Blankets and footballs and books and a bassinet with beautifully carved wood that I suspected Logan and Paige spent a fortune on. It would fit perfectly into my old bedroom. But the thing that made me lose it, sitting on the floor by our ten-foot Christmas tree, was the small box that bore marks of being shipped from the UK. Jude hadn’t warned me he was sending anything, but when I sliced open the packing tape and folded back the white tissue paper, I saw the impossibly tiny Shepperton jersey bearing his number, and underneath it, a tiny board book about soccer. I cried quietly while Emmett laid his head on my shoulder and rubbed my back.
That was the first text between us since I’d returned home that gave me the first kindling of hope that we could get through this in a good place.
Me: Thank you for the present. It’s perfect (a little big this year, but that’s okay)
Jude: Whenever it fits, I can’t wait to see. How was your day today?
Me: Good. More chaotic than usual this year. Molly is home with Noah, and Washington doesn’t play this Christmas Day, so they could be home. Claire and Bauer were here too. Tomorrow they’ll be with his family, though. What about you?
Jude: Not quite chaotic, but Rebecca forced me to her house for dinner. Her husband is a Man City fan, so it was a rocky start.
Me: LOL. Well, we can’t all be perfect.
Me: It’s late for you. Don’t you play tomorrow?
Jude: If I play like rubbish again, you’ll know why then. I best try to sleep. Merry Christmas, Lia.
Me: Merry Christmas, Jude.
I dreamed of him that night for the first time since being Stateside. Waking alone, in the middle of my old bed, in my old room, was disconcerting. And the hazy memories of how he’d kissed me, dirty and deep, underneath the Christmas tree lingered for days, a strange ache that mixed into finding a new normal with my family.
But as week two slipped into week three, a quiet lull between holidays spent playing games and watching the Wolves beat Green Bay, watching Shepperton tie against Leeds United 2-2, the new year came and went with very little fanfare, considering I found myself sound asleep by ten on New Year’s Eve, curled up underneath the bright purple comforter that I’d used in high school.
That was the first time I’d mentioned where I might live after the baby was born.
“Why not just redecorate the whole room?” Paige had asked. “And you know you can turn Molly’s old room into a nursery once the baby is out of the bassinet.”
Logan glanced carefully at my face when I didn’t respond as we’d eaten dinner that night.
I don’t know if I can do this.
The thought came and went quick and quiet. But that was the thing. I would not let those thoughts escape anymore. That was my promise to myself. I’d grab them by the tail and yank them back, so I could take the time to figure that out.
That night, I’d answered her diplomatically since I didn’t have an answer yet. “I don’t know if that makes sense since I’m not sure what my long-term plans are, but I’ll think about it.”
And just like she had that night, when I mentioned it again now, fully entrenched in week four with all of us back at work and school now that the holidays were behind us, Paige’s hands froze in the middle of what she was doing. It took her a long moment to make eye contact with me.
“Do you want to move out?” she asked.
I took another bite of apple and snagged a stool by the island, thinking carefully as she refilled her coffee. As it was most every morning, it was just me and Paige at the house. Logan was gone to the Wolves practice facility, and once Emmett went to school, it was just the two of us.
“I don’t know.”
She nodded and took a seat across from me. “I think … I think I just assumed you’d want to be here to have help with the baby. And I mean, it’s not like we don’t have the space.”
They did, in spades. It was the house that Logan bought when Brooke first dropped us all on his doorstep, metaphorically. He found the five-bedroom house in the suburbs and bought it the same day, a place we could grow into and make our own. And it bore the strong handprint of our family in the way we’d molded it to fit whatever phase of life we were in. It was so much more than four walls and a roof; it represented a second chance for all of us in different ways.
“I know,” I told her. My thumb tapped on the granite, and I fought the impulse to change the subject and see if she wanted to go shopping or go for a walk or go work out. “But I’m almost twenty-three, Paige. I’m in my last semester of school. And … and I think I need to consider the fact that just because I can live here after the baby’s born doesn’t mean I should.”
