Exit Route
She had never been much of a singer, and lullabies definitely weren't her area of expertise. Maybe that was the problem here. Lullabies were supposed to have lyrics about sheep and moons and sleeping princes, and she couldn't for the life of her think of a single one of them, let alone come up with her own. Her mother really hadn't been the type to sing her to sleep. So once again, she resorted to reproducing whatever she had heard on the radio that day, thankful that Noah was too young to really understand, and even more thankful that her drive home hadn't been filled with senseless, swearword-filled sexism. "Ooh skies are black and blue, I'm thinking about you, here in the calm after the storm." It had become something of a bedtime ritual for them, a secret routine shared only by the two of them in those precious minutes between cuddling and sleep. Rituals were a good thing, something that provided stability and predictability for herself as much as her foster son. They also tended to work. "I can't keep on chasing what I can't be for you…"
Except when they didn't. She kept walking up and down the dimly lit room with Noah resting against her shoulder, rubbing his back as he kept fussing, squirming in her arms and tugging at her necklace. From his whininess, she knew he was tired and yet, any time she actually tried to put him down, he began to cry in a heart-wrenching way. She didn't know what it was –the heat, perhaps?- but she was starting to grow restless herself, which she knew wasn't helping matters. After two months, she had attuned to his signals of distress, could distinguish between different types of crying, and still, she couldn't work out what was going on here. He couldn't be hungry, didn't seem to be in any kind of physical pain or discomfort, she had just changed him and they had had a pleasant playtime earlier so he should be exhausted. It got to her if he cried when she put him down, filling her with an instant urge to do anything to soothe him. She supposed that was natural, but it always made her worry that he felt abandoned by her. Maybe he could sense her worrying?
No, she really needed to stop overinterpreting his behaviour and projecting her own guilt at leaving him with the sitter on him. It was just that Mari-Liis seemed to have such an easy time getting him to sleep, which was probably a good thing, but she still had mixed feelings about leaving Noah with her at all. Mari-Liis was perfect in every sense: patient, reliable, flexible even at the most spontaneous of times or unreasonable of hours, and didn't have a need to ask too many questions or lecture Olivia on infant care. Most importantly, she had come with impeccable references and plenty of child care experience, seemed interested in more of a long-term nannying job and adored Noah, who was happy to stay with her. The graduate student from Estonia had come to the U.S. as an au pair a few years ago, had stayed on in higher education and was grateful for work opportunities within the remit of her visa. Olivia had a good feeling that things would work out well with her as she transitioned back into working more, but still, it was hard to leave Noah, knowing that it was Mari-Liis who would be holding him, talking to him, sometimes putting him to bed. Would she be able to do this on her own, juggling a baby and work without neglecting him? She didn't really have much choice in the matter. She needed to work –but she could find a different, more settled job with fewer hours, a small voice in her head said- and she certainly couldn't, wouldn't, give up the little boy, her foster son.
She touched his head, feeling the soft fuzz of brown hair. He smelled clean, of baby oil bath and warmth. "Ooh la-la-la-la-la, here in the calm after the storm…" She couldn't recall the exact lyrics, so she jumped to a random part in the song that she could remember, repeating whatever verses came to mind in an endless loop, hoping that it would settle him, maybe boring him into sleep. "I could say I'm sorry, but I don't wanna lie, I just wanna know if staying is better than goodbye." Noah made a contented little sound, but raised his head from her shoulder again, looking at her. She sighed. "This is not working. You're not getting sleepy at all, are you?"
He mewled, realizing she was talking to him, and made a grab for her hair. "No." She pried his little fingers away from it, which was becoming quite a feat. "Hey, my singing wasn't that bad." Not wanting to stimulate him with some distraction, she shifted his position in her arms, rocking him back and forth. Maybe it was time for shorter hair again. She badly needed a haircut, anyway, but time was a precious resource these days so she hadn't gotten around to it yet.
Normally, when he refused to go to sleep, she would lie down on the couch with him for a little while, which usually just ended up with her dozing off herself and waking up with a quiet, sleeping baby on her stomach. She needed to take her chances at sleep when she got them. The past nine weeks had been a physical and emotional ride between love and joy, fatigue and endless worrying, a sense of being overwhelmed and, for lack of a better word, unprepared. She had admitted this to Nick on the phone in a moment of weakness, Nick, who had spent months at a time taking care of Zara by himself, and he had assured her that it would get easier, that she would figure out a routine. He had even offered to babysit and she had taken him up on the offer once out of necessity. He had to be missing his own daughter.
