasn’t.
Camille had been through a lot in the last few weeks, and I had done nothing to make it easier on her.
I was being an asshole.
“You know, if you want to spend the day on the couch, watching movies, I’ve finished all the work that I had to do today.”
Camille raised an eyebrow, her lips pressing into a flat line. “You want to spend time together. Not sleeping together, but just sitting on the couch and watching a movie?”
“I’ve been a dick,” I said as I looked up from the carrots I was chopping. “And I want to stop being one. We’re having a baby together. I think that would be a lot easier if we were friends.”
“I’d like that.”
I nodded. “I also want to be at the appointments with you. I want to see our baby grow. Even though you and I aren’t in a relationship, I want to be there for every part of the baby’s life. I don’t want to miss out on a single moment of their life.”
Camille’s face paled and she looked away from me. She stared out the window at the snow falling outside, her jaw tense and her fingers drumming on the table. I could almost see the thoughts running through her mind.
When she turned back to me, she sighed. My heart was hammering in my chest. She wasn’t reacting the way that I thought she would have. Of course, I knew that I didn’t have anybody but myself to blame for that. I was the one who kept pushing her away.
“Drew, I don’t know if I can talk about this with you right now,” she said as her fingers stilled on the counter. “I feel like shit, and I just want to curl up and watch some movies.”
“Alright,” I said. I would respect her unwillingness to talk about it right
now, but I wasn’t going to tolerate it forever. This was my baby as much as it was hers. “Let me put this in the slow cooker while you go and pick out a movie.”
Camille nodded, a slight smile crossing her face though her gaze was still distant. I watched as she walked into the living room and untucked her blouse from her pencil skirt. She flopped down on the couch, sprawling across the cushions and grabbing the remote.
As she scrolled through the streaming services, looking for something to watch, I dumped the ingredients into the slow cooker. By the time I had finished seasoning the soup, Camille had gone to her room to change and come back in a pair of tiny spandex shorts and a crop top.
“I’m going to have a massive stomach in a few months,” Camille said as she sprawled across the cushions again. Her hands roamed over her stomach as love warmed her gaze. “This little baby is going to be heavy to carry around all the time.”
I sat down on the couch beside her, rolling up my sleeves and leaning against the arm of the couch. Camille grabbed a pillow and put it under her head, pressing up against my leg slightly.
“Tell me about your childhood,” she said as she glanced up at me. “I feel like I know nothing about you and we’re about to have a child soon.”
I sighed and wondered how much I should tell her. Most of the story of my childhood wasn’t great. I avoided talking about it whenever I could.
But despite my typical avoidance, I found myself wanting to talk to her about it. Though I knew I would struggle with parts of the story, I wanted her to know me. I wanted someone to share parts of my life with, even though I didn’t want to settle down.
Perhaps having Camille as a friend wouldn’t be so horrible.
“I was raised in foster care from the time I was two until the time I was eighteen.”
“Is that where you learned to cook?” Camille asked, sniffing the air as the scent of the soup started to waft through the house.
“Yeah. It was more out of necessity than anything. Most of the parents that take in foster children are only in it for the money and the free help around the house. If I didn’t know how to cook a hot meal, I was living off bread and peanut butter.”
“How many houses were you in?” she asked, her gaze locked on mine.
I could feel a lump rising in my throat as I looked away from her. As I watched the snow falling outside, I started going through the list of houses that I had been in.
“Probably twelve or thirteen. I don’t remember exactly how many when I was younger, but I remember that I moved to a new house pretty much every year when I was a teenager.”
Camille reached out and took my hand, lacing her fingers through mine. I brushed my thumb over the back of her hand, not saying a word for a moment as I tried to gather my thoughts. It was hard to think about my time in foster care.
If I could erase nearly everything from that time in my life, I would. Jessie and my ambition were the only good things I had gotten out of foster care.
“Why did you move around so much?”
I shrugged. “I wasn’t an easy child. I acted out a lot, especially as a teenager. Most families don’t want to have to deal with that. The ones that are willing to deal with the problems aren’t exactly kind to the kids they foster anyway.”
“Isn’t Child Protective Services supposed to make sure that doesn’t
happen?” Camille asked, her eyebrows knitting together.
“They are. If my social worker bothered to show up when she was supposed to, she didn’t see the bruises. It was when the surprise visits were made that they caught it.” I sighed and ran my fingers through her hair.
Camille closed her eyes as I continued to comb through her hair, spreading it out over the pillow and my lap. She sighed softly, a small smile spreading over her face.
“I had a lot of foster siblings growing up that way, but I still have a sister that I keep in contact with.”
Her eyes opened as she looked at me, surprise evident on her face. “You have a sister? I’ve never seen anything in the media about that.”
I chuckled. “I try to keep my sister out of my shit as much as possible. As long as the media don’t know about her, she can continue to live her life in peace without anyone bothering her.”
“What about our baby?”
I swallowed hard, another lump in my throat threatening to choke me.
When it came to our child, I would do anything I could to protect them. “They’re going to be kept out of the media. I don’t want our kid’s face in
any pictures that are taken.”
Camille nodded. “I think that between the two of us we should be able to keep them out of the paparazzi’s sights.”
“We’ll do everything that we can to keep our baby safe,” I said. “If there’s anyone who can do it, it’s us.”
“What else happened while you were living in foster care?” she asked, her voice hesitant and unlike the Camille I knew.
“A lot. More than should have.”
Camille bit her bottom lip and nodded. “We don’t have to talk about this if
you don’t want to.”
“No,” I said, still running my fingers through her hair, using it to soothe myself. “I want to tell you about my life. We’re about to be tied to each other for the rest of our lives. I think that means we should probably know more about each other.”
Camille nodded. “Well, I want to know whatever you’re willing to tell me.”
“I used to get into a lot of fights, especially in the houses that Jessie and I lived in. She was always kind of a loner and was picked on a lot. Sometimes even other kids in the household messed with her, just because she was a girl.”
“You kept getting into fights to defend her?”
“Yeah. At first it was stupid things, like hiding her stuff, or teasing her about having a period. As she got older though, they started seeing her as a conquest. The last straw was when I caught one of my foster brothers trying to sneak into the bathroom while she was showering. I kicked him in the gut, hard. He caught the corner of the wall and got six stitches in the back of his head. Of course he denied everything, and the day I turned eighteen, the family kicked me out. Jessie ran away a few days later and found me.”
“Oh my god,” Camille said, her eyes wide.
“It was the last time he ever tried that again,” I said, my voice sounding hollow even to my own ears. “I told Jessie she always had me by her side, that I would always be there for her.”
Camille wiped away a tear that rolled down the side of her face. She took a deep breath. “Is it wrong to hope that our baby isn’t a girl?”
My chest ached as I looked down at her. “The world is hard on women. I don’t think it’s wrong to hope that, but I also know that if we do have a baby
girl, you and I are going to do everything in our power to teach her that she has a right to be in this world and go after what she wants.”
She nodded, her expression distant as she grabbed the remote and started scrolling through the movies. “Can we talk some more about this later?”
“Of course,” I said, putting my feet up on the coffee table as she picked a movie and put it on.
It didn’t take long for Camille to fall asleep, her soft snores filling the room while I continued to comb my fingers through her hair.