I give him a withering look.
“Trust me, I can…even without a job.”
“Nick,” I say calmly. “I need you to get the hell out of the house because you’re always here. You’re at the shop. You’re…driving me nuts.”
He goes back to the newspaper. “Noted.”
“Nick.”
He looks up, smiles. “Yeah, baby?”
I sigh and shake my head. “You don’t have to constantly keep an eye on me.”
“I know.” He flips a news page. “But I’m doing it anyway.”
And he does. According to Daisy, her brother is stubborn as hell, and I should accept my fate.
What’s strange is that while he’s bossy about my water intake and whether I’ve sat down recently, he lets me make every decision that actually matters. He doesn’t argue when I say I don’t want to keep the shop schedule lighter. He doesn’t push when I say I don’t want to talk about names yet.
And between his quiet hovering and my reluctant acceptance of it, we stop talking about whether he belongs here and start acting like this—us—is already real.
So, when I tell him it’s time to set up the nursery, he just rolls up his sleeves. Cass joins him, because they’re now a team.
The nursery used to be my grandmother’s sitting room. It has a bay window that catches the afternoon light. The walls are a soft, creamy white—because we don’t know the baby's gender and I want to keep it that way.
“You don’t mind not knowing?” I ask, suddenly worried that choosing not to know if we should buy pink or blue clothes is taking part of this experience away from him.
“Enya, this kid already surprises me daily. I can wait.”
See, that’s him choosing me, again.
I stroke my belly as I watch him fondly while he scowls, reading the instructions to assemble Junior’s crib.
“Why does it have to have so many fucking screws?” he wants to know.
“I thought all men know how to put furniture together,” Cass says accusatorily, and then looks at me. “Your baby daddy is useless, Enya.”
“Hey, see that?” Nick jabs his finger toward the white and yellow changing table. “I did that. Hella lot of screws there, too.”
Cass rolls her shoulders. “I’m just saying what I’m seeing, and what I’m seeing is that you’re a disaster.”
He drills two planks together, and Cass groans. “You’re putting that on backward.”
He pauses, looks, exhales. “Goddammit.”
I grin. I take a photo of the mess on the floor and send it to Daisy with the message: At this rate, my baby won’t have a bed.
Daisy responds immediately: He can probably dismantle a bomb in sixty seconds, but can’t put a crib together. Figures!
Cass picks up the framed prints that she made for the baby. Stunning watercolors of a fox and a rabbit. When she handed them to me, I thought, “My baby is already loved.”
That feeling was exemplified when packages from Nick’s parents appeared. A bassinet with wheels. A mobile for the crib, which Daisy and Forest sent over. At this rate, we won’t have to buy any baby stuff. The thought makes me happy because that means we have people who care about our child.
My father called twice, asking me to get married. Maggie hasn’t checked on me. My birth family doesn’t care that I’m going to have a baby. But Nick’s family is all in—and I don’t feel unwanted and alone.
As Nick continues to bungle around with the crib, Cass hammers some nails for the frames, and puts the art right abovethe changing table. She’s going to paint a mural on one of the walls once we know if it’s a boy or a girl. It’s going to be beautiful.
I sit on the rocking chair watching my two favorite people banter. The chair is a gift from Forest’s brother and his wife—they have one that came in handy for when River’s wife, Sunny, had a baby, so they thought we should have one. I’ve never even met these people, and they’re sending us baby presents.
