The first time he saw her, he was rushing out his front door to get to work. As he fiddled with his keys, trying frantically to lock his door, he heard voices coming from the apartment across the hall. As he turned to head down the hall, he peeked into the open door. He saw an older man stacking boxes against the wall.
"I just think you should move back in with me, honey. You're gonna need all the help you can get, what with the baby." This perked his interest, and he pretended to check the locks on his door as he listened longer to his new neighbor's conversation.
"I have to do this, Dad," Glenn chocked on his spit and almost dropped his keys as he listened to the voice of an angel, "He didn't want either of us. Do you know how smug he would be if he knew I was forced to move back in with my dad because of him? Besides, you're just 30 minutes away. We'll be okay."
Glenn jumped a foot into the air when a voice spoke right behind him.
"Why're you standing outside my sister's door?" He turned to see a petite blonde girl standing behind him, holding a box.
"I'm not," He stuttered, "I live here. I'm just going to work." He gestured to his Pizza Hut uniform, as if to prove his point.
The girl cocked an eyebrow at him. He could tell she was about to say something to him, but a voice from inside the apartment stopped him.
"Beth, you making friends out here?"
Glenn had to remind himself to pick his jaw off the floor. Standing in the door was the most stunning woman he had ever seen. Her brown hair was tied back in a ponytail and she had the most piercing green eyes. Her eyes flickered on him momentarily, before going to her sister.
"I was just meeting your neighbor." Beth said. The woman's eyes go back to him. She smiles at him.
"I'm Maggie."
He tells his brain to form words, but he's struck dumb by her beauty. He opens and closes his mouth, and to his horror, all that comes out of his mouth is a chocking noise. The sisters give each other a look, before Beth covers her mouth and stifles a laugh.
He clears his throat, "I'm Glenn. I…I…I live right across from you."
He curses his stutter.
Maggie nods her head. His eyes drift down to her hands caressing her stomach, which he now notice is slightly rounded from the early stages of pregnancy. His heart skips a beat when he sees her left ring finger is bear.
"Weren't you going to work?" Beth says.
He glances at his watch, "Shit!"
As he rushes down the hallway to the stairwell, he looks back over his shoulder. Maggie is watching him leave.
The next time he runs into her, he physically runs into her. It was about a week since he had first met her, and he was walking up the stairwell after work, talking to his father on his phone. His dad was chewing him out about his life choices, again. He could feel his blood starting to boil. After a long shift at work, this was the last thing he needed.
He raised his voice to his father when he smacked into a warm body.
"Mianhada. I mean, sorry." When he sees that it is Maggie that he ran in to, he pulls his phone away from his ear.
"Are you okay? I'm so sorry. I wasn't paying attention."
"I'm fine." She says. He can't help but notice that she is even more beautiful up close. Her hair is down this time, and she's dressed in a t-shirt and jeans. She has a book bag thrown over her shoulder. Her forehead scrunches together when she hears his father yelling at him in Korean on the phone. He rolls his eyes at her.
"Are you sure you're okay?"
When she nods, he gently pats her on the shoulder and resumes speaking to his father in Korean as he heads to his door.
When he sees her 3 days later, it's because he is delivering a pizza to her. He laughs when she opens the door.
"Oh hey!" She smiles at him.
"Did you order a pizza?" She nods at him.
"The baby was craving pineapple."
He doesn't try to mask his disgust, "Yeah, I'm going to let that comment go only because you're pregnant. Pineapple does not belong on pizza."
She snorts and hands him some cash, "Actually, I've enjoyed pineapple pizza ever since I was little."
"I can't believe what I'm hearing." He jokes as he counts out change for her. She shoves it back in his hand.
"Keep the change."
"You sure?"
She nods, and bites her lip.
"I'll see you later?"
"I'll be here."
He trudges up the stairs at 1 am that night. Someone had called off at work and his boss made him pull a double.
He was so tired he almost missed her sitting on the floor outside her door.
"Hey, what're you doing?" She looks up at him. She's wearing a waitressing outfit from Buffalo Wild Wings. The shirt is too tight on her and makes her baby bump more pronounced. Her beautiful eyes are red, and he can tell she'd been crying.
"Oh, hey." She hastily wipes her eyes and stands; "I stupidly left my keys at work. I'm waiting for the landlord to get here to let me in."
"How long have you been out here?" He asks. She shrugs and checks her phone.
"Almost an hour, I guess. The landlord said he'd be here right away."
"Yeah, well, he's also an unreliable idiot. His version of right away is tomorrow morning. Trust me, I know from experience. Why don't you come inside?"
He unlocks his door, but he sees her hesitate.
"I promise I won't murder you, if that helps anything."
She laughs and follows him into his apartment.
He gave her a clean t-shirt of his and a pair of sweatpants to change into and he brought her a blanket and pillow. He had intended to leave her be, but then they got wrapped up in conversation.
He learned that she was a pharmacy student at the local college and she worked night shifts at Buffalo Wild Wings. He learned that she had a step brother at home, in addition to a half sister and that she had a horse back home who she absolutely adored.
