"Hey, I'm glad you made it!" Phoebe smiled through the awkwardness. "No trouble finding the place?"
The place in question was a 'Mexican' food truck on the edge of town, run by a middle aged white guy who could 'fix up a mess of keserdillers', and who kept a notice in the window asserting that the truck was sovereign territory operating under maritime law. Darren inhaled deeply, pleasantly surprised at the scent drifting through the early autumn night.
"No, no trouble." He sat down opposite her. "Not much out this way, especially this late. I just looked for the lights." He smiled. "You look beautiful tonight."
Darren's heart beat a little faster as she smiled and blushed. He tried to keep his eyes on her face, but when her eyes dropped to her hands his eyes fell to her new curves. He dragged them back up with an effort and tried to keep the conversation going.
They stumbled. He tried again. "How've you been since Valentine's? I thought about reaching out, but..."
She nodded. "Yeah, my therapist said I should put it off. I know why I needed to, but it's still hard."
Unbidden, images of a distant night bubbled into his head. A promising third date at a dinner party with a friend of a friend. A toast. A timeless dream afterwards of debauchery and perversion. Men tied to chairs. Women tied to tables and vibrators. Himself in the middle of it somehow. A gleeful face watching him do her bidding. Paramedics and police and the feeling of horror as sobriety returned in time for him to find himself wrapped in a space blanket sitting on the back bumper of a firetruck.
"It doesn't feel like healing, does it?"
He looked up at her. "What? How did you-?"
She tapped her temple. "I was there too, you know."
He paused, almost holding his breath before speaking again. "No, it doesn't."
"Darren, I know what happened to us wasn't right. We spent almost a week under the influence of god knows what doing... All kinds of stuff. But it still calls to me. It felt- it feels right." She cringed slightly. "Well... most of it. Definitely some of it."
He took her hand in his. "It's hard to tell, isn't it? What you actually want versus ought to want?" He took a steadying breath. "I tried to give all the girls space, but I can't stop myself from wanting to go back to it." That Cheshire cat grin floated before his mind's eye, and he cringed at the memory of abject helplessness it brought with it. "...some of it."
A lull in the conversation brought their eyes together. His breath caught in his throat as butterflies filled his stomach. He'd somehow forgotten this simpler feeling of non-sexual affection. No, he thought. That's not right. I just thought I'd never feel it again.
She licked her lips. "Do you want to- to feel him?" Her hand caressed her bump. "I just- it feels like we ought to, um..."
Without hesitation, he got down on one knee to better hold her, and his son to be. His hands felt a little shaky, but he leaned in and gently placed his ear against her. In a quiet moment between the noise of passing night traffic, he heard the faintest drum of a heartbeat.
As the wonder of the moment washed over him, a tiny bump kicked him in the cheek.
He jumped back, and her laughter rang out like bells. He laughed too, the tension of the night broken by beauty and wonder and a very small foot.
Phoebe recovered the power of speech first. "Oh! Young man, you can't talk to your dad that way!"
His heart skipped a beat. "Dad? You'd let me- you want me in his life?"
Her laughter stopped, and after a beat she sat up straighter to look him in the eye. "I know it's gonna be, well, hard to explain." She laid her hands over his, still cradling her belly. "He's gonna have a bunch of brothers and sisters born around the same time, maybe they'll even have the same birthday, but they should know each other, right?"
He grinned, wiping away tears he hadn't noticed crying. "Yeah, I hope the other moms are on the same page. You and I at least knew each other a little beforehand. I know we get along already."
She looked at him strangely. "I mean, I'd expect their boyfriends and husbands would be a harder sell. They're gonna have to see you with their wives again, if we go that route."
"Oh, uh, I wouldn't worry about that." He scratched the back of his head. "We... They've already been in touch." He grinned sheepishly. "You and I aren't the only ones who miss some of that week."
A long pause followed as he realized the "Support group" of him and the men he'd cuckolded had a mirror image on the other side of the gender gap. He imagined a crowd of women, variously pregnant and wishing they were pregnant, asking the same questions he'd been hearing for months. 'Do you think he's mad? Do you think she still loves me? How do I show him I love him?' The long overdue make-up sex was going to be loud enough to get the cops called.
He blinked away the vision. None of that's my problem yet, he thought. I don't need to talk to anyone tonight.
"Hold on, this is going a little too fast." Darren stood a slightly too quickly to be graceful. "Any dietary restrictions?"
She shook her head, and he strolled to the food truck with a spring in his step that had been missing for most of a year. He returned five minutes later ten dollars poorer and three 'keserdillers' richer. He smiled at her confused look, and said "Let's start over." He set the paper plates on the table with all the flair he could muster, turned to her and said. "Phoebe! It's great to see you!" He held out his arms for a hug. "How've you been?"
She grinned, giddy as a school girl, and practically fell into his arms. She pressed her face into the fabric of his shirt and took a deep breath. "I've been okay, but I'm doing much better tonight."
They talked into the night, making up for lost time. Making little mistakes and making them better and making plans and making connections and laughing at just how easy it was to be in a complicated kind of love.