Work Text:
“Do we have everything?” Ellie asks, gnawing on the inside of her lip.
“We have half the damn house,” Joel says, hefting the last bag into the bed of the truck. “We’re not gonna have room for the baby if we pack anything else.”
Ellie gives Rosie a little jiggle. “You hear that, munchkin? Grandpa just threatened to leave you at home.”
“Cute,” Joel says. “Real cute. Do you wanna go over the list again?”
“No, I checked everything off it,” she admits. “I just feel like I’m forgetting something.”
“You got your meds? Lalaphant? That blanket she likes?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you’re good. If you forgot anything, we can grab it.” He opens the truck door for her and exaggerates his accent as he says, “We goin’ to the city, y’know. Why, I hears they got a big store out there called Target where you can done buy things.”
Ellie rolls her eyes as she climbs onto the the running board. “You’re acting like you don’t just sound like that.”
She spends a minute fighting with Rosie, because she’s decided her new thing is to go stiff as a board when Ellie is trying to get her in the carseat. Thankfully, she’s easily distracted with a stuffed toy, some ball thing that jingles when it’s shaken that Tommy got her, and Ellie gets her buckled in.
“Hey,” she says, stroking Rosie’s soft cheek. “We’re gonna go on an adventure, the three of us. We’re gonna be in the car for a little bit of a long time, but we’ll take lots of breaks and it’s gonna be a lot of fun. How’s that sound?”
She lets Rosie babble for a moment before hopping down and closing the door. When she gets in the passenger seat, Joel is looking at her.
“What?”
He shakes himself. “No, nothin’. Just… I like the way you talk to her. I don’t know if I’ve ever told you that.”
“It’s supposed to be good for her, like, language development shit, or whatever,” Ellie says, trying not to squirm. It still feels weird to be praised for her parenting. She glances back at the baby. “Hopefully she goes back to sleep for a bit.”
They had to wake up stupid early to squeeze in an early breakfast. She’s fully aware that the nap schedule is going to get fucked up, but it would help if Rosie slept a little more. She usually does sleep in the car, too, but Ellie isn’t sure how much that’ll happen for a six hour drive. They’re never driven this long before.
But, sure enough, almost as soon as they hit the highway, Rosie’s asleep.
“Why don’t you catch some sleep, too?” Joel asks. “I’ll wake you up if she needs you.”
“Alright.” She shrugs out of her hoodie and balls it up against the window to use as a pillow. A moment later, Joel lays his jacket over her. “You’re gonna get cold,” she says without opening her eyes. Spring in Wyoming isn’t exactly hot, and this early in the morning, it’s still chilly. Rosie’s got one of her thicker blankets over her, since she can’t wear a jacket under the carseat straps.
“I’m fine,” Joel says. “Get some sleep while you can.”
She sleeps for a couple hours, waking up when Rosie cries. Joel pulls over at the next gas station so she can crawl into the backseat and get Rosie out of the carseat for a little bit. She props the baby on her lap and gives her a pack of teething wafers to work her way through.
When Joel’s done getting coffee, she gives him the baby while she runs inside to pee.
He’s buckling Rosie back into her carseat when Ellie gets back to the truck. “You good?”
“I’m good,” she says, climbing in. She leans back, checking on Rosie. “Ready to go again, munchkin? Yeah, you are.”
Since everyone’s awake and ideally they should all stay that way for a while, Ellie puts some music on. She is determined to avoid spending her life listening to awful kid music. She’s not against throwing on a Ms. Rachel video if she just really needs to get something done, but kid music is just fucking awful.
It does mean Rosie’s favourite song is a Pearl Jam one. But that’s because Joel sings it to her when she’s really fussy. Ellie’s a bit more of an eighties girl herself, and there’s some overlap between her music and Joel’s, but Rosie really likes his old man music best.
She’ll put up with old man rock if it means she gets to watch the little kicking feet in the backseat when Rosie gets excited.
“I’ve never done this,” she says, turning the music down just slightly so Joel can hear her better.
“What’s that?” Joel asks.
“Road trips. Well, besides the one from Boston, but that doesn’t really count. I spent most of that lying in the backseat trying not to puke. Plus, you know.” The whole fleeing her home state to avoid her rapist thing. “I guess I mean like. I never went on vacations when I was a kid. The first time was when you took me to Casper.”
Despite how that ended, it was still a good trip.
“You’ll have to start thinkin’ about that,” Joel says. He gives her one of those soft looks. “You’re only sixteen. I still got a couple years of kid with you.”
“I’m seventeen in a month,” she says, laughing.
“And Rosie’s a year in three,” he replies. “You still wanna argue that?”
Her eyes immediately well up. “Okay, never mind, I’m fucking sixteen.”
Joel chuckles, passing her a napkin that was crumpled up between the cupholders. “I’m just sayin’, we can do those, if you want. Vacations and trips. Think about it.”
“I will,” Ellie promises.
Big trips with a baby seem sort of horrible to her, but she’s never even dreamed about vacations when Rosie’s an actual kid. She didn’t really know she could dream about that.
With so much driving still to do, it’s easier to just stop at a fast food place. Joel knows her McDonald’s order, so she lets him handle it while she takes Rosie into the bathroom for a diaper change and so she can pee yet again.
Joel’s managed to grab the table in the corner, somehow, and he’s already dragged over a highchair.
She passes him the disinfecting wipes from her bag to give it a good wipe. She’s pretty sure she’s not the most neurotic about things being clean, which she considers a big success with the postpartum anxiety, but they’re in a McDonald’s on the highway. God only knows how many people pass through here and touch things.
That, and carts at the grocery store. Those are just gross.
He also gives the table a wipe while she buckles Rosie into the high chair.
The food comes out fast, and a worker brings it over just a couple seconds after Ellie finishes grabbing napkins and ketchup. She’s an older lady, probably in her forties, and she immediately smiles at Rosie.
“Who’s this little cutie? What’s your name?” she asks.
Ellie reaches over and catches one kicking foot. “She’s Rosie. Say hi, munchkin.”