She was rapidly pulled out of her thoughts by the sound of the doorbell. Already? One glance at the clock irritated her. Brian was notoriously unpunctual. Leave it to him to be right on time when it's inconvenient, she thought. She hesitated for a moment. She couldn't put Noah to bed or he would start screaming again, but introducing him to a new person was bound to wake him up even more. Besides, she hadn't planned for a meeting between these two to take place at all.
And yet she hardly had a choice. Increasingly, her life couldn't be scheduled anymore. She walked back to the front door and pressed the buzzer, waiting. Although she had told Brian the story of how she ended up being a little boy's legal guardian over the phone, in a rather pleasant, long conversation, this meeting was still awkward, in light of how they had broken up. She hadn't seen him in over three months, and she didn't want to make it any weirder for either one of them by introducing a baby to the party. But she was being silly, this was just Brian, who she had shared an apartment with, who had seen her when she had been at the worst place in her life, who had been a steady rock. This shouldn't be making her nervous, causing her heart to race and leading her to question whether calling him had been a good idea.
She had done it smoothly, with a cool, premeditated opening quip about how if he didn't want his CDs back, she was going to turn into a Van Halen fan soon, and the world didn't need any more of those. He had been stunned into a rare silence, unable to come up with a reply then anxiously asking her if she was okay. She had sadly realized that her calling him out of the blue like this had to be a reminder of terrible times. It had taken them a moment to move past that, but their walls had crumbled within minutes, and he had insisted on coming over this week to pick up the rest of his belongings. She had been throwing them into a box under a shelf whenever she came across one of his forgotten items –it was amazing how many there were- a box which had grown to contain anything from individual socks to a tacky corkscrew in the shape of a flamingo. Every time she had discovered something, it had been like a little pinch, a reminder of a former life, and she had ignored the growing box of items for as long as possible, stuffing it out of sight until one day, for no particular reason, she became fed up with it.
She opened the door for him with a friendly smile, and for a moment, they both simply stood in the doorway awkwardly, frozen in that moment of uncertainty over how to greet each other. He looked undeniably handsome, not scruffy but still dressed in his work suit, although he had taken off the jacket and tie and opened the top two buttons of his white shirt.
"Hi, Brian." Her own voice sounded oddly formal to her.
"Hey." He simply gaped at her for a moment, glancing back and forth between her and the baby on her arm, until finally, a smile began to tug at one corner of his mouth. "Good to see you."
"You too. Come on in." She stepped back to let him pass.
He stepped inside, closing the door behind him. "So this is..."
"Noah, yeah" she confirmed, patting her foster son's back. "Noah, this is Brian."
The smile broke through now, lighting up her ex-boyfriend's face as he looked at the baby, cocking his head. "Hey there, little man."
Noah instantly smiled back, gurgling happily at the attention. After all this time with her and how much he had grown, he was still indiscriminately friendly towards anyone and everyone. Shouldn't he start growing wary of strangers soon? It worried her sometimes, even though the paediatrician had told her that he seemed just fine, that babies developed at different speeds and that with a stable, loving environment, there was no reason why he shouldn't form healthy attachments. In fact, his positive responsiveness was a good sign in that respect.
"He's...really sweet" Brian commented awkwardly, clearly wanting to say something positive but unsure whether it was appropriate. It was funny how differently people reacted to seeing her with a baby, particularly if they didn't have children of their own. From his demeanour, she guessed Brian hadn't been around babies a whole lot, although she didn't know as they had never talked about it.
"When he's not screaming, he is" she replied lightly, trying to ease the tension, "...aren't you, sweetheart?" Noah chuckled and she beamed back at him, placing a quick kiss on his head and adjusting his position on her hip. Right now, she was actually grateful he was still awake and drawing attention to himself. There was no way to keep up an uptight mood around a happy infant, and the subject of conversation was a given.
"Wowowo!" he exclaimed, stretching out his arm to reach for the strange man.
"Nice to meet you, too." Brian hesitantly offered his finger and smiled when the little boy's hand closed around it.
"I'd watch that, he kind of has a death grip" she joked.
"I think I can take it." His thumb stroked the little fist lightly, and he was completely mesmerized as his hand remained trapped. "I've heard a lot about you, Noah."
She was reminded that Brian had been around for some of the Baby Doe drama. It seemed like a lifetime ago now. Watching them now, the little boy she loved and the man she had loved, was a painful reminder of what she had once dreamed of, or not quite allowed herself to dream of. She didn't want to go down this mental road.
