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The snow blew fat and light behind Jack, lining his shoulders and the top of his gear bag—if he weren’t careful, he’d have tiny snow drifts on their new floors and Bitty would have his head, but Jack couldn’t close the front door yet. He stood, soaking in the calm and quiet.
He almost always came home to Barely Contained Chaos™. Bitty was an incredible stay at home dad, teaching their girls to cook and bake, to sing and dance without embarrassment. To love themselves without reservation. But the volume that accompanied living life to its fullest—he’d thought the EpiKegsters had been loud. They were nothing compared to two four-year-olds singing and laughing with their Daddy, the sound bouncing off the wood floors and echoing through the three stories of their Victorian home.
It was perfect. Both the noisy moments and the peaceful ones like tonight. The aroma of the gingerbread, a Christmas Eve tradition, and the quiet flow of Bitty’s voice telling the girls stories as they decorated the still-warm gingerpeople. The lights on their tree flickering in unison with the flames in the fireplace, fighting against the constant chill that came with renovating an antique house.
Heavenly peace.
He closed the front door, dropped his bags, and basked in the calm, because it was rare and precious.
“Daddy said I could put them out!”
“No, he said I could!”
And there it was, their voices whiny and exhausted and loud, coming from the kitchen. Jack smiled and braced himself for the oncoming storm.
Two blurs blew out of the kitchen straight toward Jack, who squatted down and gathered them into his arms.
“Daddy! Daddy! Papa’s home!” the two girls yelled.
“Guess what, Papa? Daddy says I can leave cookies out for Père Noël!”
“No! He said I could do it.”
“I have an idea,” Jack said as he heard Bitty’s footsteps on the creaking wooden floors. “Noëlle, you leave the cookies, and Joy, you leave the carrots for the reindeer. They’re just as important.” Jack kissed the tops of his daughters’ heads and released them so he could stand up. They sped off to the kitchen and to finish decorating their cookies.
The Buffalo/Boston road trip had kept him away for four days which was too long when he wanted to be home. Jack looked at Bits, took in the bags under his eyes, the slouch in his posture, his slow gait. He looked exhausted, a little pale. “Bittle. You look like shit. Are you eating enough?”
Bitty wiped his wet hands on his Christmas apron. “Mr. Zimmerman. Y’all know there’s no time for real meals before Christmas. We’ve been baking and decorating.”
Jack wrapped his arms around Bitty and felt him give over to the exhaustion, allowing Jack to take the press of his weight. “I never sleep right when you’re not here, and the girls have been so excited about Christmas. There just wasn’t time to eat much.” Bitty’s voice was slow and sleepy and Jack wondered if he’d fallen asleep for a moment.
The silence from the kitchen was loud. And suspicious. “What are y’all doing in there?” Bitty called. When giggles were the only answer, he dragged Jack behind him to check on the girls.
“Mustaches?” Jack’s laugh turned into an yowch when Bitty elbowed him in the gut. Jack didn’t comment on the fact that Bitty was obviously recording this. “Icing mustaches?”
Jack suspected that Noëlle was behind the makeover, mostly because she had icing on her fingers: yellow to match Joy’s hair and black to match her own.
Joy and Noëlle giggled as Jack swiped his fingers through their mustaches and tasted them. “You had a mustache in November, Papa! We wanted them, too.”
“At least yours look better than Papa’s.” Bitty laughed and wiped them clean. The black icing left a stain under Noëlle’s nose. “Goodness, I can’t imagine what your grandparents are going to say when they get back from dinner.”
The girls shrieked with laughter. “Did you Snapchat them, Daddy? Bad Bob has one now!”
“Joy! You can’t call your grandfather Bad Bob!” Bitty fussed but Jack outright laughed at her audacity.
Sometimes, he was just so damn happy, that he wanted to laugh or shout, to tell everyone, I love these people! They’re ridiculous, and frustrating, and amazing, and wonderful. And they love me for who I am. He was so damn grateful to be alive for this. For them. With them.
And tonight, their entire family would be here; Jack’s parents had picked up Coach and Suzanne at the airport and taken them out to dinner. They were due any time and then they would be together, safe and happy.
Jack’s phone chimed as he said, “Okay, mustache men. Upstairs and into your new Christmas PJs! Your grandparents are almost home!”
Noëlle and Joy ran up the stairs, their pony tails bouncing with each step. They were the perfect mix of him and Bitty. Joy with her white blonde hair like Bitty, but who’d wound up with Jack’s blue eyes. Noëlle with her dark hair like Jack’s but Bitty’s brown eyes. They shared Bitty’s enthusiasm and Jack’s intensity. Jack’s skill and Bitty’s grace. But most importantly, they were well loved and loved well.
