Archive of Our Own

And when you come, my heart will be waiting

To make sure that you’re never alone

There and then all my dreams will come true, dear

There and then I will make you my own

October 21, 2025

His son is inconsolable. 

Frank once prided himself on his ability to figure out how to soothe his children. Abby had resented and marvelled at him in turn when, after she tried everything to get Tanner or Carleigh to settle, he managed to find just the thing that would quiet their wailing to intermittent fussing—taking them into the shower, popping them into the stroller and rolling them back and forth on the porch with his foot, bouncing them on Abby’s yoga ball while humming loudly. Honestly, nothing hit quite like it. Family events or work, it didn’t matter; he was an honest-to-God baby whisperer. 

Or at least, that’s what he thought up until forty-two minutes ago. 

He lost a lot of his mojo this past year, and apparently this was one of those things scattered in the wreckage of his life. As he squats down in front of his son in his car seat—Benji’s tiny face beet red, fat tears at the corner of his eyes—a creeping sense of helplessness takes over. 

He needs to be good at this. What use is he to his infant son, to Mel, if he can’t swoop in and fix things? Abby still won’t take him back, her life easier without him around (allegedly). He’s caused enough complications for Mel. Hell, the living proof of that is screaming his head off right in front of him. 

Though neither Frank nor Mel would reduce Benji to that—a problem—the situation certainly presents its challenges. They’ve both thrown around the words trauma, addiction, and vulnerability when they’ve been willing to talk about the night they hooked up. In her infinite kindness, Mel insists on shouldering half the responsibility for their fifteen-minute affair. As far as Frank is concerned, this one is on him: he was her superior, her mentor, a married man, and now it feels as if he’ll spend a lifetime trying to make it up to her. He can’t do that if he can’t manage this one simple thing, the one thing he promised her he could do when she called him tonight for help with the baby. 

“Hey, buddy, listen,” he says gently. “Listen, you have to tell me what’s wrong, okay?” 

Benji shrieks, his tiny body tensing against the carseat straps. 

“I found it!” Mel calls breathlessly from the hall. 

Frank immediately reaches for the pacifier and pops it in his son’s open mouth. After Frank taps it a couple times, Benji finally begins suckling. It’s not going to last—he can tell based on the way the baby stiffens and relaxes in fits and starts—but it buys them some time. 

“I don’t know where they all went,” Mel explains exhaustedly, putting the last few (very unnecessary) items in the diaper bag. “I just bought a new pack last week.” 

“If we can get him down, we’re stopping by the drug store tonight and buying them out.” 

Mel tucks a light blanket around Benji. Frank’s about to stop her, to explain that the shift in temperature might shock him into chilling out, but thinks better of it. As much as he’s their child, Benji is her son first. Frank is the interloper in this space, having only earned the right to be here through a spectacular lack of judgment in an embarrassingly short amount of time.

“You should at least leave one pack,” she says with a frown, hoisting the diaper bag over her shoulder. 

Frank picks up the carseat with care, mindful that anything could set this baby off. “It’s every man for himself out here, Mel.” 

“I disagree.” 

Mel states it simply, without heat or annoyance. Frank’s accustomed to both from Abby, so it’s difficult to know if he’s made a misstep by showing her what a selfish asshole he can be. (As if the drugs, theft, affair, and resistance to taking responsibility for any of it in those first few months after Pittfest wouldn’t have made it abundantly clear. Not that Mel was around for most of it.) 

Feeling properly scolded, Frank follows Mel out of the apartment in silence, watching the swish of her ponytail with every step. It’s a little hypnotic, making him wonder if maybe he shouldn’t point it out to Benji. The baby loves Mel’s hair, his little hands constantly tugging on her braid and tiny face smooshed into her locks. Frank gets it. Since entering their lives roughly two months ago, he’s held Mel in his arms more than once as she’s broken down from the stress of semi-solo parenthood. And as fucked up as it is, he can’t get the smell of her freshly cleaned hair out of his mind. So yeah, if he had an all-access pass to Mel’s hair, he’d be obsessed too. 

(Or would be, in theory, if his wife wasn’t going to take him back soon.) 

Mel turns in the direction of her car, and that’s where he draws the line. 

“No, we’re taking mine. Come on.” 

Mel stops, her lips twitching into a frown. Frank can practically hear the impending protest before the pacifier pops out of Benji’s mouth. Time’s up. His cries pierce the October air. 

As Frank buckles in the carseat’s base on one side of the backseat, Mel places Benji on the other. She gently rocks him, kissing his pajama-covered toes with each tip backward. It doesn’t work exactly, but Frank finds the giggle-wails Mel draws from their son strangely cute. So much so that he pauses long enough to glance across the backseat. 

Motherhood suits Mel. Not that Frank can speak from much experience; he knew her for all of fifteen hours before she had a child. And that’s not to say that Mel’s thriving in her new role; she isn’t. But when she’s locked in on their baby, Frank can’t help but feel something tugging at his tender insides. Deeper than the connection they made that first shift—visceral and more vibrant. Maybe that’s to be expected; she carried his son, after all. They’re family now, and—

“Ready?” she asks desperately. 

Frank clicks the buckle into place. “Yeah, sorry.” 

As Frank reaches for Benji to get him secured, Mel places the diaper bag on the floor and slides in on the rear passenger side, shutting the door behind her. They take turns calming him for a few seconds, Mel booping his nose and Frank tickling his belly. No dice. Mel even takes down her hair, a golden curtain falling over her shoulder as she holds the hot pink hair tie in front of the baby. Benji’s sobs soften, momentarily entranced by the way the bright color moves as she rubs the band between her fingers. 

“His pacifier,” Mel says, holding out her hand. 

Frank looks in the carseat. “Where…?” 

Her eyes grow wide, terrified. “Did we lose it again?” 

