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“We'll name our children Jackie and Wilson, raise 'em on rhythm and blues”
“Hello?”
“Good morning, Mr. Overstreet! I hope this isn’t a bad time. This is Claire from the Adoption Agency!....”
Knox sprung upright with the phone firmly gripped, praying it’s good news. Is this for real?
“...obviously, it’s a short notice and we didn’t think it would happen that quickly...”
“What’s going on?” A half-asleep Charlie asks, eyes barely open and hair sticking out in all directions. There was a raspiness in his voice, an effect to all the vodka they drunk the night before. This is it.
“...she was born four days ago, weighing 8 pounds, 7 ounces...”
Knox could imagine it already. A little girl, running into their room every morning and jumping on their bed like it was christmas. She would magically have Charlie’s eyes, of course. Pools of hazel galaxies that you could stare at for days.
“...whenever you’re ready, she’ll be here. Any questions?”
Knox turns to his husband, who looked about an inch away from falling back to sleep if it wasn’t for Knox’s attentive silence to the phone call.
“None, thank you. We’ll see you.” Knox replies before hanging up. He exhales, not realizing he’s been holding his breath the entire time.
“Who was that?” Charlie asked, now irritated, only to soften when Knox stares back with eyes brimming with tears.
“Congratulations...dad”
“Wait so the baby’s here?” Neil asks, mid-bite to his toast. All the boys congregated in their living room after Charlie rather excitedly all but knocked down everyone’s bedroom door and called a meeting to announce the commencement of “operation: nuwanDAD”
“Yup, Knoxious and I are gonna meet her later this afternoon so while we’re out, clean...all of this” Charlie waves his hand around the room, referring to the empty beer bottles stacked around ledges and glimmering streamers barely hanging on the walls. The product of a party thrown the night before. “We need to have a clean space for the little devil”
“Charlie, this was your party! You should be cleaning up!” Cameron retorts before glancing at the half eaten, half stale birthday cake that sat on top of their mantle, that drunk Charlie said was “the king of the castle”.
“Hey! That’s no way to talk to a new dad, Cameron. Today is my day.” Charlie smugly responds before Knox sighs of relief after successfully figuring out how to work the baby seat. “It’s not your day, Charl. It’s the baby’s. And don’t worry, the closet door you staked in the front yard will be waiting for you when you get back” he says, patting a frowning Charlie on the back.
But babe, he’s the knight of the castle!
No, Charlie!
“God, her fingers are tiny” Pitts says as he lifts one with his own. It’s amazing how just 5 minutes ago, everyone was running around the house, filling trash bags with half-filled red solo cups and disinfecting every surface. It wasn’t until Charlie burst through the front door with one hand holding the occupied baby carrier and the other flinging the paperwork like it was a winning lottery card, screaming “I’m with child!”, did everyone stop and huddle around the baby to see her.
Knox chuckles with amazement as he stared at the child in his arms. She was everything he hoped for and more. When they first laid eyes on her, he felt like time itself stopped and went in slow motion. Everything he could see, hear, feel was all a blur except for the baby that was being handed to him. She was angel, asleep with her little chest rising and falling and bottom lip jutting out just enough. Knox felt like he could just burst out crying any minute.
“Is it weird she kinda looks like you, Charlie?” Neil comments as he caressed the baby’s head with his finger. A snort from Cameron was heard followed by “What, ugly?” and usually Charlie would’ve retorted back with a snarky comment or at the very least, glared at him but the remark flew past him like nothing happened. He had no time to quarrel with Cameron, all of it was being taken up by staring at the baby’s wonderful features.
“What’s her name?” Todd asks and the newly parents looked at each other in a slow and silent panic. They didn’t think she would be here for another few months, maybe even years, so the idea of brainstorming for a name was barely even brought up. “You...have a name...don’t you?” Todd adds.
“...y-yes?” Charlie replies and the poets groan in unison, unconvinced. Pitts looked like he was seriously offended.
“Okay, we don’t. But, we’ll think of one! Shouldn’t be too hard; hell, we already got the last name down!” He jokes and receives no reaction but a small boo from Neil.
Unfortunately, it was too hard.
Not only due to Knox and Charlie’s indecisiveness and nonsensical criteria of: needs to be badass (Charlie) and needs to be a good ol’ American name (Knox), but also because a competition started brewing within the other poets; all wanted the couple to pick a name they suggested and made it their life mission to shoot down anyone else’s.
To keep order, a white board in the middle of their living room (courtesy of Meeks), became the “name-hub”, where the poets would suggest and write potential names the couple could reconsider. This quickly turned into a nightly assembly-slash-debate.
How about Mary Anne?
Cameron, she isn’t a nun!
What about Lucy?
Oh sure, name the kid after a drug-song by the Beatles!
Fanny would be so cute!
Todd, she would never be able to travel to England!
Shut up! Cara isn’t any better!
Yes it is!
It’s literally “shit” in Arabic.
By the end of the first week, about 163 names were thrown in, 12 were slightly considered, 5 were heavily debated, and one was permanently banned by Knox.
Chardonnay is a great name! It sounds french!
No, Charlie!
Okay, so we’ll name her Chris!
...
…two were permanently banned by Knox.
Early hours of sunday morning rolls around and the baby (which is what they’ve settled on in the meantime, along with “the child”, “the monster”, and “turd bucket”), hasn’t stopped crying since the night before. Both parents were drained to the bone and the sleep in their eyes were slowly winning them over. After a sleepy yet loud “shut that baby up!” from behind Cameron’s bedroom, Knox brings the baby downstairs to their living room where he stations himself on a rocking chair. He tries to hum any melody he could think of, which was proving to be difficult due to the wailing in his arms. He was about to start ripping his hair out when he catches a glimpse of the radio at the corner of the room.
Wasting no time, he puts on the first station he lands on, which happens to be country rock n roll (probably because of Charlie) and suddenly Willie Nelson’s cover of “Georgia on My Mind” starts filling the room. The notes off the piano danced around Knox and it fills his ears with delight. The lyrics glide and guide the slow guitar-strumming, creating a perfect mix.
It was around the second verse when Knox notices that he could hear Willie Nelson’s voice in full. He looks down and to his amazement, sees his daughter, slowly but surely dozing off.
“You finally got her to sleep? Thank God!” Charlie quietly interrupts, holding a bottle in hand and Knox almost tripped trying to stand as his fried brain finally worked for the first time in 24 hours.
“We have a name!” He whisper-shouts and Charlie looks at him in confusion. “What?”
Knox turns to point to the radio still playing. “She fell asleep to this! That’s her name!” He excitedly says.
“Georgia?” Charlie says, making a sour face before Knox rolls his eyes and as soon as he says “No, Willie!”, Charlie’s eyes perk up with interest.
“I mean, think about it: Willie is a good American name, it’s unique for a girl, and who’s the biggest bad-ass? Willie Nelson!” Knox says with conviction while a wide smile forms on the face of the other. “Plus, she’ll have an amazing back story for it already!”
“Willie, huh?” Charlie says, muttering it to himself a couple more times before smiling down on the heavily sleeping child. He puts his index finger in her palm and she immediately latches on. “Would you like that, Wills?”
And as if on cue, her nose twitches and she sneezes, her face scrunching up momentarily before returning back to it’s peaceful state.
“I’ll take that as a yes” Charlie excitedly says, now making a handshake with the hand wrapped around his finger, as if to seal the deal.
“Welcome to the family, Willie.”