He told her about his family, his 4 older sisters and his super strict parents who lived in Michigan. He told her about how they wanted him to be a lawyer or a doctor. He told her about how he moved to Atlanta to get away from them, and how that choice isolated him from them. He told her about his dreams to one day go to college for music. He shared with her his love for singing and dancing.
She made him sing for her.
At around 3:30 am, the talk moved to her baby. She told him she was 3 months along, and that she would be finding out the sex next week at her doctor's appointment. He smiled as he watched her talk about her baby. Her hands had drifted to her abdomen and she rubbed it softly as she talked. She hesitantly told him about her ex, who had gotten her pregnant and then bailed when he had found out.
"His name is Gareth. I thought that he would have been thrilled, but instead I came home from work to find my stuff on the front lawn and the locks changed. My dad and step mom came and got me. They wanted me to move back home, but I just couldn't, you know?"
He nods, "Yeah, my parents keep trying to convince me to move back to Michigan. I just can't do that. I can't go crawling back to them."
She asks him to sing for her again. She falls asleep against his shoulder and he ignores the numbness and tingling in his arm because he can't bear to move it and wake her up.
They trade numbers in the morning and then spend the rest of the week texting each other. It took him 3 days to realize he never got his t-shirt back from her.
He gets a text from her while he is at work. It's a picture of an ultrasound.
He grins when he reads the words she sent him.
"Isn't my daughter beautiful?"
He brings a pineapple pizza to her work that night and drops it off for her. He laughs when she sends him a snapchat of her holding a slice in front of her face.
Their friendship grows throughout the months, as does her belly. One night, while watching a movie, she gasps and grabs his hand. He's confused for a moment, before she places it on her belly. He can't help the smile that grows on his face when he feels her daughter kicking.
"That's so incredible." He looks up at her, "Thank you for sharing that with me."
She snuggles into his side. He notices that she allows his hand to stay resting on her belly.
When he knocks on her door a month later for their weekly movie night, he's thrown off when a man answers it.
"Oh, cool," The man says, "Babe, why didn't you tell me you ordered pizza?"
Glenn hears Maggie from the living room, "What?"
He watches her waddle into view, confusion on his face.
"Glenn. What're you doing here?"
He lifts up the pizza box and DVD in his hands, "It's Friday, so I just kind of assumed we we're going to hang out."
"Oh, I texted you a few hours ago."
"I didn't get it. My phone got shut off for the rest of the month." He watches as the man snorts.
"Um, Glenn, this is Gareth." Gareth sticks his hand out to him.
"How ya doing, bud?" This guy's barely spoken to him and he already hates him.
"What's he doing here?"
"We've, um, gotten back together. We want our daughter to have a family." Maggie doesn't look him in the eye. He feels his heart breaking.
"Oh, okay. Awesome. Great. Congratulations." Gareth pulls the pizza and movie out of his hands.
"Here babe, why don't you go put this in the kitchen and start the movie." She nods and he watches as she goes, taking his heart with her.
"Give it up." His eyes turn back to the man in front of him.
"She's mine. That baby inside of her is mine. Stop pretending it's any different." Gareth shuts the door in his face and leaves him standing alone in the hallway. Maggie doesn't contact him for over a month. When he sees her in the hallway, she smiles at him, but doesn't stop to say hello. Gareth has been hovering over her and shoots him a death glare anytime he is in eyesight.
He heads out to his car one evening, aiming to drive around, maybe meet a pretty girl he can bring home, when something catches his eye. He sees two figures tucked behind the stairwell and he hears whispering. He quietly moves closer to them.
"You are so damn lucky I put up with your shit. I swear to God, the minute that kid comes out, I'm getting full custody and you will never see her again. Do you understand me?"
He peeks around the corner of the staircase and his blood boils when he sees that Gareth has Maggie– his Maggie– pressed firmly against the wall. His hand grips her chin tightly and he can see the tears in her eyes. Her arms are wrapped tightly around her bulging belly, as if she is trying to protect her child.
The next thing he knows, he's on top of Gareth, punching his face in. He can faintly register Maggie screaming, but he keeps punching. His fists are covered in blood when he grabs Gareth's face like he had grabbed Maggie.
"You are never going to touch her again. Do you understand me, asshole? You will never, ever lay another finger on her for as long as I live." He shoves him onto the ground and stands. He hears one of the tenants in the building on the phone with the police.
Maggie sobs as he pulls her into her embrace. She apologizes to him and clings tightly to his chest as the police take Gareth into custody.
One of the officers, a nice man by the name of Rick, looks her over and takes pictures of her bruises for evidence. He asks if she would like him to escort them to the hospital. She shakes her head.
"I'm okay now." She says as she buries herself into Glenn's side, "We're all okay."
She bounces back from the Gareth situation quickly, and tells Glenn it's all thanks to him. They spend every moment together that they can.
When Glenn's lease is up, she suggests him moving into the 2nd bedroom in her apartment, instead of renewing his lease for another year.
She says that she had planned on the baby sleeping in her room anyways, and that she didn't need a second bedroom.