Lips suddenly quivering, Mel hides her face behind her hands and hiccups into them. His heart sinks. She’s been hanging on by a thread all day—she had to be if she called him before his shift ended—and Frank was supposed to stop this from happening. Avert the crisis. Be the hero. Be superdad. Super… baby daddy? 

Jesus. 

“No, baby. No, shhh. It’s okay,” he says in a rush. 

Frank gently pulls Mel’s wrists down so that she stays present with him. Her expression, the tears flowing down her cheeks—they take him back to last September like a punch to the gut. 

He remembers the way she leaned in as he stood in front of her, her tear-dampened lips searching and hesitant. The way she tasted like a promise in his adrenaline addled brain. Take care of me, her pleading refrain. It hit like the benzos but better, quieting the noise and grounding him. She gave him a purpose, and in doing so, saved him from himself. 

(Frank remembers the rest too, though he tries to bury the memories deep—her clumsy hands trembling as she pushed his pants down over his ass; the welcoming cradle of her thighs; her pussy so tight it left him gasping; the moaned please, Dr. Langdon that nearly made him spill before she had the chance to come.) 

They haven’t been in the back of his car since the night of Pittfest. The night that they made their baby. In the last two months, he’s described his actions that night in a lot of ways when asked: an accident, another bad decision in a string of bad decisions, a mistake. But looking at Mel here and now—with all the benefit of hindsight—Frank knows he would do it again, a secret he plans on taking to the grave. 

“Let me just…” 

He holds up his hand, as if that will be enough to stem the flow of her tears, and begins shifting around the few bits of child paraphernalia littered across the seat. Thankfully, he finds it lodged between his knee and the seat back within a few moments. 

They really should get going; Benji shows no signs of stopping anytime soon. As he’s shuffling towards the door, however, his heart clenches at the sight before him. After she adjusts Benji’s blanket with shaking fingers, Mel smooths her palm over the baby’s dark hair. She kisses his forehead, murmuring it’s okay, baby in a voice that’s thready from sleeplessness and burnout. The way she sniffles and wipes her cheeks with the back of her hand devastates him. 

Reaching for a tissue from the box carelessly tossed on the floor, Frank extends one to her like he had the night of Pittfest. Mel locks on to it, her gaze alternating between the tissue and his eyes. He doesn’t know if she’s not thinking straight or if she’s also thinking back to that night. Maybe he’s never going to be able to hand her a tissue without either of them treating it like a bomb about to go off. 

“You wanna go two for two?” he asks lightly, wiping away her tears since she seems unable to do it herself. 

“Hmm?” 

Swallowing, Mel takes the tissue from him and, after removing her glasses, dabs at her waterline. 

“The backseat. The baby. We haven’t been here since…” He sighs. “So, two for two.” 

She blinks, brow furrowing. Then, it hits her.

“A sex joke?” she asks weakly but hopeful that she understood.

“Yeah, not a very good one.” 

“I don’t want to have sex with you, Frank.” 

He shakes his head. “No, I know. Sorry, that was inappropriate.” 

Before she can say another word, Frank retreats and slides into the driver’s seat. He tries to ignore the weight of her confession, how it settles on his heart and makes it work just a little harder than it should. 

Instead, he focuses on getting them safely out of the parking lot and on the road. As his music plays low in the background, Frank fiddles with the temperature settings and periodically looks in the rearview mirror at Mel, her long hair obscuring half her face as she murmurs to their fussing son. 

To his credit, he makes it five minutes down the road before he opens his mouth. It’s just that… look, he’s not so vain that he thinks any woman would want to have sex with him. That’s ridiculous, and he’s uncomfortable just thinking about it. But Mel, she had, is the thing. Yeah, sure, they hadn’t exactly been clearheaded, but Frank doesn’t think he’s wrong about this. So if she doesn’t want to then maybe he’d… fucked it up somehow? Beyond the obvious, of course.

“I’m not bad at sex.” 

Their eyes meet in the rearview mirror, Mel’s brows drawn up in confusion. 

“Okay.” 

“I mean, that night. I don’t want you to think that that’s representative of my usual… performance.” He adds miserably, “I typically last much longer.” 

She sighs, weary. “Frank…” 

“I’m just saying that if that’s why you’re not into the idea, it shouldn’t be… you know, a concern.” 

He needs to shut up. Her face is doing this thing that it does when she’s uncomfortable to the point of distress. Maybe even tears. For the past few weeks, Frank has become well acquainted with it. 

He doesn’t even know why he cares. Once Abby realizes the past year was one giant clusterfuck of a mistake and that they’re better off together, it won’t. They’ve been together for years; they can’t just throw this away without even trying. Abby can’t really think this is what’s good for them, for the kids, after so many major life changes this past year. Once, he and Abby had been a good team—maybe not lately, maybe not since before Tanner—but Frank knows they can get there again if she gives him a fair shake. 

So, why does it matter what Mel thinks of him in bed? He and Mel are never having sex again. 

Maybe he hadn’t shown her a good time last September, but then again, how could he have? Neither of them was in a good place. It’s not as if he’d taken her out on a date or something. It wouldn’t even make a difference if Mel were just some random co-worker—she isn’t the type to kiss and tell; that much is abundantly clear; his reputation isn’t on the line here—but she’s not. She’s the mother of his child, and maybe that’s why he feels like he owes her more than he gave. He wrecked her life; she should at least have enjoyed herself in the process. Christ, he’s such a fucking asshole. 

“I don’t think of it,” she says between shushes. 

“What?” 

His eyes move back to the rearview mirror, but Mel avoids his gaze. 

“That night. I don’t think of it at all,” she clarifies. “So if you’re embarrassed about premature ejaculation, you shouldn’t be.” 

Premature… 

She thinks… 

…but he doesn’t, okay?

