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Callum found Nerea in the bathroom brushing her hair.
“Oh good, there you are,” she said, setting her brush down and picking up a hair tie.
“Jamie told me,” Callum blurted. “And that you’d prefer we don’t react.”
“Yes.” Nerea nodded.
“What do you need from me?”
“I need to get through the rest of this day as if nothing is happening. So I need you not to say anything — or do anything — out of the ordinary. I also need you to finish packing up the centerpieces so they don’t get in anyone’s way on Christmas, and please make sure all the lights in the garden are working, I think one of the strands blew out.”
“Do you mind if I kiss you?” There was so much to be worried about, Nerea's health and that of the baby's not the least of it. But even with those concerns Callum wasn’t sure how to contain his happiness. The decision to keep the baby or not was, of course, entirely up to Nerea. But wise or not, Callum was already all in.
Nerea turned to face him with an exasperated, but fond, smile. “If you must.” She wrapped her arms around Callum’s neck eagerly, though, and kissed him for several long moments before she pushed him away with a reminder of everything they still had to do today.
Callum was a trained actor; so was Jamie. Still, in Callum’s opinion, Nerea definitely won the day’s prize for pretending nothing out of the ordinary was happening in the chaos that was overtaking the rest of the house. People were even beginning to lose interest in Jamie’s relationship with them. Which was a relief, but possibly a short-lived one. As much as anyone judged him and Nerea for having a boyfriend, that judgment was going to pale in comparison to what would happen if and when everyone found out Nerea was pregnant with a baby very possibly not her husband’s.
Callum didn’t want to worry about any of it. While Nerea holed up in the bedroom and Jamie walked around dazed and wide-eyed, Callum couldn’t help but smile as he submitted obediently to Nerea’s well-organized to-do lists. He spent the rest of the day putting up lights, hauling tables around the garden, and doing his best to avoid both Nerea’s parents and his own. Sure, it might be hard, but Callum loved kids. His career had maybe gotten in the way of him spending enough time with his daughters when they were young, but he’d relished every moment he had with them. Having a baby in the house again would be a joy.
It was after midnight by the time the three of them were finally able to go upstairs for the evening. They faced each other, comically wary, from different sides of the bedroom: Nerea by the bathroom door, Jamie hovering by the window, and Callum at the foot of the bed just wanting to go to sleep.
“Are we going to talk about this now?” Jamie asked. He looked even more nervous than when he’d asked Callum about being bisexual in public, over dinner at Callum’s club. Callum wished he could calm those nerves now as easily as he had then, with a touch of his hand and a smile. He’d known from their first meeting that Jamie was special, but then he’d just thought the boy was destined to be a star. He couldn’t have known just how marvelous Jamie really was.
Nerea started taking her hair down from its bun. “We could. We probably should,” she said in answer to Jamie’s question. “But none of us have the energy for it, and I still feel awful.”
Jamie looked beseechingly at Callum, but he wasn’t sure what, exactly, Jamie was beseeching for. Did he want them to talk about it? Did he not want to talk about it? To have exhausted sex and fall asleep in a heap?
Callum shook his head. If Jamie wanted something he was going to have to ask for it more clearly. And regardless of what he wanted, Nerea had spoken.
* * *
CALLUM WOKE THE NEXT morning to find only Nerea in bed, curled up on her side as she tapped at his tablet one-handed. Her hair was tousled and she was wearing a wrinkled T-shirt of Jamie’s. There were dark circles of sleeplessness under her eyes. Callum wondered if she’d been ill again or just too worried to rest. Either way Callum’s heart ached at how lovely she was even in exhaustion.
“Where’s Jamie?” All he wanted to do was stay in bed with the two lovely human beings who for some reason wanted him in their lives. Unfortunately, one of them was currently missing.
“I don’t know. He wasn’t here when I woke up.”
Callum threw back the covers. “I suppose I should go find him.” He was still worried about Jamie’s lack of communicativeness last night. Callum wanted to address and at least try to solve whatever it was Jamie needed.
Nerea shook her head. She let the tablet fall forward onto the mattress and looked at Callum.
“Give him space and time. We could all use some of that.”
“What are you doing?” Callum nodded toward the tablet.
“Googling.”
“Googling what?” he asked tightly.
“Everything.”
* * *
CALLUM FOUND JAMIE an hour later entirely by accident. Nerea had sent Callum up to her studio to grab some odds and ends necessary for decorations. There he found Jamie, sitting backward on an old wooden chair, his arms folded across the back and his chin resting on his crossed wrists.
