Chapter Thirty-One - The Night We Held a Universe

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

The Night We Held a Universe

THE LIGHTS WERE dim.
The hallway was quiet.
And the baby was… awake.

Wide-eyed.
Wrinkled.
Somewhere between an alien and a poem.

We had no idea what we were doing.
Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

The book said the kid would sleep.
The nurse said it’d be hard.
The world said welcome to parenthood.

But none of them said it would feel like this.

She held them first.
Rocking back and forth in that creaky chair we almost didn’t buy.

Hair messy.
Eyes heavier than gravity.

But the way she looked at them?

Like the stars had come home.
Like nothing before this moment had ever really mattered.

And I just watched.

Watched her hum a song she didn’t even realize she was humming.
Watched our baby blink at her like she already knew every note.
Watched love take shape in real time.

We switched.

She handed them to me with this look like, "Okay. Don’t drop the cosmos."

And I held them.
Arms awkward.
Breath shallow.

But they didn’t cry.
They just stared.
Eyes big. Ancient.
Like they’d seen galaxies before this.

And I whispered, “Hi. I’m your dad. I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing.”

And I swear, they smirked.

The hours blurred.

We didn’t sleep.
Didn’t try.
Didn’t care.

We just passed them back and forth, trading exhaustion for awe.
Holding the weight of a whole future wrapped in a six-pound body.

We talked about names again.
Talked about dreams.
Talked about how weird it was that they had tiny fingernails already.

She cried at 4:12 AM.
I cried at 4:13.

We whispered “I love you,” like it was a new language we were both learning from scratch.

And when the sun finally rose, we just looked at each other.

Wrecked.
Wired.
Forever changed.

And I said, “Best night of my life.”

She smiled.
“You didn’t even sleep.”

I kissed her forehead.

“Didn’t need to.”