I feel like my whole body turns to jello, right there and then. One second I’m a person and the next I’m a melting pile of goop, and I don’t even entirely understand why.
I wasn’t expecting it. I’ve seen babies before, even tiny ones, but this picture in particular has activated some deep, instinctual part of my brain that I didn’t know was there.
“Oh my God, Caleb,” I whisper. “He’s adorable.”
I tell myself it’s just the baby. It’s a very cute baby, and my over-the-top reaction has nothing at all to do with the person holding the baby.
“Yeah, he’s pretty cool,” he says, looking down at his phone indulgently. “We hung out for a little while. Here, you can take that.”
He hands me the phone, then goes back to putting papers into a briefcase.
“Are there more?” I ask, suddenly awkward.
People don’t hand other people their phones. Everyone’s got something they don’t want found — dating apps, naked pictures, a really embarrassing playlist.
I wonder if Caleb has those things. If he just handed me his phone, does he want me to see them? Does he not mind if I see them? Has he simply never taken a naked selfie?
Sometimes a phone is just a phone, I remind myself.
“I took about a hundred,” he says, grabbing another stack. “You can just flip through.”
I’m tentative at first, but I go ahead and look through the pictures, shot after shot of various people holding the baby, who seems to be mostly asleep.
However, one thing becomes clear very quickly: Caleb’s brothers are all hot. There are four of them, they all held this baby, and all five of them are handsome beyond reason.
It’s astonishing, really.
“That’s Seth,” he says, his voice rumbling over my shoulder. “and then that’s Levi lurking over in the corner.”
I wouldn’t say that Levi is lurking. I’d say that he’s standing normally, hands in his pockets, attractively looking toward something off-camera.
“What’s his name?” I ask, still staring at the picture.
“The baby?”
I shoot Caleb a look over my shoulder.
“No, this year’s Nobel Prize winner,” I say. “Yes, the baby.”
He’s laughing at himself, the strap of his briefcase over his shoulder, a rakish smile on his face.
“Thomas,” he says.
I look back at Thomas, this time in his dad’s arms.
“That feels like a big name for a small baby,” I say.
Caleb’s quiet for a moment, and I wonder if I’ve said the wrong thing again.
“He’s named after our dad,” he says, his voice quiet as he looks at the picture of his brother and his nephew that I’m still holding.
It hits me like a bolt from the blue: his father is dead.
I look at the tiny, scrunchy face in the picture and it all falls into place. We talked for four hours straight, and he didn’t mention his father once. He’s not in any of these pictures. The way he reacted when I told him about my mom, holding me without saying a word, letting me cry into his shirt in a gas station parking lot. Suddenly, it all adds up.
“I’m so sorry,” I say, the words out before I think to get confirmation.
“About the name?” he teases, voice still soft, his eyes still on the picture. “It’s not so bad.”
“No,” I say, flustered, wondering if I just read this all wrong, if I’m being really weird for no reason. “It’s a good name, I mean about... aren’t babies usually named after...”
Don’t say dead people. Do not say dead people.
He turns and looks at me, a sudden realization coming over his face when he sees the look on mine.
“The dead?” he asks, eyebrows raised.
“That’s what I’m sorry about, not the name,” I say, still floundering. “Unless he’s alive and I’ve really messed up my social cues, which does definitely happen sometimes, so maybe your dad is alive and really excited and not in any of the pictures for some reason? It’s a good name. I like it. Strong. Solid.”
Stop. Talking.
“I thought I’d mentioned it,” he says, and runs one hand through his hair, a hint of an embarrassed smile on his face. “Yeah, he’s dead. Car crash. I was ten.”
I gasp, one hand over my mouth. It’s more dramatic than I mean to be but I can’t help it.
“That’s so young,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
“Thanks,” he says, simply, then reaches for his phone, slides it back into his pocket. “I should get going, I think everyone else has gone home.”
“Actually, wait,” I say, reaching into my bag. “One more thing.”Chapter Twenty-ThreeCalebI never know how to talk about my father. All these years and I’ve never quite understood how people think I should react about it. Do they expect me to gnash my teeth and weep? Open my heart to them about how much it sucked to lose my father as a kid?
Am I supposed to say nah, it’s fine, everything is perfect now?