Rosie babbles. She’s only figured out a few words, and saying any of them on command isn’t quite happening yet.
The woman sets the tray down. “Well, it sure is nice to see a kid your age helping out with your little sister.”
“She’s mine, actually.” Ellie smiles brightly. “Got the c-section scar to show for it and everything!”
The woman is immediately flustered, and stammers something before taking off.
“You wanna see it?” Ellie calls after her.
Joel shakes his head. He goes into the diaper bag and pulls out a container of yogurt puffs, scattering a few on the table in front of Rosie. “I feel like I should scold you for that.”
Ellie grabs her nugget container. “But? That sounds like a but.” She snickers. “Joel. You sound like a butt.”
“That ain’t even funny.” He hands her a stack of napkins. “Dealt with enough of that myself. I can’t blame you for reactin’.”
“You were older, though.” Not by much, nineteen to her sixteen, but still.
“Sarah didn’t look like me,” he reminds her.
“Oh,” she says. “Shit. Sorry.”
He waves the apology away. “It starts earlier than you think. But at least no one will threaten to call the cops on you in the park, probably.”
“Jeez.” She sets a few fries to the side to cool. Rosie doesn’t really need them and Ellie doesn’t usually let her have that much salt, but she can have a couple for fun because this is a special weekend. “Well, fuck ‘em all. Rosie knows I’m her mom. Who am I, munchkin?”
“Lala,” Rosie says happily.
“Apparently I am Lalaphant today,” Ellie says. “Good to know.”
Can’t win ’em all.
“You know you can ask for them to leave it off,” she says a moment later, watching Joel pull the tomato off his burger.
“Not worth the fuss.”
She rolls her eyes, but steals it from him, blotting it off on a napkin. Then she gives it to Rosie, just to see what she’ll do with it.
Honestly, watching her kid eat is just funny sometimes. When she’s having a bad day, she pulls out the video of when she let Rosie taste a lemon for the first time.
She plays with the tomato more than anything, but does spend a few minutes gumming on it and making faces. Ellie honestly can’t tell if she likes it or not. She’s making the funniest faces, but she also keeps going back for more.
Eventually, though, she reaches her limit and Ellie wipes her hands and face with a baby wipe, picking her up before she gets really mad about it.
“You want a cover?” Joel asks.
“Nah, I’m okay.” She uses them sometimes, but Rosie runs warm and now that she’s older, she doesn’t really like things over her head. She just ends up fighting it and that’s not a good time for anyone involved.
Besides, she’s wearing a big hoodie — she might have actually stolen it from Henry, come to think of it — and they’re pretty good at this, so it only takes a second to get things going. Once Rosie’s going, she goes back to eating her nuggets.
“Can I get a milkshake before we go?” she asks Joel.
He kicks her under the table, so gently she barely feels it. “Nah, today’s the day I decide to stop feedin’ you.”
He says that like people haven’t done just that. Like milkshakes are necessary. It’s little things like that that still surprise her about him, somehow. She got a full meal, exactly what she wanted and not just what someone chose for her. She doesn’t need a milkshake. She just wants one and Joel wants her to have things she wants. Simple as that for him.
Plus he always wants her to eat more. Eat enough, really. She’s always had a tendency towards thin, but she was so scrawny for a while there that when she was hospitalized, they kept screening her for an eating disorder, until she told someone it wasn’t her choice not to eat.
At this point, she honestly isn’t sure what’s baby weight and what’s just what she’s supposed to look like. She’s sort of curious if she’ll get to keep the boobs when she’s not nursing anymore.
She and Joel finish eating before Rosie’s done, so he goes up to the counter to get her milkshake.
There’s something funny there, but she’s a little busy being milked to appreciate it.
“Should be there in a couple more hours,” Joel says when she stops fussing over Rosie and settles back into the passenger seat. He won’t even start the truck until she has her seatbelt buckled. “Dependin’ how many times we need to stop.”
“Blame her,” Ellie says. “She’s the one who spent six months bouncing on my bladder.”
“Ah, she’s too cute to blame,” Joel replies. He glances in the rear view mirror. “Ain’t that right, sweet girl?”
Ellie rolls her eyes. They’re already teaming up against her. When Rosie starts to talk and can actually ask him for things, she’s fucked.
They get to Cheyenne by two and check into the hotel right in time to be late for naptime.
“I know,” Ellie soothes, trying to bounce a screaming Rosie and unfold the pack and play at the same time. “Mama’s working on it, I swear.”
Joel comes in the door with so many bags he has to turn sides to get through, and immediately drops them all on the floor. “Here, baby, lemme give you a hand with that.”
Together, they get it set up between the two beds.
“Why don’t you lay down with her for a little bit?” Joel suggests.
She thinks about protesting. She already napped in the car this morning, but she knows that if she lays down with the baby, she’s going to doze off. She’s been working hard to finish the year with good grades. Frankly, she’s never worked this hard at school before but she wants Joel and Rosie to be proud of her. And it’s been a hell of a year to get through at all, let alone get through with good grades.
All she has left is exams, and she is tired.
Plus, since Joel’s here, she doesn’t have to stay awake long enough to get Rosie in the pack and play. He’ll watch out for them.
She’s supposed to be recording things for therapy. It’s new, trying to figure out what triggers her bad days. If it was just her, she’d say it was fucking stupid. But she has a baby relying on her to be as okay as she possibly can and a… a Joel who gives a shit about her enough to make her go to therapy. It still feels weird, writing this shit down in a little notebook so she can show it to her therapist later, but it’s been helping.
The thing is, though, she doesn’t always really realize it’s happening, or why. They explore the city a while, before going to dinner. The restaurant’s nice, though not too nice to bring a baby, and kinda crowded, so all the tables around them are full. Maybe that’s why she feels unsettled, she thinks.
She eats, but her stomach feels weird and she can’t get through her whole plate. Joel frowns, but he just gets them to box it up for her and tucks it into the hotel fridge when they get back.
