Stephanie was a tiny bit weary. It seemed odd that Chris had been so easy to get back together with. It was only a couple days before that he was states away, trying to figure out what he wanted. Then he comes back and they're here and everything is suddenly so gung-ho. It worried Stephanie. It had all been way too easy. It had all just been so easy and so neatly tied up in a package for her. It shouldn't be this easy. Chris should be screaming and yelling at her for lying to him for years. He should hate her guts and want her out of his sight, that's what should happen.
He shouldn't be here holding onto her. He shouldn't be behind her, holding onto her waist with his chin on her shoulder while they waited for the girls to get out of school so they could all go home. It just didn't seem right to her, well, it felt right in the sense that she loved being with Chris, but why wasn't he angrier with her?
Chris sighed a little and looked at his watch. "Man, I hope that they get out soon, I'm tired of standing here."
"With me?" she wondered.
"Um, yeah, I'm with you, what does that matter?" Chris asked.
"Oh, never-mind," Stephanie said, feeling foolish. She didn't need to bring this up right now when the girls were going be coming out very soon. They could leave this discussion for later this evening when they were alone and the girls were in bed.
"No, what did you mean by that?" Chris inquired, turning to look at her critically. "Obviously that was meant as something and I want to know what you meant by that."
"Chris, can we just talk later?"
"Well, you're the one who's saying all this cryptic crap, so yeah, I think now would be an apt time to think about it, don't you?" he told her.
"I knew you were mad at me," she said, taking in his harsh tone. She pulled away from him and leaned against the car, staring off into space and trying to ignore him. She just wanted to ignore him for now. He should be mad and she had to wonder if he was only not mad with her because she was now the mother of his child.
"What? I'm not mad at you, I was just wondering what you meant, how can you think I'm mad at you?" he asked again, wanting to find out the answers. She was really acting strangely now and he wanted to get to the bottom of this in the moments before the girls would come over and feel the tension. Now he wasn't really anticipating their arrival.
"Because of what happened," she hissed. "I mean, you're gone for days and days, and suddenly, everything's okay with us, we barely even talk about it and yet everything is okay with us?"
Chris shook his head. "Stephanie, yes, we have a lot of things to resolve and yes, we're going to have to talk about a lot of things, but this…us, everything that we have, I don't want to throw it away, do you?"
She hesitated, not wanting to look stupid, but she had a feeling she was already looking that way to him. She looked down at the ground, kicking a rock absently as she went to look back up at him. He was still looking at her intensely and she felt naked under his scrutiny. "No, of course not, I love being with you, I love you, but I'm just thinking that it was way too easy. You were so mad at me."
"Yes, I was mad at you, but I had no reason to be. I had time to think about it, Stephanie, and it's just as much my fault as it is your fault that any of this happened. I got drunk and didn't remember, and that's irresponsible of me. Sleeping with someone and not remembering, that's not my style. I had to realize that this doesn't fall completely on you."
"But still, over the past eight or so years, I should've thought to myself about the timing," she said, her eyes sad. "I should've realized because I did wake up that morning first and saw."
"But you honestly couldn't have been too sure that we did have sex, regardless of our state of undress. We both could've gotten naked, went to do it and then fell asleep or passed out from the alcohol that we consumed. You didn't know what exactly happened either."
"I know," she said softly, "but it just feels like this is all my fault. It feels like I'm the one completely in the wrong here while you were the innocent victim who never got to know his daughter. You should hate me for that, for missing so much of Ferris's life."
"I can't, and I won't," he said. "What happened, happened, and I'm a fan of looking ahead, okay. We're together now, we know now and I have the rest of my life with her, and that's good enough for me, I missed some stuff, yeah, but you know, who's to say that I can't have that again with other children, if I'm granted other children?"
"Other children?" she asked, her eyes widening slightly.
Chris shrugged and kissed the tip of her nose, "Yeah, other children, I figure if you're the mother of my existing child, you should be the mother of all the rest of my children too, does that sound okay to you?"
Stephanie laughed, and then spoke softly, "You really don't hate me?"
"I really don't hate you," he told her, emphasizing every syllable. "So get it out of your head that I should punish you, or hate you or something because I don't. It's going to take me some time to get over the shock, but I learned my lesson. Stephanie, I love you, and I spent way too long wanting you to give you up now."
"You shouldn't have wanted me, I'm nothing but trouble for you."
"I happen to love trouble," he said, pulling her away from the car and into his arms.
"I love you," Stephanie told him, hugging him back. Maybe some things in life were supposed to be easy. It didn't mean that things were going to be simple for right now, but sometimes things could be easily resolved, even when they had been deemed impossible not long before that moment. This was one of those times, maybe they had taken the scenic route to this destination, but they had arrived there anyways.
"Good, good," he told her as they heard the final bell ring. "God, finally, I was starting to wonder if schools had extended their days and we didn't get the memo."
She laughed and pulled away from him, but still kept herself near him, as if to reassure herself that he was there and she wouldn't go home to an empty bed that evening. She had grown accustomed to Chris, like that song in My Fair Lady, she had grown accustomed to his face. It wasn't like she was going to go make him fetch her, her slippers or anything (watch the movie, you'll know what that means), but she had definitely grown accustomed to his face.
They waited a few minutes before they saw Keagan and Ferris walking over to them with wide smiles. They were both just thrilled to see Chris back permanently it seemed and with their mother again. She had seemed so sad while Chris was gone, and though they didn't say anything to her, they both could sense that something bad had happened with their mommy and Chris. But then Chris had come back and it seemed that everything was back to normal, much to their relief.
