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“And yet you’re the one saying you want to get married. Gosh, you’re confusing.”
“Okay, so it came out wrong. I—”
“Youdon’twant to marry her?”
If I had a dollar for every time she interrupted me, I’d be well on my way to becoming rich. “Yes,I want to marry Jenna. No, that’s not what I came to talk about.”
Jess lowers her brows, folding her hands serenely over her baby bump. “My dearest big brother, you’re going to have to use layman’s terms here. I’m still not skilled in the understanding of Seth-Speak.”
My lips twitch against my will. “I didn’t know I had my own language. Is it comparable toigpay atinlay?”
“Harder to understand.”
“Even more than Spanish?”
Jess nods. “Yes. Because at least I can use my phone to translate Spanish. There’s no translation service available for Seth-Speak. But I very clearly heard that you want to marry Jenna, and I’m kind of really on the edge of my seat here. You can’t drop something like that and then talk about freakingSpanish.”
I inhale deeply, filling my lungs with the humid evening air off the lake, then exhale it slowly. “I realized tonight, when Pete talked about building a new life, that it’s what Jenna and I have been doing for three years. Not in the most conventional way, but we’ve built a solid friendship and the only reason the romance feels so fast is because that part has happened fast. Or faster than the rest, I guess. In reality, though, we’ve been slowly building up to it for a third of a decade.”
“Wow. Two unexpected things: you coming to me to talk aboutyourlove life AND admitting you’ve had feelings for Jenna for three years.” Jess grabs my arm with one hand and the swing’s armrest with the other, her eyes wide. “Hold onto your diaper tabs, y’all. There might be an earthquake.”
I give her an annoyed look.
Jess grins and squeezes my forearm. “It’s true. But all teasing aside, I’m happy for you. I know I’ve pestered you, well, forever about falling in love or whatever, but I just want you to be happy. And because I know atinybit of Seth-Speak, I feel like you’re indirectly asking my permission to marry Jenna. I’m not sure why because you don’t need it, but I’m honored. And I would really love to have some nieces and nephews to love on.”
“You got those when you married into the Bryant family.”
“Yeah, but not Ella and Eli.” She smiles smugly up at me. “Or any little Senna babies you guys have. At the risk of inflating your ego, it’s pretty much a fact that you will have adorable children. Jen’s gorgeous and you’re, well, you’re not so bad looking.”
I barely resist the strong temptation to tickle her. Emphasis on barely. “How kind of you. But…Senna? Really?”
“Yep. Me and Ember have been calling you guys that for a couple weeks already.” Jess tilts her head back to grin at me. “You can’t be mad about it because you love me because I’m your baby sister. And since you and Ember are the godparents to this baby, you can’t be mad at Ember either.” She closes her eyes and holds her hand in a Zen position. “We have to have a peaceful aura for him or her.”
“Speaking of the baby, are you actually going to wait until he or she is born to find out the sex?”
Jess smooshes her lips together in contemplation. “That’s still a debatable topic in our household. Marshall wants to find out, but I want to wait. I feel like I should have seniority, though. My husband isn’t the one growing a tiny human in his body and he sure as crap won’t be the one birthing the tiny human. As my brother, by the way, you’re honor bound to agreeing with me.”
“But as the baby’s uncleandgodfather, I kind of want to have time to prepare for if it’s a boy or a girl.”
“No! You cannot side with my husband!” She whacks her hand against my chest, but it has the effect of a grain of sand on the surface of the lake. And she’s smiling. “Not under any circumstances.”
As if his ears were ringing, the sliding glass door opens and my brother-in-law steps onto the porch wearing nothing but black athletic shorts. He’s preceded by the nearly-one-year old Beau, and I’m left with no choice but to slide off the swing and give the golden retriever some attention. It gives Marshall a chance to lean down and kiss his wife without my eyes on them, so it’s a win-win. I’ve become very fond of kissing Jenna lately, but I’d much rather roughhouse with Beau than have a front row seat to a depiction of the ending of every Hallmark movie ever made.
“Hey Seth,” Marshall says as he steals my seat on the swing. It’s fine, I’m fine. “Anything interesting happen since we last talked?”
I turn a chair from the table to face them, because apparently, I was demoted. Beau darts off to grab the stick laying by the grill. “Not really. Well, Jen’s ex came and went.”
Marshall nods. “Jess told me Pete was going to see the kids tonight. How was that?”
“It could’ve been worse. Eli pretty much just stared at him, and Ella didn’t say much.”
“I can’t imagine that it would be easy for them to understand why their father just showed up out of the blue. Is he planning to stick around?”
I snort. “No. But he was honest about why he came—after he was a jerk last night, of course—and he’s going to continue to be virtually invisible, so I guess I can give him credit for that. Basically, other than that he’s going to have another child, which means Ella and Eli will have a half sibling, nothing much is going to change.”
“He’s not taking her to court?” Marshall has his arm wrapped around Jess and she’s tucked into his side, his other hand resting over hers on her stomach. “Dad made it sound like that was a possibility. He was coming to the office earlier when he stopped to talk to Jenna.”
“I doubt it. His family has enough to deal with right now.” I shrug. “From how things were left tonight, it’s pretty unlikely.”