She sighed. “I hate when you guys make sense about shit like this.”
“I know you do,” I answered with a smile. “You’d have us all here forever if you could.”
“Hell yeah, I would. What does it say about me that the crazier this house is, the more at peace I feel?”
Paige and I were so similar, and it was the kind of shared trait that made my heart grow about two sizes because even though there wasn’t a shred of shared DNA between us, and I was practically stepping into my teen years when she married Logan, she held a piece of my soul. Just like I held a piece of hers.
“I think it says we need to find something to do today,” I told her. “I haven’t made up my mind yet.”
“Deal.” Her face lit up. “Can we start working on your registry?”
“Isn’t my shower supposed to be like, a month before I give birth?”
“What’s your point?”
I laughed. “Let’s circle back to that next month, okay?”
That conversation helped bridge a previously untouched gap in my relationship with Jude in our weekly phone call.
Paige had left to run errands, so I sat in the family room under a blanket with my phone on my lap and Jude on speaker.
“Is it stupid to move out if I have a free place to live?” I asked him.
He hummed. “Not stupid, no.”
There was a slight hesitation in his words that had me smiling. “But …”
“But,” he said, “I think I’d want my own space. If it were me. But I’ve been on my own since I was seventeen, so I might not be a good person to help you make that decision.”
“Seventeen?”
“Mm-hmm. Moved to Germany to play in the Bundesliga, which is their national league. That’s where I got my start.”
I shook my head. “That’s so young to be thrown into a world like that. I can’t even imagine.”
“I learned a lot,” he said ruefully. “On and off the pitch. And for a kid who came from a bloody sheep farm, it was nothing I could’ve prepared myself for.”
My fingers twisted the edge of the blanket. “Is that when your parents … started disapproving?”
Jude let out a slow breath, and I found myself holding mine before he answered. “They started a few years earlier than that, when I took a job outside of the farm to make enough money to keep myself in the youth clubs.” Jude went quiet, and I held my breath, waiting for anything else he might give me. “My dad, especially. I was the eldest son, yeah? And it was my job to take over the farm, just as he’d done with his own father. But I think … I think they saw how serious I was, working myself to the bone to play a game they didn’t understand.”
Relief was sweet and unhurried as I listened to him talk about his time in Germany. What he loved about the independence he found, and what he didn’t. He asked me, in a slight subject change, about living with Claire in college and what that had been like. He asked me about Finn, who I’d only managed to see a couple of times since I moved back, busy, busy boy that he was.
“What do they all say?” Jude asked when we fell quiet. Most of our weekly calls lasted around thirty to forty minutes, but I’d been on the phone with him for over an hour. “Do they think you should move out?”
“Logan and Paige want me to stay. Probably because they’ll worry less. Claire isn’t saying one way or the other, but … I know what she’s thinking.”
“Twin thing,” he teased.
“Sometimes. I can’t like, read her thoughts, but it’s like hearing your neighbors talk through thin walls. You get impressions, you know? And I get the sense she thinks it would be good for me to live on my own.” I spread my hands over my belly. “So, your vote is to move out?”
“For whatever it’s worth,” he murmured, “yes, that’s my vote. But I’ll support whatever you choose.”
The gloomy days of January, only a few of them cold enough for snow to stick on the ground, gave way to slightly warmer, just as gloomy days in February. Lia and I turned twenty-three, and split a giant platter of pink and white cupcakes after a family dinner. My class, considering it was one of the last before I finished my program, felt like it was the least of my stresses. I read and wrote and had discussions with small groups. My family, all busy with their own lives, found time to carve out pockets with me when possible.
Molly traveled about half the month, and when she was back, she always took me out for time with just the two of us, considering she’d made it her mission to find me the best scone in the greater Seattle area.
I’d taken to texting Jude updates amid our search.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.