“Can you watch her?” she asks, passing Rosie over to Joel. “I wanna shower. My hair smells weird.”
She only realizes it when she says it.
He leans over as he takes the baby, giving her head a sniff. “Guy behind you musta been wearin’ about a whole bottle of cologne.”
She washes her hair three times, but she swears she can still smell it. She only gets out because she doesn’t want to use all the hot water and leave Joel with none. She still feels… off.
She nurses Rosie before bed and it helps to ground her, a little. It’s sorta nice to not be doing it every three hours, especially not in the middle of the night, but she doesn’t really mind it. It’s still pretty cool that her body just makes food for her baby.
For a while after Rosie falls sleep, Ellie just holds her, breathing in the smell of milk and baby shampoo and Rosie.
“I love you so much,” she whispers and sets her down in the pack-and-play, tucking her into the sleep sack.
Joel comes out of the bathroom and sits on the side of her bed. He sets a hand on Rosie’s belly, just feeling the rise and fall of it for a moment. She knows the feeling. She does that herself all the time. Then he tugs Ellie closer, gently, and presses a kiss against her forehead.
He puts something on the TV, some home improvement show, real low to not d8sturb he baby. Ellie watches a bit, more listening to Joel make judgemental comments about the choices the people make, and she doesn’t even really notice when she starts falling asleep.
She sure as hell notices waking up, though, because she comes to grasping for the knife she hasn’t slept with under her pillow for months.
“Oh, fuck,” she gasps. They brought Rosie’s octopus nightlight and it’s still on, projecting stars across the ceiling.
“Ellie?”
Shivering, sweat-soaked, she slips out of bed, making sure she didn’t wake Rosie on her way by before crawling onto Joel’s bed.
“Hey,” he says, moving over to make room for her. “Hey, baby.”
“Joel.”
He sits up, leaning against the headboard, waiting for her to make the first move. She presses in, pressing her forehead against his shoulder.
“My hair smells.” She shudders, grabbing his shirt and clenching it in her fist. “Joel, my hair smells.”
“C’mere.” He combs his finger through her hair, gently stroking it back. “Just smells like your shampoo to me.”
“I forgot,” she says. “He only wore cologne on Sundays and I tried not to be there on Sundays. I forgot. It was the same. Sorry, god, fuck.”
“It’s okay.” He scratches lightly at her scalp. “Do you wanna wash it again?”
Yes. “No.” She struggles against the tightness in her chest for a moment. “I think I need to… to take something.”
“Okay,” he says. He brushes a kiss over the top of her head. “Give me just a minute to get them.”
Her hands are shaking so hard that when Joel hands her a glass of water to wash her pill down with, he doesn’t let go of it as she brings it to her mouth. He sets it down on the nightstand for her and goes to put her pills away.
She scoots to sit on the side of the mattress so she can look down at Rosie in the pack-and-play. She’s sleeping peacefully, and Ellie spends a moment just watching her little belly rise and fall.
“You want her?” Joel asks.
She sniffs, scrubbing the palm of her hand over one eye. “No. She’s fine. I’m fine.”
“Alright.” Joel sits next to her and cups the back of her head. “Could braid it back for ya?”
She nods and tips her head back enough that he can pull the hair back from her face. He works his fingers gently though her hair, finger-combing out a few tangles from sleeping on it. This always relaxes her, letting Joel take care of her hair, and the emergency anxiety medication doesn’t hurt. By the time he ties off her braid with a hair elastic from around his wrist, she’s stopped shaking so much.
“You need me to say it again?”
She nods again.
Joel presses another kiss against the top of her head. “I only smell you, kiddo. Just normal teenager stink.”
“Fuck you,” she says automatically, but it has her smiling, even if it’s just a bit. “You can go back to sleep, I’m okay.”
“Nah, I’m up. Thought maybe I’d go get a run in.”
“When was the last time you ran, man, the nineteen hundreds?”
“I’m gonna make you use a rotary phone when we get home,” Joel grumbles. He lays down, moving over enough to make room for her. “Why don’t you come keep me company for a little bit?”
She watches Rosie breathe for a little bit longer, than settles against Joel’s side. “We won’t be able to do this anymore when she starts to talk,” she says, frowning.
“Why’s that?” he asks, stroking her arm.
“If she tells people, they’ll think it’s weird. Other people my age don’t.”
“Does it bother you?”
She shakes her head.
“Well… my thoughts are you’ve got catchin’ up to do,” Joel says. “Sarah used to crawl in with me. More when she was little, but even sometimes when she was older.” He chuckles, soft. “She was a morning person, I ever tell you that?”
She shakes her head. Sarah stories have been more common the last couple months, but it still isn’t the easiest for him.
“Yeah, don’t know where she got that. On weekend mornings when I didn’t work, she’d come into my room to wake me up and I’d tryta pull her down under the blankets ‘cause I knew if I got her warm and cozy enough she’d go back to sleep for another hour or two.”
Ellie lifts her head. “Wait, you’ve done that to me.”
Joel pushes her back down to his shoulder. “No, I ain’t. Anyway, when Rosie gets old enough to talk, and if you still need some company at night sometimes, we’ll just gaslight her.”
“What?” she asks, laughing. She didn’t even think he knew that word.
“Yeah, if she mentions it to people, we’ll just say she’s confused because I got a new mattress and gave you my old one or before we moved, your bedroom was on the other side of the hall. Kids do that shit all the time,” he says, chuckling. “Sarah told one of her daycare teachers we didn’t have food at home because we ran out of her favourite cereal and she had to have toast instead once.”
As parenting plans go, it’s probably not the best. But it is a relief.
She doesn’t know exactly how life is going to go. One day, it’d be nice, maybe, to have like a girlfriend or even a wife, and she won’t exactly be running to Joel with nightmares then. But she’s only barely had this for a year, and she would like to keep it a little longer without worrying about what other people think.
Even though she’s a mom now, Joel makes her feel like she’s still a kid, too. In the nice way, the way that feels like she’s safe and taken care of. It’s a little weird being both, but she doesn’t mind it.