“I was wondering where you’d got to,” Callum said mildly as he shifted things about looking for craft glue and a very particular pair of scissors he’d been sent up to find.
“I just needed some quiet,” Jamie said. His voice was dull and his eyes, Callum noted, were rather misty and red. Next to him on the floor was an open sketchpad, and on the page —
“Is that you?” Callum asked, squinting down at the sketchpad.
Jamie glanced at it. “Yeah.”
“Nerea’s work?” Callum thought about picking the thing up for a closer look, but didn’t want to intrude on whatever distance Jamie needed right now.
“Yeah,” Jamie said again. “I saw the painting she did of you. When I was here over the summer. I asked if she’d do one of me, so.” He nudged the sketchbook gently with a socked toe. “Things were simple back then, huh? Relatively speaking.”
“Only by comparison,” Callum said. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but life was only ever going to get more complicated. If it wasn’t this, it would’ve been something else.”
“Maybe.” Jamie sounded doubtful. “But I’m pretty sure this is the most complicated it could possibly get.”
Callum couldn’t disagree. He left Jamie with a squeeze to his shoulder. “Take as much time as you need.”
* * *
GETTING READY FOR CHRISTMAS Eve mass that night, Callum dressed in the bathroom still warm from the steam of their showers while Nerea helped Jamie with his cuff links in the bedroom. Buttoning up his own shirt, Callum thought back on all the Christmases he’d spent here over the last three decades.
There had been holidays in London, of course. Especially when the girls were little and they’d tried to rotate Christmas between his parents and Nerea’s. But more recently this house had become the center of all things holiday and celebratory. It was hard to believe that any of it — the food, the language, the hymns — had ever been strange to him. This is what Christmas was: Huge meals with the neighbors, relatives too much underfoot; mass at church; and the sheer joy of the season.
As they had each Christmas spent here, they and all their guests walked to the church. Despite it being more than a mile away, it was festive to troop down the road with their family and friends in the crisp evening air. Nerea looped her arm through Callum’s. Jamie, with a tentative glance at both of them, took her other arm and was rewarded with a dazzling smile. Whatever else was in store for the three-possibly-four of them, Jamie could make Nerea smile like that. As far as Callum was concerned, that was worth almost anything life could throw at them.
Jamie was fine at church, cheerful as he smiled and nodded and was generally enthusiastic in conversation to make up for the fact that he could hardly understand anyone. Even the neighbors had surrendered to the spirit of the season and refrained from snide comment, at least within Callum’s earshot. But walking home afterward he trailed behind them, texting furiously into his mobile. His sister or a parent, Callum presumed and didn’t press. If Jamie wanted to tell him what was going on, he would when he was ready.
Back at the house everyone sat up eating baked goods and talking. Jamie, however, withdrew into himself. Once they all went upstairs long after midnight he dropped into the chair beneath the window and then sat rigidly on the edge of it, responding to all inquiries in monosyllables.
“Jamie, please come to bed,” Callum finally huffed. Having emotions was all well and good, but this was ridiculous.
“I’m not cuddling while we discuss this.” Jamie gripped the arms of the chair for dear life. Callum struggled not to laugh at him, or curse in exasperation.
Sitting up in bed against a stack of pillows and wrapped in one of Callum’s shirts, Nerea ran her hands over her face. “Can you please stop acting as if we aren’t all on the same side?”
“Fine. Then explain to me how that works,” Jamie said. “Because the way I see it — and I’ve now spent more than a day thinking about this — either you and Callum are having another baby, which means there’s not really room for me; or you’re having my baby and Callum’s going to be gracious about that, which also means there’s not really room for me; or you’re going to have an abortion and then we’ll all be pissed off and sad and awkward ’til we break up. So excuse me if I don’t feel like being in your bed for this disaster that I’ve ruined my relationship with my parents for. Also it’s Christmas Eve and who has conversations like this on Christmas Eve? People are supposed to be all into baby Jesus, not worried about an actual baby.”
“Jamie — ” Nerea tried to cut him off.
“What?”
“You are being an awful human being right now,” she said.
“So?” he retorted.
“Where is this coming from? You’ve been so sane.”
“Yeah and then I had to spend all day around your families, who still don’t know what to do with me, and not talking to my family, who still aren’t speaking to me.”
Nerea and Callum exchanged a look.
“What?” Jamie demanded.
Callum frowned. “Get your arse out of that chair and sit on this bed right now so we can have this conversation with you the way it needs to be had.”
He sighed in relief when Jamie got up and slunk over.
“Fine,” Jamie said when he sat down.
“Can I rewind?” Callum asked Nerea, who only made an irritated gesture in response.