Christ, how did this whole thing suddenly become worse? His impulse to offer her a list of references who can confirm, under no uncertain terms, that he’s capable of performing for a perfectly respectable length of time suddenly bubbles to the surface of his mind. And, because he’s growing as a person, he immediately quashes the idea of telling her that his record for giving orgasms is five in one night. That’s not nothing. 

(Beneath it all, it’s not really the stamina thing that hurts. That one bleeds like a superficial head wound, looking worse than it really is. It’s a good distraction for him to focus on, but it’s not devastating. No, the slow death is knowing that Mel doesn’t think of it. Doesn’t think of them. That can’t be true, can it? If he can’t stop thinking about it—him, a man married to a good, sharp, gorgeous, witty woman who he’s loved for nearly a decade—then surely Mel still does, at least sometimes.) 

“Well, it meant something to me,” he says a little unkindly, sulking. 

Mel bites her lip but doesn’t respond. 

Another blow—she knows exactly where to hit him to keep him down. And it’s not the reaction that he wants. Maybe after more than a half decade of marriage, he’s become accustomed—conditioned—to fight at the first pinprick of pain. The faint itch to kick up a fuss lies under his skin now, but Mel’s unwillingness to engage catches him wrong-footed. The itch recedes; the pang fades. As he slumps in the driver’s seat, defeated, only the sadness remains. 

A sadness he shares with his son, only Benji has all the benefit of Mel’s undivided attention and love. One day, Benji will appreciate that in ways he can’t right now. Frank tries not to envy their child, but it seems more and more a Sisyphean task as he listens to Mel try to soothe Benji—her tone warm and soft, whispering I love you and it’s going to be alright and Mama will always be here—as the moments tick by. 

Her words do nothing to stop the baby’s cries. And it’s no wonder, his own throat tight and aching as he swallows around a lump. In an act of self-preservation—one that probably looks dickish to Mel, but he can’t possibly explain himself right now—Frank turns up the music a little to drown out her honeyed voice. 

Frank drives with no intended destination, Benji’s fussing and sobbing becoming part of the ambient noise of the car at some point. As they pass Soergel Orchards, memories of two Octobers ago rise to the forefront of his mind—taking Tanner and Carleigh apple-picking, getting them donuts at the bakeshop, and navigating the corn maze. He can still hear the sound of their giggles as they hit another dead end, growing sillier as the tiredness started to creep in. 

Last year had been a mess, what with his suspension and rehab. But this year, things could be different. They could be good again. Maybe Abby wouldn’t go for it even though she loves basic bitch shit like apple-picking—they are still only speaking through their lawyers, after all—but nothing is stopping him from taking the kids on his weekend. 

Or maybe he could convince Mel to go, just the three of them. (Abby still doesn’t want Tanner and Carleigh to know about Benji, so a big family trip is out.) Frank imagines Mel standing in the pumpkin patch, wrapped up in an oversized flannel jacket with her hair around her shoulders. Benji on her hip, one hand reaching for the mini pumpkin they pick out for him while the other—

“Frank.” 

“What?” he says quickly. “What’s wrong?” 

It only takes him a moment to realize that Benji’s cries have turned to content little noises. A few seconds later he honest-to-God laughs—the sweetest sound Frank has heard in a long time. The relief in the car is palpable, so much so that if Mel weren’t sitting in the back, he would lean over the console and kiss her. They fucking won parenting!

Except, within thirty seconds, Benji is on the cusp of losing it again. 

“No, no, no,” Mel whispers, panic-stricken. “Frank, play the last song again.” 

He has no idea what she’s talking about, but he hits the button on the wheel as requested, the jazzy swing of Van Morrison’s “Moondance” filling the car. 

Well, it’s a marvelous night for a moondance…

Benji quiets but for the occasional coo at the flute parts. As soon as the song ends, his son’s hiccuping begins anew, but this time he doesn’t wait for Mel to tell him to play it over. 

The moment he hits a red light the song is going on repeat. 

After another fifteen minutes on the road, Mel informs him that Benji’s eyelids are getting heavy. As a seasoned father, Frank knows better than to think he can head back towards the apartment now. No way will he risk it until it’s clear Benji is down for the count. 

Frank doesn’t anticipate Mel going down with him ten minutes later. 

In the ambient lighting of McKnight Road’s myriad shopping plazas, he checks the rearview again. Mel slumps over the carseat, her head lulling to the side with Benji’s tiny fingers tangled in the ends of her hair. 

Frank’s eyes continue to gravitate toward her, taking in partial impressions during the split seconds he can look away from the sparsely populated road—her shoulders relaxed, her chapped lips parted, her fidgeting hands finally at rest. 

But it’s her face—free of the worry lines he’s desperately wanted to kiss away from her forehead, her brow, the side of her mouth since she let down her guard—that draws his attention again and again. Makes him irrationally emotional, his vision blurring, because Mel looks so sweet like this. Beautiful, really. She should always look this peaceful. 

What he wouldn’t give to be able to make that happen. 

At that thought, something snags inside of him, tearing him open in a way that is neither clean nor easily sutured. A part of himself that Frank has never really felt, though near enough to that part of his soul that he’d gently palpitated the first time he set eyes on his children. Did it hurt? Yes, something fucking awful, like a piece of himself—so fundamental to his existence, his being—just broke off and walked right out into the ugly, dangerous world where he could no longer keep it safe. He would cease to be whole if anything ever happened to it. 

His palms grow sweaty on the wheel, his breathing not quite right. In a split second decision, Frank pulls into the BP and idles next to the pump, the terrible lighting casting everything in a green-ish hue. Van Morrison croons from the speakers, the perfectly reasonable volume somehow deafening:  

You know the soft moonlight seems to shine in your blush;  

Can I just have one more moondance with you, my love?

