Page 126 of Triplet Babies for my Ex's Best Friend

Addy

By Friday morning,my body has apparently decided to become a hostile work environment. I’m consumed with a low, floaty dizziness when I stand up too fast. A weird twist of nausea that comes and goes just enough to make me suspicious of every single thing I ate yesterday.

Which, for the record, included coffee, half of Oliver’s toast crusts, and one bite of a muffin that Captain ultimately stole.

So honestly, the nausea could be karmic.

I stand at the kitchen counter with one hand braced against the marble and breathe through a brief wave of lightheadedness while the coffee machine hisses in a deeply judgmental way.

“Okay,” I mutter to myself. “Rude.”

Captain trots in, tail wagging, expression bright and hopeful in the way only golden retrievers and extremely delusional men manage. He sits on my foot like this is a normal thing to do.

“You're not helping,” I tell him.

He blinks up at me.

I sigh.

From the doorway, Oliver says, “Are you talking to the dog again?”

I turn and find him standing there in dinosaur pajamas, hair sticking up at angles that suggest sleep fought hard and lost badly.

“Maybe,” I say. “Don’t make it weird.”

“I’m not making it weird,” he replies, climbing onto a stool. “You’re the one having conversations with a dog.”

Captain looks pleased with himself, as if he’s won.

“Traitor,” I murmur to him, then glance at Oliver. “How would you feel about waffles?”

He narrows his eyes slightly, which on a five-year-old is both adorable and faintly threatening. “Frozen or real?”

“Wow,” I say. “That's an incredibly judgmental question for this hour.”

“It matters.”

“It does,” I admit. “Frozen. But in a way that says I care.”

He considers this. “Okay.”

So that’s breakfast settled.

The morning moves along in the usual, now familiar blur of getting Oliver fed, dressed, persuaded into socks, persuaded out of trying to bring an entire airplane book collection into the living room, and then redirected when Captain steals one of those socks and turns it into a giant game of cat and mouse.

At one point, I bend to grab a toy from under the couch and have to sit back on my heels because the room tilts just enough to make me blink.

I’m tired, maybe slightly dehydrated, and definitely not still thinking about yesterday in Ethan’s office, where we had a deeply sensible, mature conversation about rules that somehow still managed to feel one wrong breath away from disaster.

Very professional.

Excellent.

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