Callum took Jamie’s hands in his own. “You’re having a panicked meltdown about this, regardless of any complicating factors. I have been there. I get it.” In a way, Callum — both present and past — was grateful to have someone to share this particular experience with. Jamie’s sullen belligerence in the face of life’s vagaries, while concerning, was well-earned.
“Okay, fair and all, but when you knocked Nerea up you got to marry her and feel responsible. What am I supposed to do?”
Callum boggled at Jamie. It was, in its way, a fair question, but Callum had no idea how to respond.
Nerea, though, giggled. When Callum and Jamie turned their heads simultaneously to look at her, her giggling turned into outright laughter. Callum started to chuckle himself; her mirth was infectious and the stress and absurdity of the situation demanded some sort of outlet. Jamie caught it, too, and before long the three of them were tangled in a laughing, hysterical heap on the bed.
“Okay,” a breathless Jamie finally said. “I’m done being a prick. For now. I think.”
Nerea swatted him lightly on the arm. “Good.”
“Sorry about that,” Jamie said.
Nerea smiled. “I think we’ve learned never to let you stew about anything.”
Jamie sat up. “I still have questions.”
Nerea kissed him gently and then settled back against the pillows. “Ask away.”
“You and Callum got married, he said, ’cause you gave him a list of conditions when you got pregnant with Leigh.”
“He told you that, did he?” Nerea turned a fond gaze on Callum. Callum couldn’t help but smile back.
“So if you do have this baby, do you have a list for me?”
There were times when Callum couldn’t believe that Jamie was real. What had he done to deserve someone so lovely to share life, and Nerea, with?
“I think it’s helpful, not to mention necessary, to remember that I’m forty-eight and the chances of me carrying a baby to term are very low,” Nerea said. “Assuming that’s something I want to do.”
“Should I be assuming that?” Jamie asked carefully.
“We are sitting here worrying about it,” she said. “It’s a terribly romantic notion, but I don’t know. I like my life, Jamie. I like my marriage; I like our relationship; I like my body; I like my career. Pregnancies change all those things.”
Callum kept his face studiously neutral. Now was not the time to gush about how much he wanted a baby.
“What do you need from me if you don’t have the baby? For whatever reason?” Jamie asked.
“In that case, I want your support in whatever happens and whatever choice I make. If it’s too much for you, or too hard, you’re welcome to leave, as you would be in any relationship.”
“And in the other case?” Jamie asked, hesitantly and with a flash of hope he was trying, and failing, to conceal.
Nerea looked at Callum before she turned back to Jamie. She took Jamie’s hand in one of hers and laced the fingers of her other hand through Callum’s. “I can’t be a single parent again. Not at my age, and also, not ever again. So I would need commitments, from both of you that at least one of you is going to be present at all times. If — and I can’t emphasize enough how big an if this is — if there’s a baby, I don’t want to be the primary parent. Not at six months, not at six years, and not at sixteen. I’ve done my time.”
Jamie, to Callum’s deep pleasure and utter shock, nodded instantly and even eagerly. “I can do that,” he said.
“Can you really?” Nerea looked as surprised as Callum felt.
“Of course I can. I mean, I won’t have much clue of what I’m doing, but my sisters have kids and you guys were probably as clueless as me when you had Leigh, right? So — yeah. Yeah. I want to be with you. Both of you. And if this happens to be a part of that life. I’m not going to say no.”
“That’s very generous of you,” Callum said. And it was. Possibly more than it was wise of Jamie to offer. “But you have a brilliant career opening up. Wanting to be a parent and present is all well and good, but just how much of your job are you willing to give up? Because, speaking as someone who knows, either way, you’re going to have to make sacrifices.”
Jamie fell silent, but it was the silence of thoughtfulness and someone making a plan, not of regretting offers made.
Callum turned his attention back to Nerea. There were plans and promises he wanted — needed — to make too. “I’m content with any decision you make,” Callum said. “I know I’ve screwed up before, but if there’s an opportunity for another chance, it would be the joy of my life to make up for that.”
Nerea looked between the two of them and briefly pressed a hand to her breastbone. “That’s sweet, both of you. It really is. But Callum, how you feel and what you can do aren’t necessarily the same. And Jamie, Callum’s right that you need to consider your career. Speaking of which, aren’t you both scheduled to go on a contractually obligated press tour in eight months? Together?”
Callum looked at Jamie, who was staring back at him with a look of utter horror on his face.
“Oh,” Callum said.
Jamie turned to Nerea. “Is that a reason you don’t want to have a baby, or a reason you’d be annoyed about having a baby?”
