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“Of course he likes me! I’m his favorite uncle.”
“You’re his only uncle,” Jake laughed, coming into the living room with a couple of beers in his hands. He handed one to Danny, then gave me sparkling water. Naturally, I wasn’t drinking while breastfeeding, but after Lucas’s birth, I’d given Jake my blessing to go back to beer. He had hesitated at first but had eventually agreed with me. I knew he enjoyed kicking back with my brother again after such a long period of sobriety.
The guys thumbed the caps off their beers. “Do I get to hold him?” Danny asked.
“You can hold Lucas or that beer,” I said. “You take your pick.”
“I’m not going to get drunk off of one beer!”
“I know you won’t, but I don’t want beer spilling on my baby. Sorry, but those are the rules.”
“They are,” Jake confirmed.
Danny took a swig of beer and then set the bottle down. He held out his arms, and I obligingly handed Lucas over to him.
It was sweet watching my giant of a brother holding my son, even though Lucas definitely wasn’t a small baby. Sometimes it amazed me that I’d managed to give birth to him. He was definitely going to be closer to his father’s size than mine when he grew up.
“So, how’s it going?” Danny asked. “The whole parenting thing, I mean. Would you recommend it?”
Jake laughed. “You couldn’t handle it.”
“I could handle it!”
“You could not.”
“I’m fine with him right now, aren’t I?”
“You’ve been holding him for thirty seconds. I’ve seen that deer-in-headlights look you can get on your face when he starts crying. And you’d probably fall apart the first time you had to change a diaper.”
“Are you telling meyouchange diapers?“ Danny challenged. “I’d have thought Olivia would be the one doing all the heavy lifting around here.”
Before I’d gotten close to him, I would have thought the same thing, but I knew better now. “Jake does an equal share of the parenting,” I told my brother. “He’s a great dad.”
It was true. I was the only one who could do the feedings, but Jake got up with me every single time, and he’d let me fall asleep on his shoulder with the baby at my breast, his arms around us both.
When it came to all the other parenting duties, we shared them equally. Neither one of us was working right now—Jake had plenty of money to take an extended period of time off—so we were both able to be present all the time. We both took care of diaper changing, soothing, bathing, and everything else Lucas needed.
It was amazing having an equal partner. I was in a new moms’ group with the women who had been in my prenatal class, and so many complained about their husbands not pulling their weight. If you’d asked me a year ago, I would have said Jake would be that kind of father—one who believed that taking care of the baby was the responsibility of the mother. I had never been more pleased to be wrong about someone.
“So,” Danny said, “now that the baby is here, are you two ready to talk about the wedding?”
“I think you’re more excited about the wedding than I am,” I teased him.
“I’m interested! It’s not every day your little sister gets married to your best friend. And on a tropical island, no less!”
The idea of having the wedding on the island had been Jake’s, of course. I would never have thought of it. But then, I still hadn’t gotten used to the disposable income I had now that I was marrying the inventor of Branches. Branches 2.0 had been a huge hit, and Jake was using all the money to fly everyone out to what we had come to refer to asour island.
We would marry on the beach where we had fallen in love, and then we would take everyone to Maui for the after-party.
“Are you going to be up to the best man duties?” I asked my brother. “It’s a pretty big job, you know.”
“Of course. And maybe there will be a cute bridesmaid for me, too?”
“You had better not hook up with any of my friends,” I warned him sternly.
“And why not? You hooked up with one of mine.”
“I’mmarryinghim. We have a baby together. I know you, Danny. If you hook up with one of my friends, you’ll never call her again.”
