I’ve Got You

After the ceremony, Aleshia took the time to get to know Cameron’s relatives better. Ezra slept soundly the whole time, guarded by Vaneese and Gail. Cameron’s mother, Natasha, took Aleshia to the side at one point, and gave her a well-meant hug. Strong, strawberry scented perfume wafted into Aleshia’s nostrils, and Natasha’s long, dark hair gave a faint aroma of coconut. The contrasting scents momentarily baffled Aleshia.

“Christ knows, woman, my son’s happier than he’s ever been. I have my reservations. But from what I can see, you’re a good person, and you care for your son well. And my son…” Natasha at this point seized a tissue from her tiny handbag and dabbed at her eyes. “Well, I was afraid he would never settle down. Look at him now, eh?”

At this moment, Cameron was leaning down to Ezra’s pram, and pulling daft faces.

“He’ll be a good dad.” Natasha nodded. “I’m happy he’s with you. But, between you and me… give us a few more grandchildren, eh? I want to see my son so swamped that he never thinks about returning to his old life again.”

Aleshia grinned at the older woman. Having been exposed to Vaneese’s audacity her entire life, Natasha gave her little cause for alarm. “We might be able to arrange something like that.”

She detected the hidden message implied in the woman’s words – she wanted a child of her own flesh and blood. Aleshia certainly wasn’t opposed to more children. She did, however, plan to wait until Ezra was at least a year old before lightly putting across the idea to Cameron. Part of her worried that with a new child, Ezra would receive less attention, and feel rejected and lonely. The bigger, more sensible part of her realized that she had nothing to fear.

Even with Amy screeching out how bored she was, and then spending the next three hours drawing Ezra pictures and showing them to him – the wedding went smoothly, no noticeable road bumps in their path.

Tapping her keypad, Aleshia frowned at the dust gathering in the corners of her laptop screen. She wet her finger and tried to wipe the grime off that way, leaving a color spectrum smear.

“Want a beer?” Cameron offered, as he headed to the fridge, Ezra now starting to make small sounds of distress.

“Sure. That Belgian blonde stuff you like.”

“Yup.” He returned with two bottles, clinking them as he sat them on the table. “What’s wrong, little man? Hungry? Bored?” He tapped Ezra on the nose, even as the child began flailing his limbs.

“Uh oh. Put him near the teddy bear. Trust me.” Aleshia reached for the beer as Cameron settled the little boy by the bear. Immediately, Ezra clutched onto the bear’s fur and calmed down, before plucking at the bear like a kneading cat.

“That bear was the best idea we’ve had,” Cameron observed, as they clacked bottles together. “Cheers.”

“I won’t disagree with you on that one.” Her phone buzzed. A text message from Vaneese.

Hey, sista. Come around later? We cooking lasg.

“We’re going to my sister’s later,” Aleshia declared.

“Oh?” Cameron leaned over to check the message, and sipped his beer. “Yeah. We’re going over later.”

“I need to learn to cook that dish. It’s useful, absolutely freaking delicious –” Aleshia modified her words. She’d been trying to avoid saying fu*k since the birth of Ezra, but still let them slip from time to time. “—But I’m fairly certain I’ll create some unparalleled cooking disaster. You saw what happened with the steak.”

“You did well with the macaroni and cheese, though. I like that.” Cameron tried bolstering her feelings.

“I literally just poured the packet into a pan of boiling water, and tossed in some milk and butter because it said so. Nothing complex about that.”

“You added spices.”

“Salt and pepper. And even then, I almost screwed it up. I tipped a whole pot of pepper. On the table. I don’t think cooking is ever going to be one of my talents.”

Cameron chuckled. “Well. Never say never. Maybe you just need to keep at it, and not feel bad when you make mistakes. It should be fine.”

On the wooden floor, Ezra now tried dragging the large teddy behind him, whilst also reaching for another, smaller plush cat. After about a minute, he realized he should probably let go of the teddy and just go for the cat, and began his slow-motion part crawl, part flop again.

Although Aleshia loved Cameron, madly, intensely, to the point where she couldn’t contemplate the future without him – she did find it irritating at times how flippant he acted with matters. She knew he preferred not stressing or worrying over things, but it did result in him shrugging off matters she believed ought to be considered.

She figured in time that might cause a conflict of interest, since she was exactly the type to spend their nights awake, thinking about the things that made her afraid. On the other hand, she did also tend to stress out too much – so perhaps someone like Cameron in her life might mellow out the constant worries and doubts that always threatened.

She’d written a few more poems during the new period of her life. She also inched further to completing that novel she started as a teenager. Two chapters remained, though each time she opened the document, she ended up scrolling over previous chapters and tinkering with sentences and words in them, considering herself lucky if she managed to write anything longer than a paragraph into her last chapters. She didn’t like endings, and never quite figured out how she wanted her novel to finish. Her previous efforts always lacked something.

Now, deep in a relationship with someone she loved and desired, with the stress and amusement of baby-proofing the room so Ezra didn’t try to pick things off the floor and stuff them in his mouth, she realized a different answer to her ending. Tempered by her new experiences in life, the image of it formed in her head, pooling like a dewdrop on a leaf.