His heart pounds wildly as he turns the car off and slides out of the driver’s seat into the chilly October air. Because he’s here, Frank decides to top off the tank. But really, he just… needs a minute to get his bearings, his mind going fuzzy. Any excuse will do. 

As he leans against the car with his hip and waits, his hands shoved into his pockets, Frank stares into the backseat at his family. And they are. He knows that he hasn’t always acted like it, that he’s made Mel feel like she and Benji are nothing more than substitutes for Abby and the kids at times. With his words, with his actions. Mel has suggested as much in her own way. And he’s suffered Dana’s jabs over it, Santos’ disgusted looks, Javadi’s verbal diarrhea. But it’d been Whitaker—unassuming, soft-spoken, Robby’s new golden boy—who made it stick: you know she breaks down because she thinks you’re going to leave her and Benjamin if your wife takes you back, right? 

No, he hadn’t. Not like that, anyway. And since then, he’s tried to remove Abby from his vocabulary as much as possible at work, around Mel—a shockingly easy task. At the time, he told himself it wasn’t difficult because they would soon resolve their issues, and then he could talk about her as much as he wanted again. 

Now, looking at Mel asleep in the back of his car, Frank isn’t so sure that’s the reason.

No matter how much Mel hates him—and she has every right to; he’s given her no shortage of reasons since he walked into her life—it can’t come close to how much he hates himself. And it makes him physically ill to think that he did all of that to the woman he… well. 

Without much thought, Frank gently opens the door under the pretense of adjusting her so that she doesn’t wake with a stiff neck. He presses against Benji’s fingers to free her hair and eases her upright. Mel inhales deeply, reaching clumsily for his forearm. 

“Frank?” she mumbles, still mostly asleep. 

“Right here, baby. We’re almost home.” 

Frank strokes his thumb along her cheekbone, drinking in the smooth planes of her face. He should have done this before, last September—taken his time with her, touched her with all the delicateness that her battered heart deserved. He should have held her face in his hands and told her that she’s singular. That no one has ever made him want to be this good before. 

And that’s the thing that maybe proves most difficult about recovery: he can’t do it for her. Sometimes he catches Mel doing something utterly banal—wrinkling her nose, letting an excited little hm mmm escape on her breath, squishing Benji’s cheeks together to give him fish lips—and Frank can’t help but think that he would never touch another pill again if she asked him not to. 

(It’s a fantasy—that’s not how any of this works; he has to want this for himself—but it feels true, and that in itself is heady.) 

Frank notices the way she folds in on herself as she dozes off again. The temperature dropped, the night colder than any they’ve had so far this fall. He shrugs off his jacket and places it over her, his lingering warmth surely taking away the chill quicker than the blanket he keeps in the trunk for the kids would. Leaning over her, he checks to make sure Benji is toasty too—but of course he is; Mel wouldn’t have let herself fall asleep if she’d been worried about that—and then shuts them safely in the car again. 

The typical sixteen-minute drive takes him twenty-eight for no reason other than he’s not yet ready to go back. To leave them. But his car is no place for either to get restful sleep, so Frank talks himself out of a third detour and drives them home. 

In the parking lot, he snaps a picture of Mel and then beats himself up over it, lightly bumping his head four or five times against the steering wheel. On the final time, he rests it there, miserable and feeling like a complete dirtbag. It’s probably telling that he doesn’t spare a second thought on whether or not he should delete it though. 

He hates waking Mel, but the idea of carrying her into the apartment bridal-style is out of the question for a whole host of reasons. When he rouses her, she blinks at him, wide-eyed and confused as if she has no idea how she ended up in his car in the first place. 

“We’re back,” he tells her. 

“I…” 

She glances around for her things, fumbling with his jacket. Without much thought, Frank takes her by the hand and helps her out of the backseat. She pitches forward, still half asleep, but he’s there to steady her, his hands on her hips. 

Their position takes him back to the last time they left the backseat. Strange how Mel had been just as exhausted—her eyes just as sad—but for an entirely different reason, as if his car is some kind of refuge for her when things turn bleaker than she’s capable of managing. In a certain light, Frank can rationalize it as Mel not just needing a space away from the noisy world of her responsibilities but another person to lean on. That maybe she needs him just as much as he needs to be needed. To confess it—to show someone your soft underbelly, the desires you hold that seem so essential to your being—is no small thing. More so when the person in front of you is a total stranger even though Mel has never felt like it to him; he knows her despite not knowing her at all. 

That night last September, Frank almost gave the game away. Not the drug use or the diversion, but that she made his world—loud and unfocused and cracked at the foundation—quiet, too. It motivated him to show her parts of himself that he kept close to the chest. To give her every reason to think that—despite all evidence to the contrary, evidence she hadn’t yet known—he could provide. So he took care to fix her clothes before handing them back, to unravel and rebraid her hair, clumsily but no less sincerely, so that she looked presentable. 

I can be good when I want to be. 

Never worthy, not of Mel King, but good. 

It took a herculean effort not to reach out to her in that parking garage. He’d wanted to pull her back into the backseat, strip them again, and lie down with her. Be in the quiet together, brushing stray hairs away from her face and counting her freckles. Imagine alongside her that they’d done this a hundred lifetimes before because it felt like that had happened anyway—lives he lived as a better man, deserving of someone who could be the silver-lining on a soul-crushing day. And he nearly had touched her before shoving his fists into his pockets at the last moment. 

Tonight, he does reach out. Yes, to support her, but also because he needs to feel her. Because he’s not ready to go home—just like he hadn’t been ready that night—and Mel is all he wants. No more regrets; no more what-ifs that haunt him through withdrawals and the loneliness of recovery. (Though his withdrawal days are hopefully long behind him now.) 

Tonight, her hips are plush beneath his palms in a way that they hadn’t been twelve months ago. Frank holds her more firmly, relishing how her soft body gives in response to his touch. He’d done that to her. 

