someone blah blah

She frowns when that question makes his smile falter for a moment.

She steps back — her feet hit the bag of gifts she’d brought.

“Is CJ okay?” Andy asks. Danny hesitates too long to say anything.

He nods. She waits. “She’s been… it’s hard on her,” he says carefully. “She’s tired. We’re both tired, of course, but she’s— she’s really tired. That’s normal, right?”

“I was dead on my feet the first three months,” Andy tells him with a gentle smile, keeping her rapidly beating heart to herself. She can see that reassure him.

“She’s upstairs, first door on your right on top of the stairs, baby’s with her.”

“Does she need anything?” Andy asks before she leaves, taking her shoes off in the kitchen. She places them beneath the table for now.

Danny shakes his head. “I’ll bring some food in a bit, don’t worry about it. Just— she’ll appreciate you stopping by.”

*

She knocks before she enters. She waits, gives CJ a chance to respond or cover herself up if needed.

Andy doesn’t remember that much from her own time being postpartum — less than she wants to. But something she’ll never forget it is the way that just because she’d sometimes walk around the house with a baby on her breast for all to see, meant anyone at anytime could barge into her spaces like privacy had stopped being something she might appreciate.

She waits. She knocks again, carefully, and hears nothing happening inside. Thinking CJ might be asleep, Andy opens the door as quietly as it goes.

Not asleep. CJ is fully awake — the room quiet and peaceful, really, nursery decorations cozy and more pink than she’d expected from CJ. She’s awake, upright, and all the more unsettling for it.

CJ is sitting in a comfortable chair in the corner of the room, legs tucked beneath her, a spit-up blanket on her shoulder, half her curls in a half-hearted attempt at a ponytail and the other half stuck to her face.

She’s holding the baby in her arms like Julia May’s an obligation she doesn’t know how to fulfil.

Expecting a smile — or just the attempt at one — when CJ looks up at her was naive in retrospect. Andy can’t keep her face straight. “Oh, honey…” she says softly, surprised to hear CJ chuckle bitterly at that.

She comes closer, leans down by the chair so she can squeeze CJ’s shoulder and take a proper look at Julia May. She looks happy in her mother’s arms.

She knows CJ knows what she looks like because CJ looks down at her daughter really mostly to avoid looking back up at Andy. “How are you doing?” Andy asks, feeling stupid just saying it when the answer’s bellowing in her ear loud enough before CJ’s said a word.

CJ doesn’t answer yet, but when Andy asks if she can touch Julia May, she looks up at her like she can’t understand why that’s a question that warrants asking.

Andy gently strokes the whole four hairs — ginger, she notes with a proud smile — on Julia May’s head and feels tears pinching the corners of her eyes when the little girl giggles up at her, delighted. She misses babies.

“I’m fine,” CJ whispers much too late. Her hands are frozen against her daughter’s body. “Just. Tired, you know? You were tired.”

“Dead on my feet,” Andy repeats what she told Danny with even less conviction, and CJ looks away again. “But the happiest I’d ever been.”

She regrets saying it as soon as she sees the way CJ flinches in on herself, Julia May stirring in her mom’s lap like she, too, realises something’s off. Andy continues gently stroking her hair.

“Yeah,” CJ says. She couldn’t have sounded further away if she’d tried. “Me too.”

Andy pulls up an ottoman to sit next to CJ and Julia May, covering CJ’s hand with her own against the little girl’s belly. The girl smiles. “Don’t pretend,” she tells CJ firmly, her voice soft all the same. “Not in front of me.”

CJ tries to muffle an unexpected cry they both should’ve seen coming in the spit-up muslin that’s been slipping from her shoulder. She shakes her head, too wildly, because one of her curls hits Julia May’s nose who makes her very loud complaint known to the previously quiet room.

Andy doesn’t say anything yet, not even when CJ’s wiping her eyes with the back of her hand and holding Julia May too awkwardly to be comfortable. She doesn’t say anything until the third attempt CJ makes at opening her mouth and closing it like she’s about to puke.

“Okay,” Andy says quickly, hurriedly, an arm around CJ’s shoulders now. “It’s okay,” she says, even though she has no idea how it’ll be so.

The tears stop as quickly as they came. CJ blows her nose in the muslin and drops it to the ground where it joins some tissues, soiled bedsheets, more than a few discarded cloths used for towels, and two used diapers folded tightly shut.

Danny comes up the stairs, just as Julia May is smiling again, just as CJ is looking down with something that could really be described as the fondness of a mother. Andy wants to be sick and just thanks Danny for the sandwiches he’s provided them with.

He kisses CJ’s lips, ruffles the ginger hair on Julia May’s head and asks if any of them need something more. He seems worried and put off but not surprised that CJ doesn’t answer.

“Everyone who’s visited keeps telling me I’m still glowing,” CJ says quietly, after her husband’s closed the door again and has headed downstairs.

She’s back to staring Julia May. She rocks her like it’s an experiment; she breathes in sharply when the little girl giggles.

Andy kisses the top of her head. “Lying bastards, all of them,” she says as gently as she can.