The medication she’s supposed to take for bad anxiety makes her sleepy, and she can feel it kicking in, making it so her brain isn’t just anxiety soup. She stops smelling the phantom smell of cologne. He’s dead, she’s able to remind herself. He’s dead and she’s alive.
She doesn’t believe in ghosts. Refuses to believe she’s haunted. He’s nothing anymore.
Ellie falls asleep with her head on Joel’s shoulder, listening to the two people she loves the most breathe.
The next morning, she wakes up slowly. Nine months of having a baby means she’s more used to being sleep deprived than she used to be, but her emergency anxiety medication makes her sleep heavier than she usually does. There is definitely a trail of drool down her face.
She stretches, yawns, and rolls over to see Rosie standing in the pack-and-play, having pulled herself up by the side.
“What the hell?” she says groggily. “When’d you’d learn to do that, munchkin?”
Rosie bounces in place, grinning up at her.
“Oh, shit,” Joel says from the door of the bathroom. “Don’t let her move. I gotta take a picture.”
He takes about twenty pictures, and she suspects a few of them include her, drool and bedhead and all.
Eventually, she puts an end to the photoshoot and sits up, reaching for Rosie. “C’mere, baby. We got a big day today.”
“Mama,” Rosie says happily and Ellie kisses her cheek.
Rosie calling her that on purpose is fairly new. She’s been a babbler for a while — early, which seems fitting for her daughter — but real, on purpose words are newer. Ellie really fucking loves it. She can’t wait to hear what Rosie has to say.
She changes Rosie into a clean diaper and leaves her with Joel while she deals with her own morning stuff. Rosie’s a pretty chill baby, and she could probably leave her in the pack-and-play with some toys while she peed and brushed her teeth and stuff, but Joel doesn’t mind watching her for a few minutes.
“Okay,” she says, coming out of the bathroom. “I’m hungry, so I bet someone else here is.”
“Are you hungry?” Joel asks Rosie, tickling her belly. “You’ve been such a good girl this morning. Go see your mama, hey?”
She takes the baby and settles onto her bed to feed her. She’s still in her pajamas, and no bra, which makes nursing way easier. Honestly, she’d live the no-bra life more often if she still didn’t leak sometimes. That’s annoying at home, but easy enough to deal with if she can just change, and really fucking embarrassing in public.
And bizarre, that one time it happened when she was holding Tommy and Maria’s son and he started crying, because apparently “hungry baby” sounds the same to her tits no matter whose it is. Granted, how flustered Tommy got was pretty hilarious, but it was still weird.
“Hey, kiddo, you fixin’ to order somethin’ for breakfast, or thinkin’ ‘bout going out?” Joel asks, laying stuff out at the foot of her bed to pack into the diaper bag.
“Can we go out?” she asks. “I want like. Good eggs.”
They haven’t done much in the way of eating at real restaurants, but Rosie did well in the one they went to last night. Worst case, she’ll take her outside and Joel can get their food to go.
When she’s done nursing, she strips Rosie down to her diaper and lays her on a towel.
“You’re not gonna like this,” she warns. “But you need to wear sunblock and don’t ever let anyone tell you that you don’t.”
Whoever thought of sunblock should be shot, she thinks darkly several minutes later, attempting to tug her greased-up baby back towards her. Rosie’s crying, she’s got baby sunblock all over her pajama pants, it’s a whole mess.
“Rosie Posie, why you givin’ your mama so much trouble?” Joel asks, passing her an outfit.
“Gaga,” Rosie says miserably and Ellie raises her hands.
“All yours,” she says. “You heard the lady.”
Joel gives her a look. “Ellie. That ain’t me.”
“I’m telling you, she’s said it like four times now!” She scoops Rosie up, turning her to face Joel, and leans down to whisper in her ear. “Who’s that? Who’s that there?”
“Gaga,” Rosie repeats.
“See!” Ellie kisses a coconut-scented cheek. “It was Mama, Lala, and then Gaga. And while I appreciate her music as much as the next lesbian, I don’t think she’s talking about Lady Gaga. You’re Gaga until she learns how to say P’s.”
She’d feel bad for Joel for coming in third place, but she barely squeaked into first herself. Besides, third’s pretty good. At least good enough for him to get the baby dressed while she gets herself dressed.
After, Joel braids her hair into two french braids and forces sunblock onto her, which she finds really irritating, especially when he makes her put it on the parting of her hair between her braids where her scalp shows.
You get one scalp sunburn and suddenly you gotta walk around with sunblock hair.
“Never ends,” she warns Rosie. “I’ll be putting sunblock on you when you’re thirty, you wait and see.”
With that indignity out of the way, she sets Rosie on her hip while she double checks the diaper bag.
“Lala,” Rosie says.
“I got Lalaphant,” Ellie says absently, deciding to add an extra outfit at the last minute. Three isn’t too many, right?
“Lala.”
“Right here, munchkin.” She pulls the elephant out and Rosie squeals. “Alright, fine, take it. But don’t drop her. Hold tight.”
The good thing about a nine month old is that she doesn’t realize the original Lalaphant is still at home, along with the two backup Lalaphants in Ellie’s closet. If they lose one, she would much prefer it to be one of the backup ones they bought when it became obvious it was her favourite.
Granted, she had to sleep with it for a week so it’d smell right, but she’ll take that over the heartbreak of losing it.
“And we’re off,” she says. “Like a herd of fucking turtles.”
They end up at this Elvis-themed retro diner partly because Ellie just thought that sounded wild as a concept and partly because she heard they do good breakfast. It’s pretty busy, so apparently she wasn’t the only one, but it’s nice that it’s crowded enough she doesn’t have to worry about Rosie being the loudest one in here and disturbing anyone.
Joel’s just happy they have decent coffee, but she knows he wouldn’t mind the excuse to get steak and eggs for breakfast. She’s never really gotten on that train, so she sticks with bacon and eggs.
“Anything for the little one?” the waitress asks, looking at Joel.
Ellie glances back at the menu. “Can I just get a pancake for her? And maybe a scrambled egg with no salt?”