His thumb traces a line across her hipbone to her belly, still a little round and pliant from excess baby weight. 

Frank has never felt more attracted to her than he has been lately, as if something snapped inside him that day they had coffee and bagels outside the cafe in Shadyside two weeks ago. She’d lifted Benji, blowing raspberries on his belly, the sunlight catching in her hair; it’d been the first smile he’d seen on her face in ten or so days. For a while there—during the worst days of her breakdown—Frank thought she’d never smile again. 

The suddenness of it, the genuine burst of joy on Mel’s face, caught him offguard, so much so that he fumbled his drink and spilled hot coffee all over his hand. Mel settled Benji back into the stroller while he dabbed his skin with a few napkins, and then she was on him, crouched down next to his chair and inspecting the burn. He’s not proud of the way he stared down at her cleavage, barely registering her questions or assessment. Nor was the decision to walk a few steps behind her so he could watch her shapely ass sway and trace the contours of her thicker thighs his finest moment. Of course he’d been attracted to her that first day, but this felt like something else—like he was really seeing her for the first time. 

(His attraction to Mel and her mom bod—as fucking Santos calls it—makes him consider how much more dire things would have been had he been around for her pregnancy. If he’d witnessed Mel rounder and curvier still, her face full, her nose and lips swollen. He hasn’t even seen a picture of her, his mind supplying all the visuals, which definitely makes things worse. He’d missed so fucking much, and it’s devastating. He wishes he’d been there to kiss away her distress the first time her pants hadn’t zipped, to remind her she was the most beautiful woman alive even when her walk became more of a waddle, to help her off the couch those last few weeks when she’d no doubt been all belly—a rapidly growing baby carried in her small frame. He would have loved her just as much then—maybe more—as the night they made their son.) 

Frank stops there, swallowing a groan. An image of Mel surfaces in his thoughts—Mel in her last week or two, standing in her bedroom wearing the light green nightie that he’d accidentally discovered while putting away laundry as she slept after another thirty-minute breakdown. It wouldn’t have fit her then, but who cares. He wouldn’t have been able to keep his hands off her. Hell, he’s not exactly stopping himself from touching her now. 

Frank’s fingers press against her hips, brief and light like a spasm—utterly innocuous in contrast to everything he’s feeling. 

Then, because Mel does not need his emotional bullshit right now, he retreats.  

“Let me help get him down.”

Please, baby, let me be useful to you. 

Mel concedes with a nod and grabs the diaper bag. But Frank meant what he said. He gently takes it from her hand, swinging the strap over his shoulder, and nudges her out of the way so that he can get Benji too. 

“Oh, um…” 

“Just get the door for me, okay?” he asks. 

Mel goes ahead but still glances back occasionally, watching as he carries Benji into the building. Under her intense gaze and unfamiliar with the expression on her face, Frank can’t help but wonder if she envisions him dropping the baby or something. While he hasn’t toted Benji around much, he’s carried enough carseats in his day. Would it be too much for the universe to cut him some slack and allow Mel to trust him? 

Once inside, Frank sets the carseat on the table and slides the bag onto the kitchen chair. Mel reaches for the baby’s blanket to start unfastening him, but Frank takes her hands—small and cold—into his. 

“Do us a favor?” he asks, leveraging her love for Benji against her. 

Her brow pulls. “Hmm?” 

“Go take fifteen minutes in the shower for yourself.” 

Mel opens her mouth, on the cusp of protesting as she looks between him and Benji. As soon as he rubs his thumbs over her palms, she closes it and quiets for a moment. 

“He’ll want to eat before bed.” 

“Do you want me to give him a bottle?” 

She shakes her head. “No, I should probably…” 

“Then I’ll have him ready for you, freshly diapered and in his sleepsack.” 

Her lower lip wobbles. 

It’s all Frank can do to keep from wrapping her up in his arms. Holding her has become second nature as he’s helped her through a particularly bad wave of postpartum depression, so much so that it seems cruel to them both to deny her. It’s just that… tonight seems different, loaded in a way their interactions have never been before. 

And it’s him; Frank is all too aware of that. Because before he could keep Mel close and allow her to fall asleep tucked into his side while Abby and his marriage remained firmly at the forefront of his thoughts. But now? In the time between leaving work and walking through Mel’s door moments ago, something had fundamentally changed in him. Now, the Abby Langdon greatest hits his mind had so easily supplied—the way she styled her hair on their first date, how she looked up at him through her eyelashes and veil on their wedding day, the bodysuit she wore on their second anniversary—seem no more permanent than smoke. 

And in their place: Mel, nursing Benji next to him the night of the Pens’ opener, her hastily thrown on Pirates’ jersey unbuttoned revealing a strip of her stretch-marked belly; Mel, in the kitchen next to the box of donuts he’d acquired from her favorite shop in Lawrenceville, wiping custard from the corner of his mouth, her own powdered sugar held between her teeth; Mel, tipping her head back and laughing loudly at his running commentary on Next Level Chef, her joy so unapologetic even though it startled the baby awake. 

Mel… Mel… Mel… 

She’s all he can think about.

“You don’t have to be so nice to me,” she says, her voice small. 

“Pretty sure I do.” He squints, pulling a skeptical face to try to at least get a giggle out of her. “Official baby daddy job description.” 

No luck.

“You shouldn’t feel obligated… I mean, Benji is one thing, but I’m…” 

Sighing, Frank gives into the pull between them. He cups her face and smooths his thumbs across her freckled cheekbones; Mel’s eyes search him, her body leaning towards him before she catches herself. 

“You’re a package deal for me,” Frank explains. “I don’t want it any other way, Mel.” 

Mel sinks her teeth into her lip. “You mean taking care of us?” 

What does he mean? Christ, he doesn’t even know what he means. Maybe that’s all he would have meant had this conversation happened this afternoon, but now… 

Frank looks down at her lips, swallowing hard. 

