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I forced myself to sit down with them.
“Hey, Dad,” I said when he didn’t notice me.
He nodded and looked immediately back at the screen.
“Sorry, this is an important game,” he said. I’d literally seen him today at the office and we’d barely exchanged two words.
I glanced at the screen and realized it wasn’t even a live game. He was watching the channel that broadcast old championship games for some reason.
Why my dad and Wyatt were invested in a game they already knew the outcome of, I couldn’t figure out.
Mom brought me a glass of wine and I took it gratefully. She rushed back to the kitchen to see about dinner. I resented that my dad never lifted a fucking finger to help her. That nonsense had rubbed off on my brother, but I didn’t think that Gretchen did a whole lot of homemaking. As far as I knew, she bought a lot of takeout or pre-cooked meals, and I knew they had a professional clean their house. Gretchen probably didn’t know how to turn a vacuum cleaner on. I would pay money to see her confronted with her first dirty diaper. She was probably going to lose her mind. Or hire a nanny.
I was completely bored until Mom made them pause the game and sit down at the table.
Gretchen dominated the conversation and barely even let Wyatt get a word in. We heard all about the drama at the local hospital (she was a nurse), every single pregnancy symptom, and all of her other grievances. Wyatt looked tired, which was unusual. He was the kind of guy who could get wasted for an entire weekend and show up Monday morning as fresh as a daisy, full of energy.
Not so much tonight.
“Do you have any ideas for names?” I asked, with the full knowledge that I had seen her list already.
“Well, we haven’t—” Wyatt started to say as Gretchen interrupted him, putting her hand on his arm.
“We’ve got a list of potential names, but we want it to be a surprise.” She beamed at Wyatt, and he smiled back, but the smile went away quickly.
“We are finding out the gender, though, so we can tell the decorator,” Gretchen said, flipping her hair over her shoulder.
“Decorator?” I asked.
“Yes, for the nursery,” she said, as if I was dense.
I didn’t think I’d heard of someone having a decorator for their nursery, other than a celebrity, but that’s probably where she got the idea from.
“Sounds great,” I said, not wanting to start a fight at the table.
“It will be,” Gretchen gushed. “I’ve just got so many ideas.”
Wyatt looked like he was dying inside. That was new. When he’d first gotten together with Gretchen, he’d been on board with every single one of her shenanigans. Now it looked like some of the newness (a.k.a., lust) had worn off the relationship. Add to that his new responsibility as a father and future husband, and he had a whole lot of commitment to look forward to.
It was his own fault. He didn’t have to put that obnoxiously large diamond ring on her finger that probably cost more than my car. But what Gretchen wanted, Gretchen got. Now my brother could see how he liked it.
There was a tiny bit of satisfaction in that. If only there wasn’t an innocent baby involved, it would be the perfect irony.
It was a relief when my mom brought out the pie and coffee, because it meant I was going to get to leave soon.
“So how is Natalie doing?” Mom finally asked.
“She’s good,” I said.
“You two patch things up?” Obviously, my parents knew about the falling-out because I’d been inconsolable about it.
“Sort of,” I said. “Yeah, I mean, I guess we did,” I said.
I looked down at the bracelet on my wrist. I still hadn’t taken it off.
“That’s good to hear. You two were peas in a pod. I swear, people thought you were sisters when I’d take you places.”
That was true, even though Natalie and I looked nothing alike.
