“If Aunt Sabrina lets you,” I remind him.
He scoots off his chair, grabs Yolko Ono, puts the chicken in the chair, climbs back up, lifts his shirt, and offers his nipple to the chicken.
“That’s not going to end well,” Laney says.
“It’ll end…some way,” I reply as the chicken hops into Bash’s lap and sits, facing forward.
“Doko Ono, you eat,” Bash says, pointing to his nipple again.
She ignores him.
“Do you need a blanket?” I ask Sabrina. “There’s a closet with old blankets that all of our parents donated.”
“Sure. Surprise me, please.” She shuffles the baby as she sits, and Laney and I gasp at the same time.
There’s something big and sparkly andhow did we miss that?on her left ring finger.
“What—” Laney starts as I say, “When?”
Sabrina looks down at her finger, then grins at us while she flashes a view of her whole hand, massive diamond with an elaborate wrap and all. “Oh, this old thing?”
“Yes,that old thing,” I squeal while Laney and I crowd into the last easy chair beside her. Laney’s baby is still sleeping like an absolute angel.
“Tell us everything,” Laney breathes.
“He wore me down,” Sabrina says dramatically. “I was one day shy of forty-two weeks, and he was all,you know he’s not coming until we get hitched, so we might as well just do it. Very,veryromantic.”
“Liar,” Laney murmurs.
“If you don’t want to tell us, just say you don’t want to tell us,” I agree.
Sabrina laughs. “You know him too well, don’t you?”
“We do,” Laney and I agree.
“He proposed in the middle of the night three days after we got home from the hospital. So…just over a week ago? I got up to feed the baby and couldn’t go back to sleep, so I was avoiding the bedroom, becauseoneof us should sleep, you know?”
“We know,” Laney says quickly.
I smile.
I remember missing sleep.
Seeing my friends with babies makes me want to miss sleep again.
“So he found me in the kitchen staring at all of my caffeinated coffees, and he asked me if I had to choose between marrying coffee and marrying him, which one would I choose?”
Laney and I both crack up, because we knowexactlywhat she told him.
“Right?” Sabrina says. “As if there was a question. But when he got down on one knee and held out the ring and said, ‘But I don’t see the coffee offering you this,’ it was the sweetest, funniest, most perfect thingever.”
And this is how we all know he’s her soulmate.
I love my friends’ chosen partners.
Sabrina’s still smiling. “So…I said yes, and I think I actually cried, and he’s letting me lie and tell everyone it was the lack of sleep that made me all weepy, and we took a day trip up into the mountains yesterday with my mom and grandpa and his grandma and Zen. And now we’re officially legally tied together forever, and I didnothave sex on my wedding night, which sucks donkey balls, but also, he’s never touching me with his penis again and he knows it, and he married me anyway, so here we are.”
“Are you happy?” I whisper.
