Child care is pretty much only for rich people, in my opinion. Honestly, I don’t see how anyone working a minimum-wage job can afford child care. They’d be working just to pay it, which makes no sense. But aside from that, Andrew and I both agreed that we don’t want to leave our daughter in the care of strangers, anyway. So, I worked it out with Janelle that I work only part-time shifts in the evenings when Andrew is home and every other weekend.

We’ve been living well and pulling everything off as though we’ve been doing it this way our whole lives. We may have six figures in savings, but we are no strangers to putting back as much as we can from our earnings and spending as little as possible. Other than our day jobs, Andrew and I have been playing gigs pretty consistently, every other Saturday night when I’m not working, at a bar that Blake’s brother Rob opened up in town. Something happened with the Underground and Rob had to shut it down. Rumor is that Rob narrowly avoided a jail sentence. I’m guessing it had to do with him not having a bar license, I don’t know. But Blake is manager of the new bar now, and on the nights that Andrew and I perform there we get half of the cover charge, which is more than we’ve ever made playing at any bar other than Aidan’s. Last Saturday, we raked in eight hundred bucks.

It’s just more cash flow for our savings and our future plans to go wherever that hat tells us to go.

And although Andrew will always put his heart and soul into every performance, like he always has, I can tell now that when we’re up on that stage together that he just can’t wait to be finished so we can pick Lily up from my mom, or whoever is lucky enough to have her for those few hours at night.

Andrew is so great with Lily. He never ceases to amaze me. He gets up in the middle of the night about as much as I do to change her diapers, and sometimes he even stays awake with me when I feed her. He has his guy moments, too, so he’s not entirely Mr. Perfect. Apparently, he’s not fully immune to crappy diapers, and just this morning I caught him gagging while trying to change her. I laughed, but I felt so bad for him that I couldn’t help but take over. He left the room with the neck of his shirt pulled over his mouth and nose.

And… well, I don’t really want to get too ahead of myself with the assumption, but I think Lily may have softened Andrew so much that he might actually like Natalie now. Maybe just a little. I don’t know, but whenever Nat is over, holding Lily and making Lily smile by talking to her with that animated personality of hers, Andrew seems OK with it. By the time Lily is three months old, I honestly can’t remember the last time Andrew called Natalie a hyena behind her back, or gave me that exasperated look when he knew she wasn’t looking.

He still cringes when she refers to herself as Lily’s godmother, but… baby steps. He’ll come around.

39

February 9—Lily’s first birthday

“Aidan and Michelle are here!” I hear Camryn say from the living room.

I fasten the last button on the back of Lily’s dress and then take her by the hand. But she doesn’t like it when I hold her hand and always wiggles it away and grasps my index finger instead.

“Let’s go, baby girl,” I say looking down at her. “Uncle Aidan and Aunt Michelle are here to see the birthday girl.”

I swear she knows what I’m saying.

She squeezes my finger as tight as she can, giggles, and takes one big step forward, as if I’m not fast enough to keep up. With my back arched over, I take fast half steps as we shuffle down the hallway, letting her run on her chunky little baby legs out ahead of me. When she starts to fall as she rounds the corner, I grip her hand, lift her slightly off her feet, and let her get her balance again. She started walking at ten months old. Her first word was “Mama” at six months. At seven months she said “Dada,” and I melted when I heard her call me that the first time.

And Camryn was right—she’s got my green eyes.

“Lily!” Michelle says all dramatic-like, squatting down to Lily’s level and wrapping her up in her wide arms. “Oh my goodness, you’re so big!” She kisses her cheeks and her forehead and her nose, and Lily cackles uncontrollably. “Nom nom nom!” Michelle adds, pretending to eat her cheeks.

I look over at Aidan, who has my nephew, Avery, attached to his hip. I reach out for him, but he’s shy and recoils toward Aidan’s chest. I back off, hoping he doesn’t start crying. Aidan tries to coax him.

“Is he walking yet?” Camryn asks, standing next to me.

Michelle follows Lily into the living room where a plethora of pink and purple helium balloons are pressed against the ceiling. When Lily realizes she can’t reach the balloons, she gives up and goes straight over to her stack of presents on the floor.

Aidan hands two wrapped gifts to Camryn, and we all join Michelle and Lily in the living room. Camryn sets the gifts next to the others.

“He’s been trying,” Aidan answers about Avery’s walking progress. “He holds on to the couch and walks alongside it, but he hasn’t quite got the urge to let go yet.”

“God, he looks just like you, bro,” I say. “Poor kid.”

Aidan would punch me in the gut if his arms were free.

“He’s adorable,” Camryn says as she reaches out to take him.

Of course he is, but I have to mess with my brother.

Avery looks at her like she’s crazy at first, but then gets me back for talking crap about his daddy by going straight to Camryn with no problem.

Aidan laughs.

Nancy and Roger, Natalie and Blake, Sarah and her boyfriend, who already has a kid from an ex-girlfriend, all show up practically at the same time. Afterward, our next door neighbors, Mason and Lori, a young married couple with a two-year-old, show up with gifts. Lily, being the little show-off she is, bends over with her hands and head on the carpet, sticking her diaper-covered butt in the air. Then she pretends to fall down and says “Uh-oh,” to everyone’s laughter.

“Look at that curly blonde hair,” Michelle says. “Was Camryn’s hair that white when she was a baby?” she asks Camryn’s mom, who is sitting next to her.

