A Likely Story: A Wayward Ink Publishing Anthology (11 page)

Which was what he was blissfully thinking when he felt the little bundle of Jax in him haul off with one, two, three big kicks. And when the big bundle of Jax on top of Cassidy fell over himself, howling “Holy shit!” as he scrambled, stumbling over his own limbs, to the top of the settee under Cassidy’s bedroom window.

Cassidy levered himself as up as he could get on his elbows. “What’s wrong?”

Jax cowered, knobby knees against his chest, in a corner of the couch. “Cassidy, what the
fuck
?!” was all he seemed able to say, but he managed to say it on a loop until Cassidy worried he was maybe having some kind of stroke. They’d been together for eight months, for one thing, and Jax hadn’t used his name once that entire time. He’d been “Pickle” since their first date, and “Mama” for the last few weeks—Cassidy wouldn’t have been completely shocked to learn that Jax didn’t even know his real name, and here Jax was whimpering it like a wild, frightened, talking dog.

Cassidy hoisted himself into a sitting position and put his hands on his belly, as had become his habit to soothe the wriggling baby. “Yeah, so, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.”

“What’s in there?” Jax pointed at Cassidy’s stomach from the balled-up safety of his corner.

Cassidy looked down at his belly. He looked at Jax and smiled. “A little Jax-baby.”

Jax put his face in his hands, shook his head, and set his mop to swaying. “No way. No way, no way, no way.”

“Come ‘ere,” Cassidy said, holding out his hand. “He’s still kicking, come ‘ere and feel him. You’re gonna be a Daddy, Jax.” He smiled. “We both are.”

Jax dropped his hands and gaped at Cassidy’s crazy-talking mouth, but made no move back toward the bed. “No way,” he said again. “No way, no way, no way.”

Cassidy started to heave himself up off the bed, but Jax pressed deeper into the back of the couch, and Cassidy plopped back down.

“You really
are
crazy,” Jax cried. “What’s
in
there?!”

Cassidy took a deep breath. It was kind of a lot, and Jax was skittish as a colt in a burning barn—he figured he’d just dump out as much as he could and worry about tidying it up afterwards.

And so he did. Trying to sound as rational, calm, and not-deranged as possible, he laid out everything Wade had told him. About acting as Elvira’s surrogate. About the propensity Scandinavian men had for extra-gastric epidemia. About the doctors in Oslo (who Wade had been
begging
him to contact). About the sac and the eggs and the mutated chromosomes and guys like Cassidy who take guys like Jax up the ass and make babies.

“There’s a vote at the end of January on logging rights that I absolutely have to be in town for,” he said, winding up, “or they’ll vote me out on my ass so fast it’ll bruise my tailbone. But right after that I’m going to Oslo. To have our baby, Jax,” he said, rubbing his bloated belly with pride for once. “And I want you to come with me.” Jax’s face held its expression of horrified disbelief long enough that he felt compelled to add, “I mean, you know, if you want to.”

Shortly Jax unfolded his legs; then he leapt about the room on them, gathering up his clothes. He moved towards the door without stopping to put anything on, covering his junk with his jeans.

Cassidy was aghast. “Jax? Please, dude, say something. Jax, you can’t go. Please, Babe, not tonight. Of all nights.”

Jax turned to look over his shoulder at Cassidy. His eyes softened, but his body was rigid and aimed right at the door. “It’s a lot, okay, Pickle?” he said. “I can see that you believe what you’re saying—shit, I felt that kick, I’m pretty sure
I
believe what you’re saying. But either you’re telling me I’m about to be a Daddy for real—because somehow I knocked up a
dude,
which is definitely not supposed to happen, and kind of a little bit unfair because it’s a risk I had no way of ever knowing I was taking—”

“I didn’t know either, Babe. …”

Jax held up a hand. “I know, Pick. But I don’t know if I’m ready for this level of crazy.”

“Jax, I’m not crazy. …”

“You know what, though? You are. One of us has to be. Either you’re straight-up unsafe insane, or you’re really a dude I jizzed a baby into telling me you want us to go ahead and welcome nature’s most fucked up miracle into our little family. And
that
would make us both crazy.”

“I know it’s a lot.”

“It’s a lot.”

“I
know
it’s a lot. I’ve just had some time with it, is all.”