“Yeah, of course.” 

“Okay, but only fifteen minutes,” she says, nodding. 

Mel shifts to head back to her ensuite, but Frank holds her in place for another moment for no other reason than he’s not prepared to have her more than an arm’s length away. 

“I promise not to abandon the baby if you go for twenty.” 

“I won’t go for twenty,” Mel answers softly and a little dazedly. “That’s not environmentally conscientious.” 

He’s so entranced by her hair—still loose from taking her ponytail out earlier and messy from sleep—that he doesn’t even want to blink. 

“Fuck the environment.” 

“You can’t say that. Jane Gooddall just died.” 

“Fuck—”

Mel places her finger against his lips. “Never.” 

Unable to help himself—and how had he not realized her eyes had as much green in them as brown before?—he nips at the pad of her index finger before she lowers it. The quiet squeak that escapes her is as sweet as any moan. 

When Mel leaves for the shower, Frank watches her go, missing the pressure of her touch. He might wallow about it for a bit if it weren’t for the fact that he has something to prove. Yes, to Mel but also, in a much bigger way, to himself—that he’s capable of stepping up, of being the only man she needs in her life. Because if all he’s capable of is causing her more pain—which he’s done in spades; no one is questioning that—then chasing this white rabbit, if that’s even what he wants to do, is out of the question. 

He’s been a bull in the china shop of her life for far too long. 

So he unbuckles Benji from his carseat and lifts him gently to his shoulder, careful not to undo too much of their painstaking work. The baby doesn’t make a peep. Frank grabs the pacifier and checks his phone for any missed notifications, but there’s nothing. He hesitates for a split second, fingers resting on its sides. 

Tonight, Abby and the kids are at some swanky restaurant with the rest of Abby’s family to celebrate her grandmother’s 85th birthday. He thought that tonight might be the night that it happens—the night that Abby finally breaks down and texts him, maybe even calls under the guise of passing along hellos from her extended family, but really it’s just because the event reminds her that she misses him. 

But the thing is, the lack of communication doesn’t sting. His mind prompts him to feel it—hey, that should hurt—but there’s nothing there. Suddenly, it’s the easiest thing in the world to leave his phone behind. 

The path to Mel’s bedroom is well worn by now; Frank thinks nothing of stepping inside her private space. It’s Benji’s room too, Mel not yet having given in to his suggestion to change her sister’s unused room into a nursery. Any hesitation of entering without permission was gone after the second diaper blowout. 

Frank lays Benji down delicately on the changing table. He takes care as he slips off Benji’s little gray pants and unfastens his onesie, which reads, Of course I’m cute! Look at my daddy. 

He’d been surprised to discover that it hadn’t been a gift from his mom, that Mel had bought it a couple weeks ago. She’d been so proud to present him with Benji that evening, and he figured she’d bought it for no other reason than that he and Benji are virtually identical. Now he feels a little lightheaded at the thought that maybe Mel finds him cute.

After swapping out Benji’s diaper and dressing him in Halloween pajamas—the ones with tiny cartoon ghosts wearing an assortment of hats that Mel had fallen in love with on their last trip to Ross Park—Frank zips the baby into his sleep sack. At this point, Benji is drowsy and pouting, verging on fussing, so it’s a relief that the door to the ensuite cracks open. Mel is almost done. 

“Come here, little man,” he whispers, placing Benji against his chest. 

He pats Benji’s back, easing his angry huffing as the baby rubs his sleepy eyes against Frank’s shoulder. Swaying seems to help, so Frank walks him around the room and places his cheek against Benji’s head to comfort him. That, combined with some humming and singing the occasional line from “Moondance” does the trick to quiet him. 

“‘And when you come, my heart will be waiting,’” Frank sings softly, his lips against Benji’s hair. Across the room, Mel stands in profile, framed by the door, brushing a comb through her hair at the mirror. “‘To make sure that you’re never alone.’” 

Mel steps out in her pajamas, her shirt held closed by a single button. It’s a relief to see her like this, relaxed and preparing for bed. Frank wishes she would have let him take care of the bottle; that way she could crawl right into bed. He could get them both settled in for the night. 

“Does Benji like your singing?” Mel asks, taking Benji and cradling him in her arm against her chest.

“My number one fan.” 

She places her index finger against her mouth. “You know, I think my granny might have called it caterwauling.” 

Frank laughs lightly and takes her wrist, giving her a little twirl as he sings—cauterwauling, my ass—another line on principle. And as she spins, a playful, exhausted smile on her lips, he wishes he might capture the moment in time. 

“My Skynyrd is better,” he promises. 

“I don’t think you can offer an objective assessment.” 

Lying on the bed with Benji cuddled up to her, Mel opens the button to let the baby feed. Frank wonders when this—watching these two together, Mel’s hand rubbing circles on his back and Benji’s fist gripping her top—is going to grow old. When will he feel ready to hand off the baby and walk out of the room in favor of a three-mile evening run through the neighborhood or to catch the end of the game? He’s not there yet. Not by a long shot, he realizes as he sits in the rocker, moving Penny, the stuffed penguin he bought for Benji, from the seat. He fusses with it, squishing its body and tossing it from hand-to-hand. 

And because Mel’s eyes are all soft, her lips quirked, he presses on. Her attention does something to him. Makes him feel like he’s back in middle school, like he’s just earned detention for his smartass remark, but it doesn’t matter because Iris Stevens—with her coke bottle glasses and braces—passes him a note that says: I think you’re funny. He feels the urge to press his luck with Mel, to win himself a laugh. 

“Clapton is objectively my best.” He sits back, rocking in the chair. “‘I feel wonderful / Because I see the love light in your eyes / And the wonder of it all / Is that you just don’t realize—’” 

—how much I love you. 

How much… 

How much he loves her. 

Oh fuck. 

