Wren flipped back to the Netflix home screen. “I feel so much stupider now. It rules.”
Seven straight hours of watching attractive bakers make complicated confections while simultaneously wooing and backstabbing one another had made her feel a few IQ points lighter. And it was glorious.
“Stupid people are way happier, I’ve always said.”
“So what now?” she said, laughing, stroking an extremely content Ferdie, who had curled into a little ball next to her, contouring himself perfectly to the shape of her body.
“I don’t know. We just…hang out?”
“Hang…out?” Wren said, imitating a caveman. “What mean?”
“Make words,” he said. “Talk.”
They’d been in constant motion these past months, even going back to the night they found out they were pregnant. Wren had scrambled to pick up freelance work, they’d read books and made lists, picked out and assembled furniture. And then there’d been everything that came after the shower. The Ravens game and the house tours, the casino and the haunted house. There’d been almost no time to just sit and reflect. Sit and enjoy each other.
“This is nice,” he said, finishing his thought out loud.
“Yeah, it is.”
“It seems so silly and so simple, but this might really be the last time we get to do this.”
“I thought babies were supposed to sleep all the time.”
“They do. But not on your schedule. They’re up and down again every couple of hours, all night long, to start.”
Wren sat up dramatically, as if he’d just delivered breaking news. “And you didn’t think to tell me this before we had sex?”
He playfully shoved her away. “I’m excited, though,” Arthur said. “Are you?”
She was getting there.
“I keep thinking about a little human being that we made running in here to wake us up and tell us he had a bad dream and that he needs me to hold him,” she said. In truth, she hadn’t spent much time picturing what their life would look like. What their child would look like. It had seemed betterto avoid it, just in case…But imagining it now was filling her with this incredibly glowing warmth.
“Or that he pooped the bed.”
“Way to ruin it!” She slugged him playfully. She was usually the one who punctured moments with dark or sarcastic humor. She thought about how they were so different, and yet how alike they’d become. Intertwined, like the gnarled tails of a rat king. No, something cuter than that. Two vines growing so close together you could hardly tell where one ended and the other began. You couldn’t pick two people who were more the opposite of each other than them, different worldviews, different personalities, different energy batteries. And yet somehow they were bringing all that together to build one life. It was fascinating.
“How’s the book?” she asked, breaking the silence. Her eyes had spotted its worn pages sitting on the nightstand behind him. “Is our baby the happiest yet?”
“Oh yeah. It’s kicking the asses of all the other babies on the block.” Then: “I know I should be studying, but I needed a little break.”
He’d been poring through it lately, making good progress. It felt good to be taking action, but it was keeping him up at night, that book, and he really should be banking sleep before the baby came. How could anyone be expected to do it all at once?
“You’re really going to do it now, aren’t you? The GREs? Grad school?”
“It’s looking like it,” he said.
He was stroking her foot with his, rough calluses on his feet and all. It tickled.
“What were your parents like when you were a kid?” Wren asked suddenly.
“What do you mean?”
“Did they have a parenting style, you think? You know, like monkey style or dragon?” She mimed a karate chop and a high kick that wasn’t very high, stifled by the covers. “You turned out sort of OK, I guess. I want to know how they did it.”
“Wow, thanks.” He reached over and gave her a playful tap on the arm. “I guess I would call themauthoritarianif I’m remembering the term right—I feel like I’m being quizzed on my reading right now, wow. That was probably a cutting-edge word then. They were loving but not particularly affectionate. Very heavy on teaching and setting a good example, very demanding. They had firm boundaries, followed through on consequences, which could be severe at times.”
“Authoritarian.” Wren frowned. “What’s the one where you just let them do whatever they want and you shower them with affection?” she asked.