“Yeah, well, I think I might need a little time with it, too.”

“But do you have to go?”

Jax turned in response and strode through the living room. Still naked, still clutching his balled-up jeans to his front, he opened the door and stepped into the hall. “I’ll call you, okay?”

Fucking hormones. Cassidy cried until morning.

TO BE fair, Jax hadn’t said
when
he would call. And there was nothing stopping Cassidy from swinging by The Road and checking in. But this baby would come whether his Daddy was on board or not. Please
let me just be fat and crazy,
Cassidy prayed with almost every breath. Cassidy was too old and had his shit too together to mope around waiting for some skinny-ass twenty-one-year-old to relearn how to dial the fucking phone. Or so he told himself as he steadfastly went about his business of getting fatter and more afraid every day.

What the fuck was he going to do with a baby? Where would it sleep? What would it eat? Never mind how in hell was he going to explain it? To his colleagues, his constituents… hell, his neighbors, for that matter? What was he going to do, find a T-shirt at the Oslo airport gift shop: “I went to Norway and all I got was this lousy baby”? And if he had to do it alone? He thought all he’d been doing was fucking around with some douchebag stoner kid for the last nine months, now Cassidy was wondering how he was going to get on with his life without Jax.

But get on he would. Some kind of way. He bought a business class ticket on Lufthansa from Denver to Frankfurt to Oslo for the day after the vote on the Peckerwood-Tabor logging bill. Peckerwood-Tabor was a life or death issue for some of the people in his district—well, some of the businesses, at least—and Cassidy knew that he, one of the more telegenic Republicans backing the starkly partisan proposal, was expected to be camera ready for the week leading up to the vote. It had fallen to his lot to lobby the House’s Democratic majority that morning, and if he skipped off to Norway any earlier, his shit would be waiting for him in a cardboard box in the marble hall outside the locked door of his former office when he got back. Christ, when
they
got back—frankly, he was surprised that all that barfing wasn’t more closely associated with these last few weeks of pregnancy. The first blissfully ignorant several had been a piece of cake in comparison.

He got his ducks in a row, though. He made appointments with Wade’s doctor and with Callie, his hair stylist. He hit the Men’s Wearhouse in Cherry Creek again, upgraded his pants and good gray jacket. (
Dude.
Sales guy had recognized Cassidy and almost lost his eyebrows shooting them skyward.
Just how many of them power lunches do you schedule every day?)
He even tried to load up on baby necessaries for his trip—a pack of onesies, maybe a blanket (
did brand new babies want toys?)
—but he just felt too weird. He clung fiercely to his hope that Wade’s doctor would laugh him into the street, even as he felt the Jax-baby in him kick, wiggle, and grow. He supposed even if a non-mutant and loveable life form actually squirted out of him in Oslo, Norway must have baby clothes. They had babies, didn’t they? They had to wear something. What was the Norwegian word for ‘Target’?

He unearthed his Norwegian passport from a water-damaged box at the bottom of his closet. He packed a suitcase. On the day of the Peckerwood-Tabor vote, he picked out a handsome tie to complement the one shirt he had that he could still button over the belly Jax had put on him and buttoned his new jumbo jacket to hide the four inches of gut the tie didn’t stretch to cover. He rehearsed his passionate speech, gelled his stylish and obedient hair, and ignored—at all costs did he ignore—the cramping, crippling pain that seized his pelvis at intervals that were not growing farther apart as the day wore on.

“It is our objective,” he told his assembled colleagues from across Colorado, “nay, our responsibility, to—
whoa
. …
”
He bent double at the waist, thinking for sure he was going to shit his pants. Cassidy reached for a glass of water, as if that was naturally what he had been stooping for. He let out a long breath, then another, and then stood straight again at the podium, talking as if he had never stopped: “not only honor, but encourage conservation efforts in the high-country forests, while creating opportunities for the lumber industry to build jobs, build homes, and build our mountain economies.” A few nods, a few claps—hell, they could have hurled rotten tomatoes, he didn’t care. If he threw this baby here on the House floor, he’d damn well better die during the delivery, was all he knew, cuz he’d be damned if he was going to try and live
that
down during his next campaign.

