Page 50 of That Defining Moment

Colin cupped the side of Lysander’s face, his thumb pressing into the hollow beneath his cheekbone. His skin was puffy and warm, the oedema visible in his fingers, and Lysander turned his face and kissed his father’s swollen palm. “Welcome home, Sander.”

✦ ✧ ✦

The master bedroom became the Huxley family headquarters.

Colin couldn’t leave the bed, so it became the centre of gravity that the rest of the household arranged itself around.

Diwa brought food, a full spread that he assembled on the wide oak dresser at the far wall, ferrying dishes up from the kitchen two at a time: chicken adobo in a clay pot, garlic fried rice, and lumpia arranged on a plate in tight golden rows.

Lysander watched him work.

He repositioned Colin’s pillows without being asked, one hand sliding behind Colin’s lower back to lift him while the other rearranged the stack, adding a cushion beneath that Colin sighed into. Then Diwa’s hand settled on the swell of Colin’s stomach, his palm spread wide, fingers splayed over the taut fabric of the jumper, and he left it there while he talked to Ryland about Max’s nappy output.

He kept touching Colin’s belly. He’d be mid-conversation with Stephen, and it would drift right back to the bump, his thumb tracing small circles over the curve while Colin shifted his weight so that Diwa’s palm sat more comfortably on him.

His father, who had spent Lysander’s entire life taking care of others, was lying in a bed while his alpha fed him. This was everything he’d ever wished for Colin.

Ryland had positioned himself cross-legged at the foot of the bed with Max in the crook of one arm, and was making notes on his mobile with the other.

“What are you typing?” Stephen asked.

“Feeding log,” Ryland said. “Timestamp, duration, which breast, volume estimate in millilitres, and a subjective satisfaction rating on a scale of one to five.”

Stephen’s head fell back against the pillows. “A satisfaction rating.”

“His. Not mine. I’m assessing based on post-feed calmness, duration of sleep onset, and whether he cries within fifteen minutes of detaching.” Ryland glanced down at Max, who was asleep with his mouth open and a thread of milk running from the corner of his lip to Ryland’s sleeve. “This feed was a four point two. Strong latch. Minor fussing at minute seven, which I attribute to a suboptimal angle on the left breast.”

“Ryland.”

“We could push it to a four point five with better pillow support. I’ve been researching nursing pillows. There’s a U-shaped one on Amazon with four thousand reviews and a mean rating of four point six, although I suspect review bias, so I’ve adjusted the estimate down to four point three.”

Lysander bit the inside of his cheek and turned to his father, who was watching Ryland with a look of such profound fondness that it nearly made Lysander start crying again. Colin caught his eye and mouthed, I know.

“Tell Sander why you chose the name Max,” Stephen commanded. He made pointed eye contact with Lysander, his lips trembling with a suppressed grin.

“Max,” Ryland said, “is named after Max Planck. The father of quantum theory. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918 for his discovery of energy quanta, which fundamentally altered humanity’s understanding of atomic and subatomic processes.” He looked down at his son. “I felt it was appropriate, given that this child has fundamentally altered my understanding of everything.”

Stephen rolled his eyes so hard that his whole head moved.

“Stephen wanted to name him Jacob,” Ryland added, in a tone that made it clear he considered this a near miss on par with an asteroid passing through Earth’s orbit.

“Jacob would have been a lovely name. Jacob Huxley-Ryland.”

“Jacob is what you name someone who would end up going on pub crawls and Contiki holidays.”

“I went on plenty of pub crawls and Contiki holidays in my early twenties, Ryland! I want that for Max.”

“And I want to set him up for a rich, intellectual life. Max Planck is the foundational figure of modern physics, Stephen. The Planck constant is literally one of the defining quantities of the universe. Without Max Planck, there is no quantum mechanics, there is no semiconductor technology, and there is no mobile phone on which you spent months googling baby names that won’t, and I quote, get our child punched in the playground.”

“Diwa made us an app,” Stephen told Lysander, cutting across the lecture ruthlessly. “Because we couldn’t agree on a single name for three months. He built us a baby name app. Like Tinder, but for names. We each created a list, and uploaded it. Then you swipe right if you like it, left if you don’t, and it only shows you the matches.”

Lysander glanced at Diwa, who shrugged one shoulder without removing his hand from Colin’s belly.

“It took twenty minutes to build,” Diwa said. “And it was faster than listening to them argue about it for another trimester.”

“Max was on both our lists,” Ryland said. “We both swiped right. Stephen didn’t know who Max Planck was, so technically I won by omission.”

Colin’s laugh started as a wheeze and ended as a full-body spasm. “We didn’t need the app,” Colin announced, once he’d got his breath back. “Diwa made a spreadsheet. Names down one side, meanings down the other. Filipino names, English names, everything. He’d colour-coded them.”