“Shut up. I haven’t mentioned her since before we got married.” She’s right; she hasn’t. Celia hasn’t been a part of our lives in any way, shape or form since the last time I’d seen her at the loft. She’d kept her end of the bargain, ceasing all contact with me and my family. And I’d kept my end—Warren Werner is still the head of Werner Media.

For a time after our engagement, Celia’s name came up in counseling. She’d been a contributing source of much of our conflict, and it was inevitable that she’d be discussed. But eventually all of us agreed—Alayna, Lucy and I—that talking about Celia further kept her around when she didn’t need to be. We didn’t talk about her after that, and, eventually, I didn’t think about her either. Well, not often.

“Anyway,” Alayna says now. “Your mother told me.”

“Of course she did.” She told me as well. She always did love to stir the pot, even sober. Though Sophia has long lost her love for Celia—rarely mentioning her anymore, thank God—she hasn’t exactly warmed to Alayna. She hasn’t warmed to anyone, for that matter, except for possibly my father. The two seem to find redemption in each other, even when no one else can see it. Perhaps Alayna and I are like them in the eyes of others.

“Thoughts?” She’s not testing me for an emotional reaction. There are no secrets between us anymore. Particularly not about my old partner in crime.

“Regarding Celia? Good for her.” It’s as much attention as I will give to the woman on the birthday of my first child. It doesn’t mean I don’t wonder about her on occasion, or that I didn’t pause when I heard her news. Part of me hopes her romance is genuine. Wouldn’t that be ironic?

But it’s entirely possible the engagement is simply a scam or her parents’ arrangement. She’s likely still cold and unfeeling. Maybe even unhappy and miserable.

I won’t lie. There’s a small part of me that wishes for the latter. Okay, a big part of me.

“Yeah, good for her.” Alayna’s tone seems indifferent, and I sense the bitterness she once carried for Celia has been replaced with other things. Things that matter. The prestige of running New York’s Hippest Club of the year, according to the Village Voice. Two anniversaries celebrated with a husband who loves her more than could ever be expressed. A newborn baby who coos and clicks in her sleep.

Alayna stares down again at her pink-hatted bundle. I think she could look at her baby forever. I could look at her looking at her baby forever. Jesus, I’m getting mushy in my old age.

I turn back to the tablet and click for advanced search. I enter a meaning, curious if any names will pop up. A list of over fifty does. I scan through them, my breath catching on one. I click the name to read the definition further.

“Alayna,” I say, still not believing my eyes, “did you know your name means precious?”

She’s taken aback. “Seriously?”

“Precious; sun ray. See?” I show her the tablet where the definition is clear as day.

She blinks at the screen. “Did you know that?”

“I had no idea.” I’m not sure if she realizes how often I’ve referred to her as the light in my darkness. Her name is completely fitting for her. For the woman that would be mine.

“It was fated,” Alayna says with the sweetest grin. “I was meant to be yours. You knew what I was about before I did.”

I can’t stand it. She’s too beautiful. Too perfect. I look back at the tablet. “You’re giving me too much credit.”

“No, I’m not.”

And, I think, maybe she’s right. Maybe we were fated or destined to find each other. Maybe everything that happened to me and Celia and Alayna was all meant to happen, each painful part playing out in order to lead us to our personal happy ending.

Or maybe it’s just coincidence. And does it really matter? It’s a happy ending either way.

Our baby stirs again, this time with more determination. “She’s waking up.” I watch her tilt her head toward Alayna, her little mouth open and searching.

“Hey, she’s rooting,” Alayna exclaims.

“It looks to me like she’s trying to suck your breast.” I tickle my baby’s cheek with my finger. “I get it, little girl. I like sucking her breasts too.”

Alayna laughs. “That’s called rooting, you dork.”

“It’s not called rooting when I do it.”

“No, that’s called awesome,” she says, looking up at me with that devilish grin of hers, the one that can make me instantly hard if I’m not careful.

Again, I have to look away. “Stop it. You’re going to make me horny, and the nurse said six days.”

“Six weeks.”

I sigh. “I suppose I heard wrong.”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

I return my focus to the screen in front of me and scan further down the list. “What do you think about the name Mina?”

“Mina? Mina Louise.” She repeats it, testing it out. “I like it. What does it mean?”

“Precious. In Sanskrit.” I gaze down at my daughter—my daughter!—and watch her fight to open her eyes, her little lids squeezing tight and relaxing before they pop open. “Look at her. What do you think? Does it fit?”

“She’s certainly precious.”

“Like her mother.”

I toss the iPad to the end of the bed and wrap my arms around my wife and child. For someone who once felt very little, I am now overwhelmed with emotions. My heart is full to the brim, overflowing with love. So much love.

Sometimes it’s hard to even remember that I ever was another man. That I ever was anything but this one—a man who will fill a camera with newborn baby pictures and tear up as his precious daughter opens her eyes. A man who found sunshine in his dark existence when he deserved it least.

Alayna Withers changed everything for me. I can easily divide my life into two parts—before her and after. The person I was in that time long ago and the person I became when my eyes first found hers.

Though that isn’t entirely accurate. Before her, I never really lived. So there is only after.

I begin and end with her. It’s as simple and as profound as that. Our worlds have entwined and wrapped around each other’s completely. They’ve shaped into something new and fixed and whole. There is no longer her story or mine, but now and always, only ours.

THE END