He would rather have shit his pants. He hadn’t taken a shit in three days. Wade had warned him that prolonged constipation was the last of the warning signs as the baby’s “escape chute”, he’d called it, expanded, beating back the rectum for unfettered access to—well, to the world. He made his speech, cast his vote, shook some hands and had his picture taken, and then bolted for 14
^th
Avenue and a cab. The driver was pissed—four blocks wasn’t much of a fare—but Cassidy didn’t dare hoof it, lest these fucking contractions—
If I
do
ever see Jax again, I’ll kill his can’t-put-on-a-condom ass, I swear I will—
drop him in the street and he be forced to shit out a baby in front of the World’s First Quizno’s.

Have you left yet?
The first peep he’d heard from Jax in three weeks chirped across his phone’s screen as he was letting himself into his condo. He laughed—almost cried—with relief.
Hallelujah!
Another opportunity for denial. He could reply—
Tomorrow
, he sent back—and pretend like getting on a plane to fucking Norway was still any kind of viable option. Like if he lived through the night he wouldn’t birth Jax’s slippery baby in a business class lavatory somewhere over—well, over wherever the hell he had to fly over to get to Frankfurt.
Tomorrow.
Was there ever a more magical word? His life was perfectly normal, everything was fine, and so, too, would tomorrow be.
Tomorrow.

Can I come?

Cassidy read this next text message a hundred times before he was able to exhale. Jax wanted to come. To Norway. To the birth, Cassidy inferred, of their son. He wanted to type
No.
He wanted to type
Hell yes!
. He wanted to type
Fuck off
and
I love you
and
You! You did this to me!

And then the devil’s own hand punched through Cassidy’s asshole and twisted and yanked at his insides until he yelped in surprise, yowled in pain. Fuck Norway. He needed Jax with him here, and he needed Jax with him
right
now. That he managed to type and send
can u come 2nite?
without blacking out was its own miracle of sorts, and he hoped fervently for others as he crawled towards the bathroom, cursing everyone he could think of from condom makers to carpet cleaners as he soaked himself in amniotic fluid.
Here comes the son,
he thought. He laughed; then he rolled his eyes.
Great, now I’m gonna have that song stuck in my head this whole time.

Jax took his sweet-ass time strolling over, but eventually Cassidy heard him knock. “Pickle?” Muffled through the door across the apartment from where Cassidy lay panting on the bathroom floor, he couldn’t make out the
word
“Pickle”, but Jax always called his name when he knocked. Like maybe he wasn’t totally confident he’d be welcome, even though Cassidy had given him a key
way
too early on. “Pickle?” again. Louder this time. Cassidy heard the
thunk
of his backpack and the
clunk
of his boots across the hardwood floor. “Cassidy?!”

Just come in here,
Cassidy willed Jax from his spot on the cool—blessedly cool—tiny-tiled bathroom floor. He would have called out, naturally, but someone had wedged his pelvis in a vise and wouldn’t lay up on the tightening. Most of his energy was devoted to crying at the moment. The condo wasn’t but 1,300 square feet. Jax would stumble in eventually.

“Oh my damn, Pickle!” As soon as Jax hit the bedroom door he spied Cassidy sprawled across the en suite, and leapt across the room. “Are you OK? What happ—wait a minute. …”

Cassidy had managed to wriggle out of most of his clothes. He’d balled up his brand new suit into the world’s lumpiest pillow, and worked his tie loose but not totally off. His huge belly heaved out from the dress shirt he was still half-wearing, his laughably engorged udders pooled at its base. The couple of buttons that had given him trouble lay scattered across the floor. Jax dropped to his knees, but when Cassidy growled at him like a cur in an alley, he backed away. “Are you okay?” he hazarded again.

“Yes,” Cassidy croaked. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Jax smiled, edged close again. Cassidy seized the nearest handful of Jax’s hair and yanked so they bonked foreheads. “Because now I can kill you.”

Jax tried not to smile. He tried to look chastened and grave and very concerned. But he hadn’t been fucked into a baby balloon, and he wasn’t having contractions—he was going to be a daddy, and he laughed and laughed.

“I can’t believe you’re ‘bout to bring me a baby,” he gushed. “Are we really doing this?”

“I don’t know what you got planned. But I’m gonna tend to this, yeah.” Cassidy grimaced against the pull of another contraction, and all but pulled the fistful of hair from Jax’s head.

“Ow ow ow ow ow,” Jax whined.

“Tell me about it.”