“I’m exhausted watching them.” Jack slid out a kitchen chair out for Bitty to sit and then dropped into a chair himself. “I know I didn’t do half of what y’all did today, and I had a game.”
Bitty snerked at Jack’s casual y’all.
Before Jack could defend himself, the girls were back and hauling their fathers up onto their feet and into the living room.
“We made a fire so it would be warm when you tell us the Christmas Eve story.” Noëlle pulled Jack to his overstuffed leather chair, which someone had moved close to the fireplace.
“When you say you made a fire, you do mean the one in the fireplace, right? You didn’t start one, say, in the basement?” Jack raised an eyebrow and pointed to the flames in front of them. The girls giggled again and Joy moved Jack’s hand down and around her back.
“Daddy, did you secretly replace our kids with giggle monsters while I was away working so hard?” Jack asked Bitty, who was leaning against the back of their chair.
Noëlle crooked her finger and Jack leaned closer to her. “You don’t work, Papa. You play games,” she whispered in his ear.
Jack laughed at Bitty’s gasp and stopped him from correcting her. “You’re right, sweetheart. I do play a game for a job. I’m very lucky.”
Bitty tugged the ottoman next to Jack’s chair and sat, leaning close to Jack. Joy scrambled off Papa’s lap and made herself comfortable on Daddy’s.
“Ok, you can start now, Papa,” she said, once she’d wriggled herself comfortable, elbowing Bitty in the ribs at least twice.
Jack heard the tiny ooof each time. He reached out and stroked Bitty’s cheek. “You look beat, Bits.”
“Just glad it’s almost bed time.” Bitty smiled wanly, and Jack understood. Parenting in pairs was damn difficult; single parenting was exhausting and almost impossible.
Noëlle bounced on Jack’s lap. “The Christmas Eve story, Papa!”
Jack laced his fingers through Bitty’s and began. “’Twas the night before Christmas…”
“Nooooooooooooo.”
“No, Papa. The real Christmas Eve story.”
“Oh, you wanted that story. I didn’t know,” Jack said to hear the girls laugh. “Twas a few days before Christmas, and Daddy was huge…”
“Hey now—” Bitty fussed, but Jack was sure he was joking.
Pretty sure, anyway. Bitty had been huge when he was pregnant with twins.
“Our babies weren’t due until January, and we asked Daddy’s doctor if we could go visit your grandparents in Quebec for Christmas.”
“Go to Quebec, they said. It’ll be fun, they said.” Bitty snuggled Joy closer, kissing her forehead when she settled against him.
“Bad Bob and Grammy were away—” Noëlle prompted.
“They weren’t supposed to be—they’d gone to a hockey charity dinner and were snowed in.”
“They couldn’t get home!” Joy added.
“But that was okay, because the weatherman said our skies would be clear for Santa on Christmas Eve. But by the afternoon, the snow wasn’t big, fat flakes any more. They were tiny and didn’t stop. But even that was okay, because Daddy and I were safe.”
“Until!” the girls squealed, trying to make Papa speak faster.
“Until way after bedtime, Daddy woke me up. His eyes were huge—”
Joy opened her eyes as wide as she could. “Like this?”
Bitty nodded. “Yep. And I said, The babies are coming. And Papa said,” Bitty put on his best Quebecois accent (which was still horrible, Jack thought), “No, they’re not. We have four more weeks.”
“To be fair, it was the middle of the night,” Jack laughed at himself. “But Daddy was pretty sure, and he was making all kinds of crazy faces like this—”
Jack contorted his face into ridiculous poses. Bitty just shook his head in mock disgust.
“What did you do, Daddy?” Noëlle asked, breathless and afraid, as if this were the first time she’d heard the story.
“First we called the hospital near your grandparents’ house but they didn’t have a doctor who could help us. It’s still pretty unusual for a man to have babies, even today.”
The girls were finally quiet as they listened. Jack watched his family, their features golden in the firelight. A life like this, with a house full of noise and happiness, was only a hazy, distant dream when he was in rehab a lifetime ago. The Haus had come close, but this life they’d forged in Providence was more than then-Jack would have dared hope for.
Jack cleared his throat, blinking back the tears that threatened to expose him as a softie. That would not be good for his reputation. “We needed to make sure that Daddy would be safe. We called every hospital we could get to, but they had no one who could help and no room, anyway.”