"He likes you" she observed. Their eyes met, and there was something in that shared moment that was impossible to ignore, a smile tinged with thoughtfulness. It wasn't regret or melancholy, or happiness per se, but the understanding that their lives had changed so fundamentally, so irreversibly since their last meeting that turning back the clock was impossible. He was a stranger coming to this apartment, and the fact that he had been living here until three months ago seemed unreal. Yet still, despite all of that, there was such a familiarity here, and seeing him wasn't sad at all like she had expected, nor odd, but bittersweet.
"Wowo!" She was grateful for the interruption from her foster son, who decided to let go of Brian's finger and have another go at her hair instead, which she quickly stopped, eliciting a discontented whine from Noah, who balled his hands into fists and buried his face in her shirt.
"Shh, yes, I know, it's past your bedtime. Sorry, I meant to put him down earlier but-"
"No, I'm sorry to bother you, you're busy-"
"No, it's fine" she said firmly. "But are you in a hurry? Do you mind waiting for a little while I put Noah to bed?" Now that he was here, she didn't want to just shove his belongings into his hands and kick him out the door.
"No, sure, don't rush." He looked relieved at the suggestion. "I'll just hang out."
"Make yourself at-" she stopped, cursing herself for her near choice of words. "I mean, sit down, relax, help yourself to a drink...water or tea, that is, I don't think I have any beer-"
"Liv, it's fine." He wandered over to the kitchen, helping himself to a glass. "Take your time."
"Okay. Come on then, Noah, bed time. Say bye-bye." She waved at Brian, who waved back at them, softly calling "good night". She could feel his eyes on her back long after turning around and walking away.
Pulling the bedroom door closed behind her, she kept patting the little boy's back and began to hum, holding him close. She wasn't going to sing with Brian in the next room, and either way, humming seemed to be doing the trick just now. Despite his exciting encounter with a stranger, Noah was starting to settle quietly against her shoulder, his breathing slowing down. She glanced down at the child in her arms, whose eyes were beginning to glaze over, and a sense of calm finally washed over her, too. Once again, she was filled with such love, more love than she had ever believed possible. Everything else seemed to fade into the background.
After walking back and forth for a little while longer, she gently lowered Noah into his crib, tucking his legs into the sleeping bag. She remained bent over the bed for a moment to avoid startling him out of his semi-asleep state before withdrawing her arm. It was a small victory as he didn't protest, his eyes closing. She lingered for a moment, watching him drift into sleep, taking in his perfect round face and chubby cheeks, listening to his even breathing, which was interrupted once by a snort.
She tore herself away reluctantly, acutely aware that her guest, her complicated ex of a guest, was waiting next door. She had mixed feelings about this. It was easier than she had expected, more natural. She wanted to know how he was doing and had been dying to tell him about everything that had happened in her life while, at the same time, dreading that conversation. It was good to see him. In another sense, it was an intrusion from the past, and she hadn't known until today whether he actually wanted to see her, or simply got spooked by the call. So far, the evidence pointed to the former.
She walked into the living room, quietly closing the door behind her, and found Brian standing next to her shelf, fiddling around with a colourful object. "Has he dozed off?" he asked, glancing up at her.
"Yeah, you could say he's sleeping like a baby, although I think that expression is misleading."
He smirked, shifting his focus back to the bucket in his hands. "He's not a good sleeper yet?"
"He's getting there. That was really quick, actually." She watched him give the handle of the shape sorter one last squeeze before it was lodged into place. "What are you doing?"
"Just thought I'd give this a try. There, it should work again." He picked it up and dangled it in front of her, satisfied with his work.
"How did you manage that?" The bucket had been sitting on her shelf with a loose handle for ages.
"Natural talent. I made the hole a little bigger, see? It should still be childproof though."
"Thanks" she replied, baffled. This was not the kind of reaction she had expected from Brian, least of all to kids' stuff. It was a little embarrassing and wrong to have her ex-boyfriend fixing things in her living room. "You didn't need to do that."
He shrugged. "It looked broken. I had nothing better to do."
She smiled, fighting against the urge to hug him. "Well, Noah will probably break it again in five minutes –he mostly just bangs on it- but thanks anyway."
"You're welcome." He tugged at his shirt nervously where it was clinging to his skin. There was a natural pause as both of them realised that they were alone now, together for the first time in a while. There was no script for this situation. "You look great" he commented quietly, his eyes still fixed firmly on her face rather than anything else.