“Sure thing, honey.” She winks at Ellie. “And I’ll bring you some extra napkins, too.”
Ellie snorts. “Thanks.”
Knowing the limits of her baby’s patience, she only puts Rosie in the high chair when she sees the waitress coming back with their food.
“Okay,” she says, fighting with the buckle. “Now you’re gonna be my big girl and not lose it, right?” She pauses, looking at Rosie sitting in the high chair. “Actually, no, never mind, be my baby a little longer. I’m not ready for a big girl.”
Joel snorts.
The waitress sets their plates down, leaving Rosie’s food in front of Ellie. “I had them make her food first so it should be cool enough for her now.”
“Oh, shit, thanks,” she says. “That’s really smart.”
Patient when it comes to food, her daughter is not.
She’s pretty sure the pancake on the menu was only supposed to be one, but Rosie’s plate has three little mini pancakes on it, perfect for her to hold and gum on. That’s nice. She doesn’t have to cut anything up while tiny hands try to grab it from her.
“It’s a good thing she’s food motivated,” Ellie observes as she shakes hot sauce over her eggs.
“Ellie,” Joel scolds lightly. “She ain’t a dog.”
She stuffs hashbrowns in her mouth. “Babies and puppies are not that different,” she says around a mouthful. “What is a crib if not a baby crate?”
She gets most of the way through her meal before Rosie decides she’s thoroughly done with the high chair. She lifts her out before she freaks out and gets up to walk her around a little, walking by a few tables where no one’s sitting yet and checking out the memorabilia.
“Elvis is the king,” she tells Rosie seriously. “You ask Grandpa, and I bet he could teach you some of his songs on the guitar.”
“Lala,” Rosie says, frowning.
“Lalaphant’s right here,” Ellie says, pulling the elephant toy free from her belt loop where she shoved it exactly thirty seconds ago when Rosie tried to throw it on the ground. “I only know a couple of Elvis songs, honestly,” she admits.
Little bit before her time, really.
“What’s that one go?” She wipes a bit of egg off Rosie’s nose. “Wise men say, only fools rush in,” she sings softly. “But I can’t help, falling in love with you.”
Their little trip around the restaurant buys her enough time that she can finish her breakfast with Rosie on her lap, although it means dodging little fingers that think her food is way more exciting.
“Munchkin, I promise you will not like straight hot sauce,” she says, wiping it off Rosie’s fingers with a napkin before she sticks them in her mouth.
They play pass the baby a bit, and she raises an eyebrow when Joel cuts a strip of steak off and gives it to Rosie for her to gum on.
“Iron,” he says. “I checked the app.”
“Sucker,” she replies.
The restaurant isn’t one of those shitty places that only has a change table in the women’s bathroom so Joel takes Rosie for a diaper change while Ellie crawls under the table and uses a handful of napkins to clean up the eggs and pancake bits her incredibly tidy child threw on the floor because even though they’re going to tip well, she feels like no one else really wants to touch food she isn’t wholly sure her kid didn’t chew before dropping.
Sometimes being a parent is so glamorous.
She sets Rosie on her hip again when they go up to pay at the front, their waitress meeting them there after a minute.
“And how was everything?” she asks.
“Fucking amazing,” Ellie answers before Joel can say something all mannered or something.
He only looks a little pained.
“Are you out of school already?” their waitress asks as she punches in their orders. “All three of mine are out now and I can never remember anymore when summer break starts.”
“Not for a few more weeks. Long weekend,” she says. “I’m seventeen, if that’s what you’re actually wondering.”
“Ellie,” Joel says.
“No, she’s right, I’m just being nosy,” the woman says with a grin. “What’s your little girl’s name?”
“She’s Rosie. And she’s nine months,” she adds, because people with kids get curious about that. “Rosie, say hi.”
Rosie immediately drops her head against Ellie’s shoulder, hiding her face.
“Since when are you shy?” she asks with a laugh. “Goofy girl.”
“And you’re all set,” the waitress says. “Thanks for coming out to see us and you have a great weekend. And honey? You’re doing a great job.”
Ellie immediately flushes red. “Oh. Thank you.”
She’s still blushing when they get back to Joel’s truck. By chance, she happens to look at the receipt before throwing it out.
“Oh… she didn’t charge us enough.”
“How’s that, baby?” Joel asks.
“She didn’t charge us for Rosie’s food. Should I go back?”
He smiles, putting his arm on the back of her seat to check behind them. “Nah. I think that was probably on purpose.”
“Why?”
“People like babies,” he says. “’Specially cute ones like the one you made. We took Sarah to… oh, I don’t even remember, but I know she must have been just about eighteen months, and she got a free balloon from the guy sellin’ ’em just ’cause.”
“Weird.” She shrugs. “Zoo time?”
“Zoo time.”
She’s never actually been to the zoo. She was supposed to go on a field trip with her class once in Boston, but her foster mother at the time refused to sign the permission slip so she couldn’t go.
Whatever she had in mind that it might look like is nothing on the reality.
“Holy shit,” she says, leaning on Joel’s shoulder to try to get a glimpse of the map he won’t let her see. “How big is this place?”
“Hundred and forty acres,” he says. “But only forty are in use.”
“How come?”
“Don’t ask me. Maybe so they have room to expand. Quit peekin’.”
“Alright, alright.” She backs off slightly. “But tell me one thing about it.”
This is his thing, this trip before it got truly hot for the summer. He’s been planning it all and not letting her see a damn thing. He wanted it to be a surprise, and she’s trying to let it be one. She’s been learning to like surprises again with him.
“One thing?” he asks. “Look up there. You see that? There’s a chairlift thing you can take up the mountain. I think Rosie’s too little for it, though.”
Ellie looks up — and up — and up.
“Fuck no,” she says immediately, shuddering. “She’s not going on that thing until she can drive.”
When she looks back at Joel, he’s giving her a puzzled look.
“What?”
“Thought you wanted to go up in a plane one day,” he says.