“What happened, Papa?” Noëlle asked, her voice tiny and afraid. “Was Daddy okay?”
“Yes, baby, I was, because your Papa is a super genius. He said, I know who to call!” Bitty reached for Noëlle’s hand, and she wriggled out of Jack’s lap and into Daddy’s.
“When I was little and Bad Bob played hockey, his team doctor was our friend. So I called Uncle Pierre because he would know what to do. He told us to come to his house. I helped Daddy to the car, and we drove through the snow to Uncle Pierre’s.
“He told us to come to the stable behind his house, and Daddy kept saying, I’m not a horse. I’m not having these babies in a barn. But when we walked through the doorway, it looked just like a hospital! Uncle Pierre had everything we needed.”
Joy clapped, but Noëlle grabbed her hands to stop her. “Keep going,” she said.
“As Uncle Pierre was getting all of his equipment ready, he told us that men had been having babies a lot longer than the news ever said, and that included hockey players. Uncle Pierre talked the entire time he helped Daddy into a gown and onto the table. He told us we would be surprised by whose babies he’d delivered. He said that not every unspecified lower body injury was what it seemed.”
“Were you scared, Daddy?” Noëlle asked, petting Bitty’s face.
“A little, but I knew that when we were done, I’d get to hold you two, so it was worth it.”
Jack swallowed hard as he tried to speak around the emotions. He didn’t have enough words, not the right words to tell any of them how much he loved them. That he was overwhelmed but in the best way, not like the old days where drugs were his escape. These three were all the clichés: they were his heartbeat, his nourishment, his happiness, his life. “Uncle Pierre said Daddy was very brave, and that he’d never seen two more beautiful babies in all of his years. He said we should name you both after him, PierreOne and PierreTwo. I thought it was a good idea.”
“Papa, you are silly. We were supposed to be Joy and Noëlle!” Joy shook her head because her fathers weren’t getting the story right.
Bitty slipped the girls from his lap to the floor. “Actually, you were supposed to be Suzanne Larissa,” Bitty said, kissing Joy’s cheek. “And you were supposed to be Alicia Georgia.” He kissed her cheek, also.
Jack scooted to the edge of his chair. “By the time you were born, it was after midnight on Christmas day. Uncle Pierre said Joyeux Noëlle. And Daddy said, Those would make beautiful names. And that’s why you are Joyeux Suzanne and you are Noëlle Alicia.”
“And your Papa called us at two in the morning and told us the good news,” Alicia said from the kitchen doorway.
“Your Daddy called us at the same time and told us,” Suzanne said from behind her. “And we took the first plane that we could, just so we could hold you both and love on y’all. We brought y’all so many gifts that your fathers fussed at us for spoiling you.”
The girls squealed and ran to their grandmothers for hugs and love and then jumped into their grandfathers’ arms.
“Come on, mes anges,” Bob said. “Let's see if we old people remember how to put children to bed. Besides I heard on the radio that Santa is over Nova Scotia—”
The girls slid down to the floor and ran to the stairs calling good night and Merry Christmas leaving the adults to follow.
With everyone gone for the time being, Bitty perched himself lightly on Jack’s lap and laid his head on Jack’s shoulder.
"I'm worried about you, Bittle. You're having trouble keeping your eyes open."
Bitty sat upright and reached into the pocket of his apron. He brought out a rectangular box, wrapped but scrunched from the weight of two little girls. He bit his bottom lip as he handed the gift to Jack.
“What’s this? We agreed not to—” Jack hoped he didn’t sound irritated, but they’d agreed on no gifts. And this was exactly the size box a watch would fit inside.
Bitty nudged Jack toward the chair. “Just sit down and open it,” he said as he reclaimed his spot on the ottoman.
Jack took gift, and untied the ribbon, sliced through the tape with his thumbnail, and ignored Bitty’s huffs of impatience as he flattened out the paper. He lifted the top from the box and opened the glittery tissue.
A home pregnancy test with two stripes.
“You’re—We’re—” Jack stammered, speechless.
Bitty nodded. He took Jack’s hands. “No snowstorms this time. He or she should be due before training camp starts.”
Bitty stood but Jack remained seated. He lightly pressed his ear to Bitty’s stomach and whispered, “Hello, baby. Papa loves you and your Daddy who’s very good at keeping secrets.”
“We love you, too, Papa.” Bitty stepped back far enough to kiss Jack. “And this time, we can prepare Uncle Pierre.”