“Well, it’s not Meg,” Mel says, but he can hardly hear her over the blood pounding in his ears. “Tell Daddy you only used to settle down for ‘Broke His Heart.’” 

He… 

He’s in love with her. 

With Mel. 

And Frank stares at her—how can he not, not when…—but she’s oblivious to it. To this paradigm shift that up-ends everything he ever thought he knew about his heart. Every theory—Abby is his true love; he can love deeply, but never slowly, never present in the way his partners need; he has to have the games, the friction to grease the wheels of his affection—proven false in a blink. 

His palms begin to sweat. 

“Dick me down / slut me out, put it in my ribs, ayy,” she sings, half-rap and half-lullaby. 

When did this…when had he…? He replays the last six weeks in his head, desperate for some sign of when things had actually shifted. Had it been today or… or has he been harboring these feelings longer than mere seconds, minutes, hours? That breakfast in Shadyside… the trip to the Aviary when Benji had smiled for the first time at something other than the two of them… the day he found her curled over in her closet, sobbing into her knees… the moment she told him she forgave him for everything… the first time she said his name?

(When he braided her hair in his car… when he pushed inside of her… when their lips met for the first time…) 

Frank doesn’t realize he’s been staring at a stray baby sock on the floor—thoughts racing, cortisol spiking—until he catches Mel shifting uncomfortably from the corner of his eye. 

“Sorry, that was…” She shakes her head. “I, um, I meant to say thank you. For tonight, I mean. I was very overwhelmed, and I… I didn’t know what to do, you know? You had a long shift, but you still came over to help. I appreciate that. You being here. People don’t always… well, they walk away. Sometimes even literally, when I’m talking? And so I want you to know that I’m grateful that you didn’t.” 

As if she’s just realized that she’s rambling, Mel closes her mouth abruptly. She looks at him expectantly after a beat or two, and he really should respond to her. It’s just that his tongue feels a little too big for his mouth, awkward and clumsy. Nevermind that his brain struggles to process anything beyond: You love her, you love her, you love her. 

He waits, frightened that if he speaks now he might confess it. And he can’t, Frank thinks a bit hysterically, because even though everything has changed for him, nothing has for her. She doesn’t deserve this, not something this heavy—love from some guy with a benzo addiction—not while she’s paving a way forward as a first-time mom. Not while she wades through an episode of postpartum depression that, quite honestly, scares the shit out of him. No, this, he has to keep close to his chest. For Benji. For Mel. For any semblance of normalcy that they can expect in their complicated situation. 

“I think I said something wrong,” she announces, exhaustion curling around her words. 

“What? No. Mel…” 

Frank crosses the short distance between the rocker and her bed, sitting on the side of it and reaching for her forearm. 

“I’m sorry. I…” He sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “You didn’t say anything wrong, sweetheart. Yeah, it’s been a long day, but there’s nowhere else I want to be.” 

“I don’t know that that’s true,” Mel says, and Frank doesn’t think he imagines her gaze slipping over his left hand. 

“It is. I promise you.” He strokes her wrist with his thumb. “No more lies, remember?” 

Frank can tell just by looking at the microexpressions flitting across her face that Mel doesn’t believe him but desperately wants to. She’s the only person in his life to ever do that—look at him as if he’s too good to be true and she’s waiting on the other shoe to drop. So many fucking shoes have dropped in Mel’s life. 

“Will you stay just a little bit longer?” 

“Yeah, of course.” 

He runs his hand down her blanketed waist, over the curve of her hip. Nothing has changed for her, he reminds himself, but everything has changed for him. He feels it in the urge to lie down behind her, to throw his arm over her and spend the night. 

“Just until he falls asleep.” Mel hesitates, as if whatever she has to say next is too much. “If you could put him in the bassinet so I don’t have to get up again.” 

Frank wants to kiss her. To show her that she doesn’t ever have to do that with him: act like some small thing—something he should be doing as a father—is burdensome. To positively reinforce that she should expect more from him, that she should ask for things for herself even if they feel selfish to the point of discomfort. 

The urge is so overwhelming that he gets off the bed and dips back into the chair, Penny in hand. 

While he waits for Benji to fall back asleep, Frank considers how to get the two of them to a place where Mel can rely on him without the guilt. The most obvious thing: not disappearing on her anymore. But he hasn’t, not since that night in the parking garage after Pittfest. He’s been there for her, showing up when things are okay and when they’re bad. It’s still not enough though, not that he expects it to be when he bailed on her during her pregnancy when she needed him most. And grand gestures are out. Not only because he’s trying to break that habit, but now because he can’t possibly let on that he has feelings for her. Where is that line, the one between grand and thoughtful? He’ll have to work on a list with his therapist to keep himself steady for Mel. She needs him too much for him to fuck this up. 

“Frank?” she calls sleepily, followed by a yawn. 

He moves to gently scoop up Benji and tuck him in. The baby settles in without a peep, his arms flopped beside his head and thumbs tucked into his fists. Frank lingers beside the bassinet for a minute, watching the rise and fall of Benji’s chest. He might not see him for a week, between his and Mel’s schedules and getting the kids this weekend—the longest stretch of time since Benji came into his life. It might as well be forever; each time he leaves it gets a little harder to walk out the door. 

This isn’t his home, despite the fact that it’s come to feel that way, so Frank pulls himself away from his son. His gaze drifts to Mel, her eyes already shut and breath on the verge of evening out. No doubt she’s exhausted from a long, overstimulating day. He should let her rest; she trusts him to turn everything off and lock-up by now. 

He should, but impulse control has never been a personal strength. 

