happiness is a butterfly

i want love

Baby J is the size of an avocado.

Discovering the gender of their baby makes everything suddenly seem so real for all of them.

Marsha focuses her energy on turning the spare bedroom into a nursery for the baby. Beverley calls her with talks of a family baby crib and the blue socks she's knitting.

She feels supported.

Her belly has officially popped, making her once tiny swell much more obvious. It also means everyone at school stares at her even more than usual, as her fitted knit dresses highlight her rounded form. Someone in the toilets compliments her pregnancy fashion, which makes her smile but then think of Maddy and the promise they used to make that they would look like absolute hot bitches even when pregnant.

Her mom takes her out for dinner, just the two of them. No Nate, her mom had insisted. No Lexi, she had retaliated. Suze asks her if she's okay, if she's happy, if she's scared over and over again. And Cassie wishes she could confide in her mom, or anyone really, and share her fears.

She knows what they'll say, so she keeps her relationship to herself.

She tries her hardest to push at the far back of her head the concerns raised by Nate on his ability to raise this child. It's different, she reasons, for her that's carrying their child the bond is immediate from the womb. She can feel his every flutter, she feels connected to her son from before she knew he was her son. She's hopeful that the moment Nate will get to hold his son all his fears will wash away.

So she puts on her pageant smile and acts like everything is fine. If you ignore the bad things in your life, eventually they go away.

"We're so happy." She reassures her mom. "We're so excited."

Her and Nate start talking names. Cassie has a long list of boy names she loves. Nate has a lot of No's.

Most important is to avoid any name with any correlation to the people in their life they hate.

"So your middle name is Myrtle?" He asks with amusement and a scrunched nose as they lie in bed.

"Ugh, I was conceived at Myrtle Beach." She groans covering her face. "But okay, Nathaniel Edward..."

"What's wrong with my name? It's a strong name." He teases. His father would tell him over and over again the importance of his name. Nathaniel. A strong name for a strong man.

"I like Nathaniel for a boy, like the hot guy from Gossip Girl." And he starts playfully questioning how she could ever find another Nate handsome. His finger tickles her side.

But no, there was no way he would want to call his son after himself. There was enough baggage his son would be inheriting as is, no need to curse him with being a Junior as well.

"Okay, so what do you like? You keep saying no to everything..."

He sighs rolling away from her, which by now she has learned means losing playful Nate and getting broody Nate instead. "I don't know...maybe Bennett? For a middle name or something."

Bennett.

She knows what that means. "Like your brother?" She asks, turning to her side facing him. He nods his head silently and she wonders whether to ask more about his brother or allow him to open up at his own accord.

Cassie had vaguely heard over the years about a third Jacobs brother who passed away in an accident. But in the months she had spent living in their home, Bennett's name had never been brought up or discussed. His photo was on the wall, as was his height measured on the door frame to the den. Bennet, age 7, it read.

"You never talk about him..." she prompts tentatively and his eyes turn to hers. Like he had done many times in their short time together, and like he will do for years to come, he searches her eyes for that reassurance to open up.

"We went to Mexico for Mom's birthday one year, it was such a crazy holiday. We stayed at this cool resort and did all these activities as a family." He begins with a smile.

Nate would go on to tell her about a fun afternoon at the beach with his brothers. His Mom had gone shopping by herself, and their Dad had left them in the afternoon for a couple of hours. Aaron, being 15, was left in charge of his two brothers, which in itself Cassie could tell you was a terrible idea.

"This guy started talking to us and he had these super cool jet skis. We were dying to go on one the whole trip but Mom and Dad kept saying no, so he offered us to use them..." Nate's voice paused as he went to swallow the lump in his throat and Cassie could feel the sense of dread pooling at the bottom of her stomach, like an acid lava burning her insides.

There was always so much competition between him and Aaron, their father and grandfather had always pushed them to win every challenge, to participate in every sport. To win or go home. That meant that all sports played by the two Jacobs boys could turn a little rough.

Bennett was different though. A little younger than his two brothers, he had always been more of a gentle soul. He would get scared easily and was always such a Momma's boy he never wanted to get in trouble. So when the time came to go on the jet skis, Bennett had started crying begging his brothers not to go.

Knowing they couldn't leave him unattended on the beach, the two brothers pushed the youngest to follow their lead and stop crying.

"Don't be a pussy." Nate recalls Aaron telling their brother with a shoulder nudge.

Jed, the guy with the jet skis, offered to take Bennett on his jet ski. "We'll go slow." he promised, allowing the two older brothers to race each other in the water.

If he closes his eyes, Nate can still feel the salty wind hitting his face as he accelerates over the waves. It felt like freedom, until it didn't.

"We were going so fast trying to overtake each other and then Jed started racing us as well, I don't know I thought maybe he was having fun so he went faster? But then it looked like they were driving right into me so I tried to swerve and lost control of the jet ski."

Cassie's eyes scrunch closed as Nate describes the sound and feel of the impact of their jet skis crashing. Sometimes Nate can still feel his body flying off from the force of the hit.

Jed, it turns out, was highly intoxicated at the time of driving the vessel.

Bennett, who was not the strongest swimmer to begin with, had knocked his head in the collision and drowned.

The family of 5 made their way home as 4, a little sunburnt and extremely distraught. Nate's broken arm was in a sling, a reminder that the events of the previous week were not an awful nightmare.

It wasn't their fault, grandparents and family friends would reassure them. But he could feel the blame every time his mother looked his way.

Marsha had never quite recovered from the tragic loss of her son. Needless to say that was also their last family holiday.

Cassie sheds a few tears at the story, hormones will do that to you. And now that she was on her way to become a mother, she couldn't fathom what that loss would feel like.

"I just keep thinking about how he begged us not to go and we made him." He told Cassie.

And one thing he would never admit out loud, or confess to anyone, was that when they came home and weeks later he went digging in his father's office, a new shiny DVD with a green case sat proudly in Cal's collection.

And Nate would play the tape and recognise a young man from their hotel having sex with his father.

There was no date on the DVD, but Nate is pretty sure Cal recorded this little escapade on that damned afternoon he had left them at the beach.

And being angry at his father was easier than being devoured by guilt.

I want love, but it's impossible. A man like me, so irresponsible.

A man like me is dead in places other men feel liberated.