“Start of a long list. After which comes I’m forty-eight,” she said. “That’s a concern both for my sake and a baby’s. The risk of complications increases, the risk of birth defects increases — ”
Jamie’s head snapped toward her. “Birth defects like what?”
“Oh, God, any of them. Congenital heart problems, Down Syndrome — ”
Jamie had leapt up from the bed and started pacing. “No. No. No, no, no, no, no,” he said, agitated.
Nerea looked at Callum, baffled, but Callum had no idea either. He shrugged.
“Jamie, I’m afraid that’s the science,” Nerea told him.
“No,” Jamie said again. “That’s not what I mean.”
“Then what do you mean?” Nerea asked.
“You know Aoife? My sister?”
Callum’s heart sank. He could see where this might be going. And if he was correct, Jamie was going to have every right to be upset with what Nerea had just said.
“You’ve mentioned her,” Nerea said. “The one who just got engaged, yes?”
“Yes.” Jamie nodded. “She’s my favorite person in the whole world. More than you, more than Callum. And she has Down Syndrome.”
Nerea covered her mouth with her hand. Shock, Callum thought, that somehow neither of them had known and together had been callous for it. Jamie could be so forthcoming, and yet there was always more. He was so kind, and yet always seemed to keep so many secrets in his life so unbearably close. Callum suddenly wanted to know about all of Jamie’s sisters. He felt chagrin for all the times he and Nerea had never asked. Callum wished for Jamie to trust them with the whole of his world, but Callum could see now why that hadn’t happened yet.
“And that,” Jamie said, angry, “is why my very decent but imperfect parents freaked out about her engagement and then had a meltdown when I told them about you.”
“We didn’t know,” Callum said uselessly.
“And you shouldn’t assume that every family is like yours!” Jamie exclaimed. “I love my sister. When I told her about you she couldn’t stop laughing. She didn’t believe me! I told her I was dating a movie star and his wife, and she thought what I was saying about the three of us sounded too good to be true. So if you don’t want to have a baby, I guess that’s fine. But if you don’t want to have a baby like Aoife — because you think it’s too hard or not cool or you’re too busy or famous or whatever — that I can’t do. I can’t be here for that.”
“Why didn’t you tell us sooner?” Nerea asked.
“Because I shouldn’t have to say any of this? Because she’s a person, and I wanted you to meet her first?”
“I’m sorry, Jamie. I didn’t know.” Nerea echoed Callum.
“Well, now you do.” Jamie stopped pacing and dropped into the chair again.
“Perhaps I am coming at this with a set of biases I didn’t even realize I had.” Nerea took a deep breath and glanced at Callum.
He nodded at her. As he kept saying to Jamie and himself, Nerea came first. Whatever her feelings were, she should express them without checking them with Callum.
“I’m willing to acknowledge that and to learn from you and your family,” she said. “But the reality is, while you may want a baby regardless of what type of baby, my age restricts my ability to care for a child who in any way needs long-term care. It wouldn’t be fair to me, and it wouldn’t be fair to them.”
“Aoife’s getting married,” Jamie repeated. “She and Patrick are getting a flat in a community that can support them. Don’t assume what someone needs from you when you don’t know.”
“I’m learning Jamie. I’m trying, I really am. I am, once again, only one of three potential parents here,” she added. “Regardless of any of these issues, I can’t be the primary parent. I’ve said that before and I have a feeling I’m going to keep saying that until this plays out one way or another. So that ball is in your court, boys. It’s also only one of our many problems.”
“But you could love a Down Syndrome kid? As long as we did all the work?”
“Of course I could love her,” Nerea said. “That’s not in question. Not to me. And not, I hope, for you.”
“What are the other problems?” Callum asked, circling back to the remark that had been half-buried by the crisis of the moment.
“Our lives, our schedules, our homes,” Nerea said. “Jamie. You split your time between Dublin, London, and — if we continue this pattern — Spain. Callum and I split our time between London and here. We are three adults with time-consuming careers and somewhat itinerant lives.”
Callum wondered how they hadn’t talked about this before. But then, there hadn’t been an immediate need to. Not like this.
“This international jet-setting lifestyle is compelling in theory,” Nerea went on. “But in practice, it’s not an arrangement that’s sustainable. And that’s true whether I’m having a baby or not. So if you need to find some new reading material to occupy you, Jamie, start brainstorming solutions as to how we’re going to fix that.”
Callum said nothing. He wanted to see what Jamie’s response would be.
“That’s easy,” Jamie said. “We’re all just going to have to move.”