She gave him a short laugh. "I look tired. I feel tired." The apartment needed some tidying, too, but she would probably be too tired to get up and do it later.
"You look...happy" he clarified seriously.
"I am happy." It was the truth, and if anyone could understand how much that meant, all things considered, it was him. As she spoke the words, she realised that it had been this, most of all, that she had wanted to share with him. Not in a spiteful way, not in the sense of "I'm happier now than I ever was with you". She hoped he didn't take it that way.
But he simply kept looking at her thoughtfully, the lines on his forehead deepening. "It's nice to see you smile."
He was so good at finding all the right things to say. There hadn't been too many things for her to smile about before. To be fair, neither one of them had been doing much smiling in those last few months of their relationship, when everything had been overshadowed by darkness, they had both been strained and short-tempered and fed up with it all, and had walked on eggshells around each other to avoid nasty arguments, which had happened all too often, anyway. "It's been an adjustment. It's not what I planned, it just...happened. But in a good way, you know."
"Yeah."
"How about you? Are you happy?" She leaned against the wall, comfortable to remain where she was, not wanting to break the moment of honesty by shifting her position. They had somehow spent their entire phone call talking about her.
"Oh, sure." He didn't sound entirely convincing, but then again, that was just Brian, it was hard to tell with him. "I'm good. Got my own place again, which is good, there comes a point when it's just sad for a grown man to be crashing with his mom."
"There comes a point when it's almost sweet again. But that sounds good."
"I'm trying to apply for a transfer, too, but it's complicated. It could take a while."
"Where to?"
He hesitated for a split second. "The OCCB, Narcotics again if they'll take me, but I'm not picky. I'd do anything else, pretty much."
"That's great!" She was glad to hear he was moving forward, pursuing something that she knew was important to him.
"It's not looking good at the moment though. Might have to stick it out at IAB a little longer."
"You'll get there, eventually. Maybe they'll consider it once you've done at least a year there."
"We'll see. But that's kind of why I didn't come by to pick up the rest of my stuff earlier. I haven't been around much, you know, I was UC for a couple of months and then things were so busy when I got back-"
"It's fine. I could have mailed them to you. I've just been...busy as well."
"I can see that." He picked up the differently coloured blocks and began dropping them into the shape sorter.
"Anyway, your stuff..." She moved over to pull out the small cardboard box from under the shelf. As her eyes moved over it, she noticed that she really had just been dropping stuff into it in no particular order, not bothering to do it neatly. She wished she had. It looked very loveless this way.
He bent down and his face lit up as he picked up a dark blue T-shirt with the statement "I'm right, you're wrong" on it. "Hey, I'd been wondering where this got to."
"You know it was one of my favourites." It was a ridiculous shirt, but it had been one of the harder items to part with. She had loved sitting around in it at home at one point.
"Keep it then. Suits you better anyway." A playful grin appeared on his face.
"No, thanks. I don't need a shirt to prove it" she countered. Keeping reminders of the past around was no use.
He nodded in understanding. "Is this everything, then?"
"Should be. Unless you've hidden things around here."
"Well, thanks for collecting it anyway." He picked up the box, moving to leave.
"Hey, Brian..." She felt a need to say something more. After all, she could have mailed his things to him, but didn't.
"Yeah?"
There were no good words to express it, because she wasn't entirely sure what "it" was. Regret? Relief at seeing him? Reluctance? "R" seemed to be her letter here. "I'm glad you came by."
"Me too." He clutched the box against his chest, hesitating. "Um..."
She waited, but evidently, he wasn't having an easier time here. Maybe acknowledging it would help. "This is a little weird, isn't it?"
"So weird" he agreed, relieved. "I just want to talk normally."
"Maybe you can" she shrugged.
"Look...I wanted to be there for you after everything. I really did."
Except for this one topic. She wasn't too keen on forwardness about this one thing. "I know. You said."
"I thought about just showing up here a hundred times, but I didn't want to just...you know, creep up on you or anything..."
She cringed at the formulation, although it hit the mark perfectly. He knew her too well. Although a part of her had wished for his presence and its familiar comfort in those dark times, it only would have complicated things. Springing his presence on her would have felt like a violent intrusion, and her response most definitely would not have been positive. "No" meant "no", and Brian understood that. "Thank you" she said earnestly. "For refraining."
"I would have helped" he reiterated sheepishly. He was making this difficult.
