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“Neither did I.”
Another long pause before a deep exhale. “Fucking Ryan.”
If I had a beer, I would raise it. “Fucking Ryan.”
“You’re taking it?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
Nick snorts, a short, infuriating noise. “You’re not taking it.”
Unease settles in my gut, and I have no idea if it’s at the prospect at not going back to the job I love, or if it’s because of how easily Nick can read me. “Why do you say that?”
He counters my question with one of his own—maybe it’s my imagination, how rhetorical his sounds. “You love her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Bullshit. You love her.”
Jesus. One successful relationship and he’s the fucking love oracle. If he’s gonna claim that title, I might as well milk it. “How did you know? With Amelia?”
The corner of his mouth quirks. “You really wanna know?”
Grimacing, I thump him. “Seriously? That has a dirty answer?”
“That’s not why I’m asking.” While Nick bats me away, his smirk goes nowhere. “Although—”
“You know I’m spending the majority of this weekend surrounded by baseball bats, right?”
Nick snickers but it’s quick to sober, quicker to adopt that goofy ass expression he gets whenever he talks about Amelia. “It’s simple, really. I looked at her and saw the rest of my life. The kids, the house, everything. I knew, y’know?”
See, that’s the terrifying thing. I’m pretty sure I do know.
“Yeah,” Nick hums softly, like he can read my thoughts. “That’swhy I asked.”
39
SUNDAY
“Did you see this?”is how Gideon greets me on the last morning of the school year as she and her students file into my classroom for a little end-of-year celebration.
Propping herself on my desk—which August and Izzy helped relocate to the back of the room so the kids could have an unobstructed view of the movie projected on the whiteboard it usually sits in front of—she hands over her phone. “Apparently, you’re engaged.”
“How nice for me.” I sigh as I scan the article stating just that, apparently confirmed by a source coles to both Cass and I. “Are people not bored yet?”
“You’re dating a dynasty, honey. Nothing boring about that.”
She can say that again. There is nothing boring about the odd, hybrid-family household I’ve suddenly found myself a part of. Nor about the routine we’ve managed to perfect in a worryingly short amount of time. The normal, easy routine that feels entirely too natural and is the antithesis of the word itself—there’s nothingroutineabout our chaos, but at least there’s a pattern to it.
Every morning, we have breakfast together. Meaning August scoffs down whatever Cass makes while hurriedly finishing homework he forgot about, and I pretend not to notice, or sometimes I really don’t notice because I’m busy fending off the man tipping prenatals vitamins into my palm and trying to convince me that vegetables belong in smoothies. Usually, he succeeds because he plays dirty. Around the twenty-one week mark, he waxed poetic about our growing fetus—the love of his life, he’s taken to calling her, and fuck him wholeheartedly for doing that and blurring the boundaries I already have to squint to see even more—being the size of a carrot. So, when he served up a glass of frightfully orange liquid with big puppy-dog eyes, what the hell was I supposed to do?
Chug the entire thing and restrain a grimace, obviously.
The same way I did last week when he produced spaghetti squash for his blending pleasure. Twenty-three weeks brought us back into fruit territory—I never thought I’d be so happy to see a mango—but with week twenty-four on the horizon, I fear what Cass might do with an ear of corn.
We have dinner together too. Every single night. Sunday’s are a group affair, every available member of a very extended family cramming themselves into one house—usually Cass’, since it’s the biggest—for a home-cooked meal that tends to last well into the night. I’ve experienced three of them now and the novelty still hasn’t faded. I still can’t get over the concept of family dinners not being suffered through in suffocating silence, and August can't get over the concept, full stop; two-person meals have been his norm for pretty much his entire life.
It’s the little things that get me the most, though. The tiny new additions to our routine. Nursery shopping and journal writing and bestowing an extensive country music education upon the man who insists on driving us everywhere.