Nancy nods. “Yeah, it definitely was.”

Later, after everyone has arrived, Lily gets to open her presents and, just like her mama, she sings and dances and puts on a show for everybody. And then when she gets to blow out her candle (really, I kind of blew it out for her) she practically bathes herself in cake and purple icing. It’s in her hair and hanging off her eyelashes and shoved up both nostrils. Camryn tries, futilely, to keep her from making too big of a mess, but she gives up and lets Lily have her fun.

Lily’s passed out cold from all of the excitement long before the last of her guests leave.

“I think the bath did it,” Camryn whispers to me as we stand over her bed.

I take Camryn by the hand and pull her along with me, shutting Lily’s door but leaving it open just a crack.

We lie on the couch together watching a movie for the next two hours, then Camryn kisses my lips and leaves to take a shower.

I turn off the TV and lift up from the couch and look around the room. I hear the water running in the shower and the cars driving by on the street outside. I think about the conversation I had with my boss yesterday, about how since I’ve been at my job for nearly two years now, that I have two weeks of vacation time coming up. But I know that two weeks just aren’t enough when it comes to Camryn and me doing the things we want to do. The whole job situation is the only thing that we never quite worked out when it comes to what we’ll do when we want to leave Raleigh for a month or more. Neither one of us wants to lose our jobs, but we ultimately came to one conclusion at least: it’s a sacrifice that we’re willing to make and will have to make if we’re going to fulfill our dreams to travel the world and to avoid being victims of that everyday, monotonous life that scares us shitless.

We know we won’t be at these jobs forever. And, well, that’s kind of the point.

But I told my boss that, yes, I would need to take those vacation days in the next couple of months. I decided not to give him any kind of notice about leaving, until after I talk to Camryn tonight first.

I get up from the couch and grab a notepad from the drawer at the computer desk and sit down at the kitchen table with it. And I start to write down the various places that Camryn and I have already talked about wanting to see: France, Ireland, Scotland, Brazil, Jamaica… I write until I have a pile of strips of paper in the center of the table. While I’m folding them one by one and dropping them into Camryn’s cowgirl hat, I hear the water shut off in the bathroom.

She comes into the kitchen with wet hair plastered against her back.

“What are you doing?” she asks, but realizes it before I have the chance to answer. She sits down next to me. And she smiles. That’s a great sign.

“Maybe we should leave in May or June,” I suggest.

She drags a comb through her wet hair a few times and seems to be thinking about it. Then she places the comb on the table. “You think Lily is ready for that?” she asks.

I nod. “Yeah, I think she is. She’s walking. We said we’d wait at least until she started walking.”

Camryn nods, too, still thinking about it, but she never looks unsure. “Have to get her started early,” she says.

We definitely aren’t like other families. A lot of parents would completely reject the idea of traveling out of the country with a small child just to be traveling. But not us. I admit that it’s not for everybody, but for us it’s the only way. Of course, our “travels beyond” won’t be like the times Camryn and I spent on the road in the United States. Driving around aimlessly for hours and days and weeks on end with a baby in the car isn’t entirely feasible—Lily would hate that. No, these travels will be more staying put in cities we want to explore than going from one city to another without much rest in between. And unfortunately, we won’t be taking the Chevelle.

Camryn pulls the cowgirl hat over to her and shuffles her hand around inside. “Did you add all the ones we put on the list?” she asks.

“Of course,” I say.

She playfully narrows her eyes at me. “You’re lying.”

“What? No, really I did.”

She nudges me in the shin with her bare foot underneath the table. “You’re full of shit, Andrew.”

Then she starts pulling out the strips of paper and unfolds them and reads them off.

“Jamaica.” She sets it down. “France.” She sets it on top of the other one. “Ireland. Brazil. Bahamas. Virgin Islands. Mexico.” One by one she stacks them on top of each other.

After several more she pulls out the last one, holds it up folded loosely in her fingertips, and she snarls at me. “Something tells me that this doesn’t say ‘Italy.’ ” She’s trying so hard not to smile.

I really don’t know why I thought I could actually pull this off.

While I’m trying not to laugh and keep a straight face, she unfolds the paper and reads its contents: “Australia.” She drops the paper on the top of the pile. “I should penalize you for trying to cheat,” she says, rounding her chin and crossing her arms stubbornly over her chest.

“Oh come on,” I say, unable to keep a straight face after all. “At least I didn’t add a few more that say ‘Brazil.’ ” I laugh.

“You thought about it, though, didn’t you?!”

I wince at her loud voice, and we both glance toward the hall where Lily is sleeping in her bedroom.

Camryn leans over the table some and hisses through her teeth, “I’m penalizing you. No sex for a week.” She leans away again, pressing her back against the chair and smirks at me.

OK, this isn’t funny anymore.

I swallow down my pride, hesitate, and then say, “Come on, you can’t be serious. You like it as much as I do.”

“Of course I do,” she says. “But haven’t you ever heard anywhere that women have this magical ability to be able to live without it longer? I’ll get myself off.”

“You’re bluffing,” I say, not convinced.

She nods subtly with that hell-no-I’m-not gleam in her eye, and it’s making me nervous. “What are you going to do to make up for it, then?”

One side of my mouth lifts into a grin. “Whatever you want.” I pause, holding up my finger and add before it’s too late, “Well, as long as it’s not degrading, disgusting, or unfair.”