“How have you possibly found a way to be annoyed with me right now?”
“Did you really put something you peed on directly in my hands?”
Chapter 4
Abby
Seven Weeks
Iwasn’t expecting how much lighter I would feel after finally telling someone, but I feel like I’ve been freed from the metaphorical shackles I’ve been dragging around for the last week. Once I let Jack in on the big news about Little One, telling everyone else felt infinitely easier.
“I can’t believe you didn’t call me immediately,” Ellie sniffs indignantly. “You’ve been growing a person for a whole week, and I have been none the wiser. And even worse, you told JACK.”
“What the hell is so wrong about telling me?” Jack asks, looking taken aback.
“It’s not about you, Jacky boy, you know I love you,” she says, waving her hand dismissively. “It’s about the best-friendshipbetrayal.”
“I was having a bit of a meltdown, Ellie Bellie,” I say soothingly, waiting for the wave of theatrics to pass.
“I know,” she says, face softening. “Oh, my sweet ginger angel–we’re having a baby.”
“We’re having a baby,” I repeat back, a smile tugging at the corners of my mouth.
“Who is ‘we’?” Jack interjects, a bemused smile tugging at one corner of his mouth.
“Have you been living under a rock?” Ellie says in a patronizing tone. “We’re family.”
“It takes a village, Jack Robbit,” I respond, grinning when he rolls his eyes at the old nickname that’s never gone away. “Haven’t you heard?”
“What is he right now, like a lima bean?” Griffin says, eyes wide with awe as he stares at my stomach.
“Stop staring at my stomach, you’re freaking me out. And don’t compare Little One to a fruit or vegetable, I hate when people do that.”
“We’ll find a different scale then,” Ellie coos, leaning in close to my belly. “What size are you right now, tiny ginger angel?”
“We don’t know the baby will have red hair,” I say pragmatically. “And we don’t know if it’s a he, Griffin.”
“It’s a he,” he says, nodding like he’s said something wise and profound. “Definitely a he.”
“Well, I thinksheis going to be a perfect little ginger mini-you,” Ellie says defiantly, still very close to me.
I gently shove her away, reclaiming my personal space. My eyes meet Jack’s across the room as he rolls them playfully. I think he seems lighter, too. Like he needed someone to pull him out of his own grief the way Little One pulled me out of mine, even temporarily.
“You two fight like an old married couple,” he mutters.
“We are an old married couple,” they say in unison.
“You’re barely in your thirties.”
“Like we said,” Griffin says with an exaggerated sigh. “Ancient. Decrepit. One foot in the grave.”
“Sorry, babe, you’re not getting out of it that easily,” Ellie says with a smirk. “You’ve got at least another fifty years of this.”
“Unless you don’t,” I say quietly.
The room freezes, suddenly so quiet that you could hear a pin drop.
“Abby, we’re sorry,” Griffin says, a horrified look on his face. “That was stupid, we were just–”