"I know that" she replied gently. He had called her a few times after her ordeal, ranging from audibly frantic and upset the first time over gentle and concerned to irritated at her rejection. One word from her, that's all it would have taken for him to come rushing back for all the wrong reasons, out of guilt, fear and a sense of responsibility, because he was a decent man who loved her. He had stopped calling once she had told him in no uncertain terms that she wanted some time alone to process things. "But I needed some space. That has nothing to do with you, but you know I can't sit around and cry and pour my heart out to you. That's just not who we are."
"You wouldn't have had to. I shouldn't have pushed you about that."
"Look, there's no need for this." She wasn't particularly keen on discussing Lewis now, after his death, or ever. They couldn't have gone through all this together again, he had to realise that. Not twice. And they had moved on, she had moved on. "It's all fine. I'm good, whatever happened with us is fine."
He took a long look at her. "Is it?"
"Isn't it?"
"No." He set down the box on the floor. "I mean I get why you didn't want me around, but I want you to know that it wasn't just out of obligation or something."
"I got that. Really." Why did she feel like he was trying to get it all out of his system now, three months later?
"Because I've thought about it a lot...that last real conversation we had, before shit went down..."
This was another door she didn't want to open. "We've already talked about this."
"One time. Before that, we never even-"
"There's nothing left to discuss. Especially not now..." She gestured at the mess in her living room, the room that had once been theirs, which looked completely different now. There were no pictures of them; it was as if their history had been erased. She had moved the furniture around, making room for large boxes she could quickly stuff things into when she was in a hurry. All breakable objects had been moved to a higher shelf, and there wasn't any of the previously fancy stuff around, anything small and decorative and swallowable. The sofa was covered in a not-so-clean blanket, and there was a smaller baby blanket on the floor with some toys scattered on it. Not much remained of their old life. "We've moved on. We made that choice, both of us."
"Because it felt like the only option at the time. I don't know, sometimes I feel like after everything, we were just too tired to fight for it more, and if I'd said something-"
"There was nothing you could have said. We wanted different things." She didn't want to go down the "what if" route. It was no use pretending that this had all just been one gigantic misunderstanding.
"Clearly. You wanted to be with someone else."
"I wanted to be with someone who wanted to have a future with me. I wished that could have been you." And now she had a future, which didn't include him. She was fine with that, and she didn't want to start questioning again. "What if" was not an option here.
"Of course I wanted some kind of a future with you, but we never even talked about it, and then you spring it on me in a conversation right after telling me that there's probably someone better out there for both of us, that I was a nice guy who got you through a hard time, but that was all, and you made it very clear that that was over."
"What?" They seemed to be remembering two different conversations here. "That's not what I said. Not at all."
"It doesn't matter how you worded it, that was the point. It was like you were giving me an exit route."
"You didn't have to take it!"
"What was I supposed to say? It was like you had already made up your mind."
"Was I so off the mark? You told me you thought we had more fun 'just hooking up'." Hooking up. It was this wording that had stuck with her, that had made it plain as day that they had very different understandings of their relationship. You couldn't get serious with a guy who only wanted casual fun. Although part of her knew that he hadn't meant it that way, that whatever they had shared had meant something to him, the key problem had stayed the same: He had been unhappy and yearned for simpler times. Simpler times were his version of a content life. She had been unhappy and yearned for more.
"I meant at that time, when things were easier, like when we felt closer- why are we getting so hung up on phrases?" he asked, frustrated. A verbal back-and-forth wasn't his thing.
"But that was the problem." She tucked her hair behind her ear and walked over to the sofa to straighten out the blanket, feeling the urge to do something other than stand there looking at him while bringing up a difficult subject. "You know when I felt closest to you?"
"No, to be honest, it was kind of hard to tell if you ever did."
His sudden bluntness felt like a stab. She had always assumed they had parted so amicably –too amicably, really- based on a mutual understanding that what they had been doing made no sense. She didn't want him to walk around thinking that their relationship had somehow not been the real deal. "Bri..."
"When?"
"When things were at their worst." She studied a stain on the edge of the blanket, folding it over to hide it. "When you took time off work for me, when the trial..." She shook her head. "What happened there didn't break us up. Things were bad, and in a way, that brought us closer. And then they got better, back to normal, or stressful in a different way, and somehow it just...died..."
"Yeah" he agreed sadly, "it did."
"And that's what I meant, going through that kind of thing together, it's major." She lacked a more accurate word. "But maybe it's not the best basis for a relationship if the thing that keeps you together is need..." She stopped when she saw the expression on his face.
"Is that what it was?"