For Chris, it was like seeing Ferris for the first time, and that was a peculiar feeling for him. He had seen her everyday for a while now, and he had seen her as a baby, one that he didn't know was his, but as a baby nonetheless, but he was seeing her for the first time as his daughter. It was strange, not like seeing a newborn, but like seeing something you had wanted to see but had never gotten the chance to see until this very moment. That probably made no sense to anyone, but it made a lot of sense to him.
He had always wanted to have children, but with his busy lifestyle and turnstile of girlfriends, he had never really met a woman that he felt he could have children with. When you dated models who only cared about staying between a size 0 and a size 2, or actresses who had to stay skinny for the cameras, children weren't really on their minds much, if at all. Yet for Chris, children had never seemed like a bad thing. So he always wondered what it would be like to have a child and see that child for the first time. He had wanted a child.
Now he was seeing that child, and she was right in front of him and he knew her and he had seen her smile and heard her voice and knew what she liked and didn't like. In the scant few hours since he had found out that Ferris was most definitely his, he had begun to mentally note the things that could definitely be attributed to him. He wouldn't take credit for all of Ferris's intelligence because Stephanie and her family were full of smart people, but so was his family, so he took partial credit for that. She had his smile though, he had just noticed, and the blue of her eyes were much clearer than Stephanie's, now that he had really looked. The lightness of her brown hair was another indication and then it all just came back to that smile, the one she was giving him right now. His little girl was smiling at him and it was…well, how do you even describe that kind of feeling?
"Mommy! Can I play soccer?" Keagan asked as she ran over.
"Right now?" Stephanie asked.
"No," Keagan said like it should've been obvious that she wasn't talking about right this second. "Evie is going to play on a team and I want to play on a team too," she whined.
"Oh, well then, I'll have to call Evie's mommy or daddy and ask them about it. Are you sure that you want to play soccer though, you're not very old."
"I'm old," Keagan said. "I'm old enough for soccer, Mommy. Chris, do you like soccer?"
"Well, I've never really been a huge fan, but if you were going to play soccer, I bet I would become your biggest fan," Chris told her with a kind smile and Keagan looked to Stephanie expectantly.
"Mommy, are you going to be my biggest fan too?"
"Of course I would be your biggest fan, I'd cheer you on and then I'd kick any other mommy's butts that say anything bad about you," Stephanie said, making a mean face for Keagan who giggled. "But if everything checks out, I don't see why you couldn't play soccer."
"Yay!" Keagan said happily. "Can I go tell Evie?"
"You can tell Evie tomorrow, okay sweets?" Stephanie said. "I think that we just want to go home."
"I got homework tonight, Mommy," Keagan said very seriously.
"Wow, homework, that's very important," Stephanie responded as she smiled at Chris, who was smiling back at Keagan's antics. Ferris was talking with one of her classmates, a little ways away, who had run to catch up to her. "What's your homework?"
"I have to collect leaves because we're going to do an art project," Keagan explained. "Chris, will you help me find leaves? You and Mommy can help, the teacher said that you could."
"Of course," Chris nodded. "I love to look for leaves."
Keagan grinned and hugged Stephanie's leg as Ferris walked over. Stephanie watched Chris's reaction and he did have a look of almost wonder on his face. It brought up the fact that they actually had to tell people about this new development, and that was going to be more difficult than actually finding out of Ferris was Chris's daughter. She didn't look forward to telling Hunter most of all. He was going to rip something to shreds; she just hoped it wasn't Chris.
"Hi Mommy, hi Chris," Ferris said as she walked over. "Are we going to go home now?"
"Yeah, we're going to go home," Stephanie said, answering for the suddenly tongue-tied Chris. She knew that he was searching for the words, and she nudged him on the side and he turned to her and she mouthed to just be himself around her. Chris nodded, but he knew that was easier said than done.
"Hey Bueller, do you have homework tonight?"
"Yeah, but not a lot," Ferris said as she came to stand next to Chris. Chris took a deep breath and looked at Stephanie who smiled. She couldn't help it, she saw the resemblance now, clear as day and it warmed her heart in ways she couldn't imagine happening. It was the first time she had realized what she had given Chris.
When they got home, things went as usual. Ferris sat at the kitchen table as Stephanie helped her with her homework and Chris and Keagan ran all around the backyard collecting leaves for her homework, Keagan turning down the ones that weren't pretty enough. Eventually they all came in and ate dinner together, and after that, they went and watched television together, like a normal family.
Keagan was nestled in Stephanie's lap, leaning her head against Stephanie's collarbone as Ferris was snuggled against Chris's side. Stephanie kept glancing over at the two of them as they sat there, unbeknownst to either one of them. She couldn't help it; she couldn't take her eyes off of them, they were just so incredibly cute together. She wanted to take a picture of the two of them, capture the moment forever. She wanted to remember this, this time when everything seemed so good, before the truth finally came out, before she had to tell people what had happened.
Chris felt someone's eyes on him and he looked over to see Stephanie looking at him. He stuck his tongue out at her playfully and she smiled, letting it reach her eyes as they sparkled with something more than the light from the television. She was happy, and she knew that Chris's stomach was fluttering with happiness. She was happy that he had that, and that the truth was not hanging over their heads now. Chris felt Ferris snuggled into his side a little bit more, getting more tired by the moment and blinking her eyes slowly.
There was a lot that had to happen after this, a lot to clear up. Chris and Stephanie knew the journey was not yet over, and would only get tougher from here on out. There was so much happening and so many people to tell that it could be overwhelming, but just for this moment, they let the fact they were a family wash over them. They weren't conventional and they weren't "official," but they were a family all the same, and that was a perfect feeling. Chris looked over at Stephanie again and she watched as he mouthed two words to her while smoothing the sleepy Ferris's hair back.
"Thank you."