“Airplanes are statistically safer than cars,” she replies. “That is not an airplane, Joel. Airplanes have floors. That is a bench dangling in the air. That is insane.”
If she didn’t know better, she’d say he was laughing at her right now.
“I didn’t know you were afraid of heights,” he says.
“I’m not! I’m appropriately cautious about heights.”
And maybe they give her the willies, as Joel would say, but that’s her business.
Besides the chairlift from hell, this might be the coolest thing ever. Joel has a plan, apparently, and that plan starts with her getting to feed goats. They have a whole little goat playground thing, where they can go walk on the roof of their little building, and Ellie is sort of in love.
“You wanna know their names?” Joel asks, looking at something on his phone.
She has a goat eating out of her hand. She’s good with anything. “Sure.”
“Brie.”
She nods.
“Colby.”
Wait.
“Cojita.”
“Joel.”
“Asiago. Mozzarella. Muenster. Queso. And Ricotta.”
By the time he’s done, she’s grinning so hard her cheeks hurt. “They’re all named after cheese?”
“Yep.”
“Oh my god.”
Then he takes them to check out the penguins, which Rosie is inexplicably very suspicious of.
Ellie doesn’t get it at all. They aren’t even that big, but when they stand close to the glass to watch one swim, Rosie shies away.
“It’s just a bird, munchkin,” she says softly, moving around the stroller to crouch down next to her. “Look, he’s swimming.”
No sell.
Meanwhile, when they work their way over to the bears, she’s transfixed by them. Ducks? Still a little suspicious because apparently her kid does not like birds. Bears? Happy little leg kicks the whole time they’re watching them.
The last thing they do before lunch is check out the elephants for what feels like forever. There’s a bridge over the enclosure they walk across that’s one of the coolest things she’s ever seen. It feels like the elephants are so close she could almost reach out and touch them.
“Lala,” Rosie says happily.
Ellie snorts. “That’s a big Lalaphant.”
Joel, meanwhile, takes about nine hundred pictures. Mostly of her and Rosie, but a few of the animals, too. She’s been taking them like crazy herself.
She and Rosie split off from Joel before lunch. It’s getting warm and she wants something to drink that isn’t water, and he offers to get her something while she finds somewhere quiet to feed Rosie. The park has a bunch of shaded spots with signs saying they’re quiet areas, which she thinks would be okay for them to use, even if that’s probably not exactly what they meant when they made them.
Though she’s not feeling the least overstimulated she’s ever been, either. She doesn’t mind a couple minutes of quiet herself.
She peeks into one and sees just two people, a little girl with very pink headphones and a woman she assumes to be her mom.
She keeps her voice low when she asks, “Do you mind…?”
When she gets one of those mom looks she’s starting to recognize, she grabs one of the other benches. Once she gets Rosie tucked under her shirt, she looks around, giving the little girl across from her a wave. Kids, she’s found, tend to be the least weird about her breastfeeding in public.
The little girl gets up and walks over to them, climbing onto the bench next to her.
“Nicole,” her mom hisses.
Ellie smiles, mouths, It’s okay.
Nicole hands her a tangle fidget.
“Thank you,” she whispers. “I love these things. My therapist has a ton of these in her office.”
She doesn’t as a rule talk a lot about therapy, but she doesn’t think the five year old will rat her out.
Her new little friend takes her backpack off and pulls out a pack of crayons and a colouring book. She turns her backpack over to use as a desk, spreading the book open. Then she hands Ellie a crayon.
“Can I colour?” she asks, keeping her voice soft. “Where do I put my green?”
Nicole points at the trees.
“Sound good,” she says, and does her absolute best to colour the tops of the trees without jiggling Rosie too much. Honestly, seven out of ten activity to do while nursing. She’s using her wrist more than you’re really supposed to when you’re drawing, but it’s better than that time she tried to make a grilled cheese while nursing and burnt the shit out of it, setting off both the smoke detector and the baby and making herself cry because she ruined her sandwich.
They finish two pictures by the time Rosie’s done, and Ellie has to hand back her crayons.
“Sorry, we have to go for lunch,” she says. “But thank you for letting me colour.”
She signs the thank you without thinking, something she’s been trying to do more with Rosie. She thinks baby sign is a cool idea in general, and she wants her to be able to talk to Sam when she’s older, but she only knows a little bit of ASL, mostly just the basics that Henry and Sam have taught her.
Nicole gives her a thumbs up and starts on another picture. Ellie chuckles. Sam does that, too. Henry does the more formal one for you’re welcome, but Sam always goes with thumbs up. Kids.
She buckles Rosie back into her stroller and puts her hat back on for the sixth time, at least. She’s using the sunshade on the stroller, too, but she wants Rosie to get used to the damn hat.
“Thank you,” Nicole’s mom says.
Ellie waves her off. “Ah, she made this a lot less boring. Have a good one.”
Joel got a coffee and got her a frozen drink that she chugs half of almost immediately and then fights off the brain freeze. Nursing makes her so fucking thirsty, still. She’s been drinking water, but it gets boring and a bit of a sugar hit immediately perks her up enough that she’s not whiny and droopy waiting for the shuttle to take them back to where the restaurants are.
Apparently the zoo has two restaurants basically right next to each other. One of them is a fancy pizza place where all the pizzas have complicated, gourmet toppings and there’s like wine and beer and stuff. The other has chicken tenders.
Rosie’s been good in restaurants, but Ellie isn’t pushing her luck.
Plus she likes chicken tenders.
She takes herself and Rosie to the bathroom while Joel gets them food. She swears, she’s peed in every fucking bathroom this zoo has.
By the time she gets back to their table, their food is done and Joel has worked some kind of little miracle. There’s salads on the menu, but not a salad bar or anything. Yet somehow he’s managed to convince them to give him a little bowl of cucumber slices, halved cherry tomatoes, and some kind of shredded chicken.
“Whatever you paid for that, it’s way too much,” she says.
The food is, expectedly, kind of overpriced. She was just gonna give Rosie a couple fries and a handful of whatever snacks she has in the diaper bag.