"Come on, it'll help both of us out. We can split the rent."
She hugs him when he agrees.
They fall into a routine quickly. They bicker over who's turn it is to do the dishes (he always ends up doing them because she plays the pregnancy card) and spend evenings together watching Netflix on the couch. Her classes are over for the summer, so she is working full time, trying to save every penny she can before the baby comes. She buys a crib from IKEA, and he helps her set it up (he sets it up, while she lounges on her bed while surfing Facebook). He helps her shop for baby clothes, and when the sales clerk comments on how beautiful his wife is, he just smiles and agrees with him.
She circles her due date on the calendar, and he finds himself crossing off days, counting down to it. Her due date comes and goes, and he finds her doing odd things to try to induce labor. He finds her eating Frank's Red Hot Sauce by the spoonful and laughs when she shoves him out of the way to get a drink of water. He helps her walk laps around their apartment complex and even drives an hour and a half away to pick up a certain type of oil that "is guaranteed" to induce labor (it didn't, by the way).
Her doctor schedules her to be induced 2 days from now and they are sitting on the couch when she turns to him.
"We should have sex."
He chocks on his Pepsi.
"Come again?"
"I said, we should have sex."
He stares at her, speechless.
"Oh, come on! Everything online says that sex is the best way to start labor. Please, Glenn. For me?"
All he can do is nod his head as she pulls him up from the couch and takes him into her bedroom. They spend the next few hours together, getting to know each other in a way he never thought possible.
Her water breaks early that morning. He's the one who notices it when he rolls over to pull her into his arms and his leg lands on the soaked sheets.
She begs him to stay by her side at the hospital. When one of the nurses wraps a plastic band around his wrist with the words 'Greene Baby-Father', he doesn't bother to correct them. Instead, he stares at the tiny words in awe. When Maggie shows him her wristband, which has 'Greene Baby-Mother' on it, he presses a kiss against her forehead and wraps her tightly in his arms.
When the baby comes 13 hours later, the doctor lets him cut the cord. Maggie makes him go over to where the nurses are cleaning the baby and he stares at the little girl in complete wonderment. One of the nurses lifts her up in the incubator and allows him to take pictures of her on his phone.
"What'd you think, Dad?"
"She's beautiful." He whispers.
Maggie cries when she holds her for the first time. Glenn gathers them both into his arms and she leans into his embrace.
"I love her so much already." Maggie cries as she touches the baby's face.
"Me too."
With every passing day, Glenn finds himself falling more and more in love with Arden Noelle Greene and her mother. When Maggie's classes start back up, Glenn switches his job to night shifts so he can stay home with the baby while Maggie attends classes. They make love for the second time when she comes home from a long day of classes to find him cradling her daughter to his chest, gently bouncing her while singing an Aerosmith song to her. She took the baby from him, placed her in her crib and then threw him on the bed and ripped his clothes off.
No one mentions that the baby looks just like her biological father.
When Maggie brings them to a get together that one of her classmates was having, she introduces Glenn to everyone as her boyfriend and her baby's father. He can tell it confuses people, because the baby looks nothing like him, but no one says a word.
The little girl has him wrapped around her finger. He'll spend hours rolling around on the floor with her, trying to get her to laugh and giggle. He begins to teach her to speak, spending time saying "Dada" to her over and over again and laughing as she tries to mimic his speech.
And the baby is so in love with him. Whenever he walks into the room, she babbles and wiggles with excitement and reaches out to him, begging him to hold her. He always goes straight to her after work and lifts her up into his arms for an evening cuddle.
When she takes her first steps, it's to toddle right into his arms after he gets home from work.
He has a photo of the three of them at Arden's first birthday party as his phone wallpaper. He'll often take his phone out throughout the day just to look at the photo. Arden sits in between them with a huge slice of cake, more of it on her face than in her mouth, with a chubby hand reaching out to feed him a handful of smashed cake while Maggie beams at her daughter. Looking at that picture everyday gave him the courage to enroll in the local community college.
He didn't know what he was going to be, but he knew he wanted to be more for her. He wanted to be more for both of his girls.
He includes Arden when he proposes to Maggie. He has her hand the engagement ring to her mother, her little blue eyes shining at the prospect of having such an important task. Maggie sobs when she asks, "Will you marry my daddy?"
He takes over at that point, wiping away her tears. He exclaims his love to her.
"I want to fall asleep next to you every night, and wake up to you every morning. I want to be there for Arden every single day when she wakes up and I want her to fall asleep every night knowing that daddy is right there. I love you, Maggie. Marry me?"
It was Arden who told him he was going to be a father again, 2 years later. She came running up to him, waving a sonogram picture around, while screaming about her baby brother or sister in mommy's belly. He almost dropped the little girl in shock. He looked up to see Maggie grinning at him, her hands resting on her belly. He wrapped both his girls up in his arms and cried into his wife's shoulder.
Arden wipes his tears away with her little fingers.
"Why're you sad, daddy?"
He places a kiss on her tiny forehead, and then places a longer one on her mother's lips.
"I'm not sad, baby. I'm happy. Daddy is so happy."