Frank leans over her and presses a light kiss to her temple, the smell of her shampoo tickling his nose. To his surprise, she clumsily reaches back, her palm settling on his jaw. His forehead drops against the side of hers for a moment, his mind racing to memorize the feel of her soft skin against his 5 o’clock shadow. Frank knows her touch, but it feels different now that he’s realized it’s the touch of the woman he loves—weighty and tender and worthy of all the attention he can muster. He wants to put his fingers on her chin, delicately turn her head and kiss her full on the mouth. Open her up with his tongue and listen to her sigh into him. 

He won’t be able to stop himself from remembering their night together, not tonight. 

He loves her. 

And because he loves her, he brushes his lips against her hair one more time before stepping away. He walks backwards towards the hall, pausing in the doorway to drink in the sight of her curled up in bed. When he’s had enough—well, not enough; it’s never going to be enough—Frank shuts the door behind him. 

Another stray baby sock lies in the hall. Maybe he’d missed it when he went to change Benji, or maybe it’d been from earlier in the day. The whole place is in disarray, he realizes, taking stock of Mel’s small apartment—a sink full of dishes, a pile of clothes by the small washer-dryer unit, a laundry basket on the couch, a messy stack of mail strewn across the table, the Chinese takeout he’d brought abandoned on the kitchen counter when it was clear Benji wasn’t going to stop sobbing. 

Frank glances at the clock in the kitchen—10:14. He needs to be up in less than eight hours for his next shift. But the idea of leaving Mel to wake up to this mess doesn’t sit right, especially not on a day off when she might otherwise spend it relaxing, Benji willing.

So he picks up the rest of the laundry lying around the kitchen/dining area and living room, a mix of both the baby’s and Mel’s things. Frank sorts them into piles and combines them with what Mel had already done before she got pulled away. After hunting down the back-up detergent—unscented, he triple checks—he puts in a load of her clothes. He’ll have to take Benji’s home with him and do it tonight; his mom can return them to Mel on Friday hand-off. 

The kitchen is next, Frank portioning out Mel’s barely eaten string bean chicken into two single-serve containers. She can reheat them easily enough this way if Benji refuses to be put down tomorrow. 

He vaguely recalls that being a point of contention with Abby when Carleigh was born; the takeout and meals were helpful, but she couldn’t make a plate with a newborn in one arm and a two-year-old hanging off her other. And, of course, he never seemed to remember to do it after a shift, or if he had, it wasn’t to her specifications. 

But as he stares down at the containers in his hands—chicken carefully separated from the chow mein, the chow mein and fried rice not touching—Frank realizes how naturally he attuned himself to Mel’s needs. No less specific—maybe even more so—but somehow easier for him to manage even after a long day. Frank supposes that Abby’s seemingly constant irritation with him and everything he did, even if he was trying to be helpful, didn’t help motivate him. But he gets why she was annoyed now, at least with most things. 

He wasn’t the husband, the co-parent, Abby needed. Frank owns that. Maybe if he could have been more like he is with Mel, they would have never gotten to this point. But the thing is, it feels like second nature with Mel—slowing down, staying home, leaving work on time. He’s not trying to be a different person; he just is. Mel just… brings out this whole different side of him. 

And so maybe he and Abby were always going to end up here—divorced, bordering on estranged. The drugs and disciplinary hearings and rehab just expedited the process. No amount of parenting highs and good make-up sex could patch up the wound in their marriage. He never understood her, but at one point in his life, Frank wanted to. Then, unbeknownst to him, he stopped caring to learn. 

If he’s being honest with himself, Frank worries what this might mean for him and Mel. It’s easy, yes, but what if it’s too easy? What if he’s missing something here? Some day will he stop wanting to do her dishes, too? Carelessly forget to separate out her delicates before putting things in the wash? Will there come a time when all those banal little Mel-isms stop making him breathless? When her touch doesn’t set him alight? Just like Abby, will Mel become just another fixture in his life—overworked, forgotten, and drowning? 

Inhaling deeply, Frank braces himself on the counter. 

Not like Abby. This isn’t going to be a repeat of his marriage because he and Mel aren’t together. They’re co-parents. Even if he thought he could nudge her in the direction of something more—even if he wanted to—Mel is in no position to get involved with anyone right now. Her mental health is at an all-time low by her own account. To make a move would hurt her, would be selfish, and Frank is so tired of being selfish. 

As he waits to swap the laundry, Frank moves around the apartment in a daze—washing bottles and her breast pump, scrubbing pots and trying to get her eclectic collection of mugs free of tea stains. (The latter is a lost cause after five months of half-drunken cups sitting abandoned around the house all day.) All the while, he thinks of Mel: how desperately he needs to step up for her, how he wants to be the kind of guy that she wants around. He amends that to platonically, knowing that that’s not entirely true, and then presses the heels of his hands into his eyes in the middle of the living room and tries to shed his frustration with himself. 

It’s after eleven by the time Mel’s clothes are ready to go in the dryer. Frank leaves her a quick note to tell her that the food is in the fridge, that he put away as much laundry as he could, leaving only the things that needed to be put away in her room. He adds: call me if you need anything. And then: i’ll miss you two this week. Frank frowns, scratches out you two and writes in Benji. He rethinks that quickly, not only because it’s not true but because Mel will definitely be hurt. In the end, he rewrites the whole damn thing three times before settling on something mostly platonic. 

After he turns the key in the lock, Frank rests his forehead against the door to her apartment. Everything has changed for him—he loves her, he’s in love with her, tearing himself away from her right now physically hurts—but nothing has for her. Mel doesn’t want to have sex with him—she said so herself plainly—doesn’t want him at all except as a father to their son. The rejection stings. Maybe it always will. But he has to be good for her. Be the man that she needs, not the one who he wants to be. 

It doesn’t settle well on his heart; he can feel his instinctual rejection of the very idea of it. So he closes his eyes and breathes. In…two…three…four… Out…two…three…four… Allows his body to ease into it like they taught him in rehab. 

He’ll learn to manage this just like he learned to manage his addiction: one day at a time.