He also got her the bigger meal, which wasn’t what she asked for and cost more.
“It’s worth it,” he says. “Don’t worry about it.”
“She’s not even gonna eat all this,” she says.
“That’s fine. Stop fussin’.”
She’ll admit Rosie does pretty well on her little lunch, although missing her morning nap means she does fully conks out with a cucumber slice still in one hand.
Joel smiles when he sees it and lifts her out of the high chair, wiping her hands with a napkin with a practiced ease Ellie’s still a little jealous of. She leans over and grabs him a thin blanket out of the diaper bag. The restaurant is air conditioned and after being outside all morning on a warm day, she doesn’t want the baby getting cold.
That, and a little tuck of it over her head might keep her sleeping longer.
She rouses when Ellie takes her to get her back into the stroller, a little annoyed that they’re moving her around, but she settles when Ellie gives her Lalaphant.
A worker stops by their table. They don’t really have waitstaff in this place, but there are people cleaning the tables every time someone leaves.
“Can I get these out of your way?” he asks, gesturing at their empty dishes.
Joel agrees, thanking him.
“Wow,” the guy says, stacking their plates together, his voice doing that thing people do when they talk to babies. “Don’t you look like your big sister?”
Again?
“I’m her mom, actually,” she says, a little less nicely than Joel would probably like.
The guy looks at her, looks at Rosie, and then looks at Joel and is visibly confused. Joel passes as white, mostly, Ellie is white as hell, and Rosie is pretty clearly mixed. If Rosie didn’t look so much like her, they’d look like they were kidnapping her.
Before he can go down an extremely wrong path, Ellie sighs and holds her hand over her head, pointing a finger down at herself. “Mother.” She does the same thing to Rosie. Rosie tilts her head back to look up at her hand. “Daughter.” At Joel. “Grandfather.” Back at Rosie. “Granddaughter.”
The guys stutters something and beats a hasty retreat.
Ellie flops dramatically across the table. “Eight months of pregnancy and a c-section and no one thinks she looks enough like me to be mine. That’s so unfair.”
Joel chuckles. “Your own fault for still lookin’ twelve.”
“Eat a dick,” she says and sits up. “Let’s blow this popsicle stand.”
Already halfway through picking up the diaper bag, Joel stares at her. “How much time you been spendin’ with Tommy?”
“Too fucking much.”
They take things slower after lunch. She won’t ever admit it, but babies? Really fucking exhausting. And she maybe doesn’t have as much stamina as she used to. Joel seems to have realised that because it seems he’s planned fewer things. Between exhibits, though, she glances at him.
“Can I ask you something?” she asks.
“Can I stop you?” he teases.
“If you want me to,” she says seriously. He nods. “Do you ever go back to Texas?”
She’s surprised him, she can tell, and she really didn’t mean to. It’s just something she’s been thinking about, with travel on her mind.
“Oh, uh. Not really, no,” he says. “Why do you ask?”
She shrugs, steering the stroller around a group of people who decided the middle of the pathway was a great place to stop and talk. “You’ve never said if you have family or anything back there.”
“Some distant cousins.” He runs his hand over his hair. “We were never close, honestly. I haven’t been back since… well, since.”
“I, um. My mom’s buried in Boston. I’ve never — well, Marlene never told me where when I was a kid and I didn’t know how to look it up, so I’ve never been.” And maybe she was a little afraid to go alone. “Just…”
“Do you wanna go?” Joel asks, soft, no pressure.
Despite that, her entire body shudders and her fingers simultaneously go both cold and sweaty on the stroller handle. In theory, Boston is safe. It’s just a city now. David has been dead for four months. He’s not there. She wouldn’t need to look over her shoulder constantly for fear of him finding her.
But the idea of going back makes her skin crawl.
“Not right now,” she manages. “I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s alright,” Joel says. “I guess… you’re askin’ if I would want to go visit Sarah?”
She nods.
“I don’t know,” he says. He reaches for her, letting his hand rest on her back as they walk. “Never really thought about it before.”
“It’s just…” She stares at the path ahead, not quite ready to look at Joel. “You’re kind of part of Rosie’s story now, you know? Like her heritage and shit. So. I kinda want her to know about you. So I was just wondering.”
“Hey, c’mere.” He grabs the stroller and pulls them over to the side, because they’re not the kind of assholes that obliviously stand where everyone else needs to walk.
“Hm?”
He tugs gently on her arm until she turns and he can pull her in for a quick hug, pressing a kiss against the top of her head.
“What’s that for?” she asks.
“Does it gotta be for somethin’?”
She supposes not. It’s not like she has a reason every time she kisses Rosie’s cheek or head or hands, besides that she wants to.
While they’re stopped, she pulls back the canopy on the stroller and checks on Rosie — who is fast asleep again.
“Oh,” she says, chuckling. “I think we might be about done for the day.”
“One more thing.”
She grins. “Man, she’s out cold. I don’t think she’s gonna get much out of the rest of the day.”
“You will.” He puts his hand back on her back and gives her a little nudge. “Do you trust me?”
With her life and her kid and her heart.
After that, the rest of her day is nothing.
She spends the walk trying to guess what animal is left to see, making increasingly outlandish guesses as they go. Probably the answer isn’t actually Devils Hole pupfish, but it’s funny and it means she can explain what those are to Joel, which is half the fun. He pretends to be annoyed, but he always listens to her and asks questions so she keeps talking.
“—and they’ve tried taking them out of the cave to see if they can live somewhere else, but they always die and — oh, holy shit.”
She can see why Joel saved this for last.
“You wanna go up and check them out closer?” he asks.
“Hell yeah.”
They get to go up onto a raised walkway that goes around the giraffe enclosure, that puts them high enough up that they’re practically eye level with them. Their heads stick right over the edge of the railing.
“Two hundred giraffes have been born here,” Joel says. “They have a whole conservation program.”
She turns to grin at him. “Did you study?”
“I may have read the Wikipedia page,” he admits. “Do you want to feed them?”