"Not only, of course. We had good times, you know that. Just not so much after that." She sat down on the sofa, scooting to the edge and making room for him. He hesitated for a moment before he went to join her, sitting as far away from her as possible on the familiar furniture.
"We were always at work, and when we were home, we had no energy left." It was a factual statement, tinged with regret.
"Yeah. But if it had only been that...it if had only been any one of these things, we could have made it work." It hadn't been a single tragedy that had broken them up. It had been life, a succession of small things, or rather, their absence from this relationship along with a lack of perspective. Sometimes, love alone wasn't enough, especially if love was the thing that kept you stuck. And still, there was a strange irony in the fact that the first time they had said "I love you" had been right before parting ways, as if it had been this departure that allowed for that kind of openness.
"But then we'd always end up avoiding the topic" he added. "We really weren't too great at this, were we?"
"I don't know, I'd say we did good on some things." She slumped down on the sofa, leaning back her head. Fatigue tended to overwhelm her these days if she could get a couple of minutes to sit down.
"Yeah. We did." She could feel his eyes on her. He had turned sideways to face her, his arm on the back of the sofa, already decreasing the distance between them. She was pleasantly surprised at the ease and honesty that had somehow found its way into their conversation. She couldn't remember the last time they had talked like this.
"I've missed you" she muttered.
"Me too" he admitted, reaching for her hand.
She gave him a sad smile. Under different circumstances, they might have made great friends, and that would still be better than nothing. She missed just hanging out with him, talking, sprawling out on this couch together watching some sports game and teasing him for getting all worked up over it, the comfort of a silent hug when things got rough. Sometimes, it felt as if these were still life images she could conjure at will now, prettier versions of their relationship that remained in her mind and modified her memory. This was precisely what made them so treacherous, so easy to fall into, because she wasn't entirely sure in these moments whether she was missing Brian and all the good and bad as it had been, or whether she was recalling a different version of herself with him that existed in her imagination. Or a potential version of herself with someone, in those weak moments where it all seemed overwhelming and she didn't know if she could be a single mother to a child.
"So what now?" she asked. Why had she called him in the first place? She was confused about what she wanted. Life seemed complicated enough right now without throwing this into the mix.
"I don't know."
She wished he would make a decision and not leave it up to her. This felt like when she had asked him about his dreams for the future, and he had only given her an evasive answer. "We can't go back."
"No. But forward? I mean, do you think that we could give it another try?"
She contemplated the question. It was too tempting to simply say "yes", but she didn't want to do it for the wrong reasons. "Things are more complicated now. There's Noah. I have to think about him."
"Yeah, of course."
"I'm still trying to figure out how to be a mother." The word "mother" didn't roll off her tongue too easily, but she was watching him carefully to see his reaction. He didn't flinch. "I don't really have time to think about other things, like fun or-"
"I wasn't talking about fun –well, I hope there'd be fun sometimes- I was talking about a future."
She had never heard him use the word in this context before. This was new. "The thing is, Noah is part of all that now. There's no...no future without him. Noah comes first."
"I get that." He smiled slightly, hopefully. "He seems cool."
"'Cool'? Seriously?" She crossed her arms. Boyish charm wasn't cutting it here. "He's a child, not a playmate, and sometimes he laughs and he's fun to play with, but sometimes he's not, sometimes he screams and cries, or gets angry or moody...it's not all fun and games, it's worrying and diaper changes and sleepless nights, and I can't just keep that separate from-"
"Whoa, Liv." He rubbed his palms against his pants. "Will you stop trying to scare me off with baby poop? I mean, it obviously doesn't scare me."
"I'll believe that when I see it." She couldn't help laughing slightly, burying her face in her hands and rubbing her eyes. "God, Brian..."
"I know we got stuff to figure out. That's why I'm trying to ask you out on a date. We'll sit and talk and...there'd be food..."
"A date?" The thought of dating, just dating, was something that had been the last thing on her mind these past few weeks.
"Just a date. Whenever you can manage. You think we could do that?"
She looked at him, thinking of all the other things they had managed together. By comparison, going out to dinner didn't seem so bad. "We could give it a try."
"Cool" he said simply, smile lines forming around his eyes.
Maybe I can find you
Down this broken line
Maybe you can find me
Guess we'll know in time
Author's Note/Disclaimer: Right, that took a while to finish, but I think it is indeed finished here. As usual, I own nothing and I am not deriving any profit from this story. Law and Order: SVU belongs to NBC, and the song "The Calm after the Storm" is by the lovely duo The Common Linnets.