We move in a gentle choreography that feels like the opposite of an arena—no whistle, no clock, just two people adjusting the angle of a rug until it agrees. He hands me an Allen key; I tighten the last bolt. When the frame stops wobbling, a laugh bubbles up of its own accord. Not relief. Recognition. We are building places that hold.
In the doorway, a stack of boxes lists toward catastrophe; Jason hip-checks it upright without disturbing the monarch. “Forts,” he declares, surveying our cardboard empire. “Racecar track. Neutral-zone trap in the hallway for Sophie when she tries to assemble a glitter cannon.”
“She will,” I say, heart doing that quiet, silly bloom. I let myself picture ten minutes from now, and then a year. Boxes becoming ramparts, the hall becoming a runway, this room becoming the center of a map that finally makes sense. For once, imagining doesn’t feel like tempting fate. It feels like drawing breath.
Jason sets the lamp down where the stars will be best and wrestles the cord into obedience with a twist of his wrist I know from seeing him corral pucks on the boards. The lullaby playlist keeps looping a soft piano track; he hums along two beats behind, like he’s drafting off the melody. It should be ridiculous. It steadies me.
I lean my shoulder to the nursery doorframe and try to hold the whole picture at once: paint drying to a warm hush, the mobile’s wooden skates turning in the draft, our names in marker on box sides like flags planted in new soil. And him—forearm streaked with white, jaw rough with end-of-day, babytucked high against his chest in the wrap like a medal he didn’t win so much as earn by showing up again and again.
“Is the humming legally actionable?” he asks without looking up, rubbing at the paint swipe with the inside of his wrist and only accomplishing abstract art.
“Not if you keep it under a whisper,” I say. “And only if you don’t try to add drums on the cereal boxes.”
“Cruel,” he murmurs, but his mouth curves. He checks the crib bolts I tightened, tug testing with the same patience he gives a new stick. Oliver sighs into his hoodie and he stops moving like the room has been given a rule. I watch a laugh ripple through his shoulders and fade as he recalibrates to quiet.
I catalogue him the way I used to catalogue injuries, except this list keeps expanding in ways that don’t scare me. Grumpy—still there, that knit between his eyebrows when the world is loud and unfair. Stubborn—absolutely, but redirected into holding ground that matters. Competitive—yes, but the scoreboard has changed; he likes winning at bedtime routines now. Devoted—always, even when it was messy; now it has edges that feel like safety instead of walls. Changed—yes. Not like a swap, but like a season that learned when to pass instead of deke.
He glances up and catches me staring. “What?” he asks, mock wary. “Do I have paint on my face? On the baby? On the baby’s aura?”
“Just your forearm,” I say, stepping in. I touch the streak with my thumb and leave it there a beat longer than it takes to wipe. “And there’s a new crease right here.” I tap the place between his brows gently. “It’s a good one. It means you think before you swing.”
He huffs, soft. “Character development wrinkle. Sexy.”
“Mm.” I stand on my toes and kiss the crease anyway. His breath stalls, then evens. Oliver makes a small complaint at the jostle; we both apologize in whispers, synchronized.
He tips his chin toward the shelf near the window, where the first three board books already lean like a team that hasn’t learned to stand shoulder to shoulder. “I used to think a quiet house meant I wasn’t doing enough,” he says, almost to the books. “Now it feels like I’m finally skating to the right end.”
“Me too,” I tell him, and it feels like admitting I used to narrate my value by how busy the hallway was. “I like this end.”
He nods, eyes flicking to the mobile as it turns. “You ever think about how we almost didn’t get here because we were both so convinced we could out-discipline our hearts?” He says it without accusation. Just wonder.
“Every day I don’t pass out mid-feed,” I say. “Which is most days.” I smooth a palm over Oliver’s cap and then over the paint on his arm that’s almost dry. “We learned to ask for help. From each other. That’s the change.”
Jason’s smile slides slow and certain across his face, the version that made me mad the first year because it looked like a dare. Now it looks like a promise. “I’m still grumpy sometimes,” he offers.
“I know,” I say, and it comes out fond. “I’m still bossy.”
“Lucky kid,” he says, and the kid, on cue, snuffles, then settles.
The lamp throws a warm circle onto the rug. He sways once without thinking, a tiny figure eight that mirrors some muscle memory I don’t have a name for yet. I breathe in that loop with him and let the versions of him line up like jerseys on a locker hook—past, stubborn, hopeful—and realize I’m in love with all of them at once. Not a contradiction. A team.
By dusk the nursery smells like drying paint and faint baby shampoo. We retreat to the living room where the moving boxes form a temporary coffee table and the couch is still a rumor. Jason spreads a blanket across the floor—stadium-blanket blue, frayed at one corner from a thousand wash cycles—and tugsanother one over our legs once we sit. The baby monitor glows on a stack of paperbacks like a tiny lighthouse, soft green pulse steady. Our kid sighs through the speaker every few minutes just to remind us we are being supervised.
“Cuisine?” Jason lifts two takeout bags like a waiter who might be fired after this shift. “We have Thai and also Thai.”
“Bold menu,” I say. “I’ll start with the pad see ew and see where the night takes me.”
It takes me to a carton that smells like garlic and happiness. We use plastic forks and an Allen key packet as a makeshift coaster. He opens spring rolls and hands me one without asking which dipping sauce I want, somehow remembering I’m a peanut-sauce person and a sweet-chili skeptic.
“This is ridiculous,” I say, and I mean the whole tableau—blanket, boxes, the monitor’s tiny hush, us in sweats with hair we’ve both given up on. “It’s perfect.”
He relaxes by degrees like I just gave him permission to enjoy this instead of grade it. “Imperfect excellence,” he decrees. “My new brand.”
We eat the way you do when you can’t remember how long it’s been since you cared about plating—leaning in, laughing when noodles escape, trading bites without ceremony. Halfway through, the monitor crackles with a soft protest that dies before we can panic. We freeze anyway, listening like deer. The green dot steadies. We exhale.
Jason nudges my knee with his. “Tell me one good thing from today that isn’t a baby thing,” he says. “We already have a list for those.”
I think. “I found the box with my favorite mug,” I say. “It’s the dumb one that saysWorld’s Okayest Trainer. It felt like finding a past version of me I still like.”