“So fucking much.”
It costs extra. She’s not, like, fucking Quasimodo where she spent her life in a tower and only came out at night or whatever. She has done stuff, like when her class got to go to the movies for free. But popcorn cost extra and her foster family wouldn’t give her money for that, so she didn’t get anything. A foster family once took her to the fair and they gave her the same ride tickets as their kids, but they wouldn’t pay for games or anything. On field trips, when everyone else got money to buy lunch, she’d have a sandwich or skip eating altogether if it was a foster home where they expected her to get the free lunch at school and didn’t bother to care if she ate during the day.
She gets that money can be tight. And Joel’s not mega rich or anything. It’s just that… well, he makes her a priority. He once offered to give her the money he got from the state for fostering her. She refused, but she’s not entirely sure he still wasn’t secretly putting it in an account somewhere.
He just wants her to have the things that cost extra, too, is what it boils down to.
“Here,” he says a moment later, handing her a bundle of lettuce. “Go on.”
When she hesitates, unsure what to do, he cups her hand and stretches both their arms out over the railing. A giraffe wanders closer and Ellie goes stiff with anticipation.
“Breathe, kiddo,” Joel reminds her.
“I am. Don’t scare it,” she whispers.
“I won’t. It’s alright.”
The giraffe takes the lettuce right out of her hand, tongue tickling her palm.
She giggles. “Hey, there.”
Joel keeps handing her more lettuce, a truly ridiculous amount. She’s pretty sure she’s hogging the giraffe and other people are probably getting annoyed, but she doesn’t give a shit. Besides, like, her kid, this might be the best thing that’s ever happened to her.
She beams at Joel. “So fucking cool.”
Eventually, Joel’s lettuce stock finally runs out and the giraffe wanders away to look for more treats. She stays watching them for a long time.
“Thanks,” she says after a moment, leaning against Joel’s side.
They don’t last too much longer after that. Apparently the very last thing Joel wants to do is take her to the gift shop. She’s a little stunned, but after a couple nudges, she picks a few souvenirs. A cool ass T-shirt for herself, a stuffed giraffe for Rosie. She even picks out a couple things for Maria and Tommy and Benji.
Then, when she pretends not to see Joel sneak extra stuff onto the counter, after they’ve checked out, she pretends she forgot something inside and runs back in to grab the mug she saw for him. She gets them to wrap it up and stashes it in the diaper bag before heading back outside.
In a desperate attempt to get Rosie’s naps even close to back on schedule, she ends up giving her a bath when they get back to the hotel room. They brought a few bath toys and she really likes the bath, so it keeps her awake for a little while.
Plus they are both shockingly dirty. Ellie seriously does not know how that happened, considering she’s gone through probably half a pack of wipes today alone, but when she takes Rosie’s socks off, there is an entire goldfish cracker crushed in one and that’s probably the least gross of it. As for herself, she’s a little sweaty and dusty and just sort of grody, so she leaves Rosie with Joel and grabs a quick shower.
She comes back into the hotel room to find Joel walking with a very annoyed baby.
“Oh, munchkin,” she says, taking her. “I know, we’re so mean keeping you awake. But if you sleep all day, you’ll be awake all night and nobody wants that.”
Almost as soon as she’s holding her, though, Rosie’s fussing changes a little and she flops against Ellie, tugging on the neck of her shirt.
“I’m gonna feed her,” she says to Joel. “Shower’s yours if you want it.”
She makes the mistake of sitting on the bed to nurse. Between the hormone shit that happens and the sound of the water running in the other room, Ellie immediately starts getting sleepy. The warm, happy baby smelling like baby shampoo in a clean onsie doesn’t help, either. She’s not even sure how awake Rosie is anymore. She complains as usual when Ellie makes her switch sides, but it’s half-hearted at best.
Joel comes out of the bathroom in a pair of sweatpants, absently rubbing his hair with a towel. “Forgot a shirt,” he says when she raises an eyebrow at him.
That actually wasn’t what she meant, though. Joel doesn’t really get shirtless around her a lot, even though she knows he likes to sleep that way sometimes. It doesn’t really bother her, because it’s Joel, but it makes her feel safe because he worries about it. He’s so careful to never make her uncomfortable.
But what she was actually looking at is the fact that Joel is sunburnt.
Knowing him and how his skin tends to work, it’ll probably fade to tan by tomorrow, but she’s going to gloat about it as long as it lasts. Next time, he’s getting sunblocked too. She’s gonna guilt him about setting a bad example for the baby.
“Want some aloe?” she asks.
“It ain’t all that,” he grumbles.
“Uh huh.”
She yawns, setting an already-asleep Rosie in the pack-and-play. “Why am I so tired?”
“Well, you did spend most of the day climbin’ a mountain,” Joel says reasonably. He pulls a shirt out of his suitcase and tugs it over his head. “Why don’t you get some sleep while the baby’s down?”
She wants to argue, but the sheets are cool and soft and she’s already slumping down. She gives a long stretch. “Mmkay.”
A moment later, Joel sits on the side of her bed, stroking his hand over her damp hair. “If you’re not up for goin’ out to dinner later, we could order somethin’. Maybe find a movie to watch.”
“Pizza,” she says. They have another day in Cheyenne, and Joel has more planned tomorrow. She really wants to check out one of the museums, so they’ll probably do that, but he’s been adamant she be surprised about this trip and, well, the zoo worked out pretty well. She’s gonna let him do this.
Either way, though, she wouldn’t mind chilling in the hotel room for the rest of the day. She doesn’t want to be too wiped to enjoy tomorrow.
“Sure,” he agrees. “I’ll even let you pick whatever weird toppings you want.”
She smiles, a little hidden by the pillow. “You’re stuck with me and my weird pizza forever.”
Because that’s what this trip is to celebrate. Part of it is an early birthday trip, but it’s also to celebrate the adoption being finalized. In the eyes of the law, she belongs to Joel forever.
“Thank God,” Joel says and she ducks her head a little, overwhelmed.
He’s right, though. Thank god.