As she watched his car pull out of the driveway, she moved Dylan’s little arm back and forth in a wave. Maybe it wasn’t that Van didn’t like her enough. Maybe she didn’t like him enough either. Or maybe they liked each other a lot but liking each other wasn’t the same as being in love. They had tried. They had done their best and they had been kind, but deep down they had always known it wasn’t meant to be.
Truth
Two weeks later Bailey was feeding the swans in her nightgown like an actress with a niche OnlyFans when Vanny rattled up in his Subaru.
“Get in, loser, we’re going shopping.” He grinned.
“What?” Bailey stared at him.
“That’s a quote fromMean Girls.” Van blushed.
“Duh. But where are we going?”
“Eben and Max’s adoption came through.”
“Oh my God!” Bailey screamed, and ran upstairs to put on some pants.
The baby wasin Ohio,so Eben and Max had left at four in the morning to meet her at the hospital. They had been slowly moving into their renovated house on the Neck, figuring they had all the time in the world, but suddenly they were about to bring home a baby, and half their worldly belongings were in boxes.
Augusta was hanging curtains in the nursery when Bailey arrived, and she hopped down to give her a hug. “It’s a baby girl but we’re not doing pink, or anything gendered. We’re doing the nursery in whites and neutrals.” Augusta announced this with the seriousness of an international diplomat bringing down the Berlin Wall, and so Bailey nodded solemnly and tried to honor the moment without smirking. The house was an absolute disaster, crates of dishes in the hallway, bedding in plastic cases in the garage, a giant wrought-iron chandelier mysteriously in the bathtub.
“They just finished the painting,” Augusta explained. “They had been talking to this mom in Ohio about adopting the baby, but sheseemed to be deciding between them and this straight couple in Tulsa, and Eben was convinced she was going to choose the straight couple. But apparently the mom liked the idea that she’d always be the mother in some way, even if she never meets the kid.” Augusta shrugged.
Bailey hadn’t ever thought about it, but that made sense to her on some level. The baby would have two dads and then, somewhere in Ohio, her only mom.
Dylan was with Bailey’s parents, Fran’s kids were with her mother, Augusta’s with hers, and so they spent the entire day working, RJ and Colin driving back and forth between Eben’s old house and the new one, moving sofas, tables, and the king-size bed that nearly hospitalized them both. Fran organized the kitchen, having an engineer’s logic for the placement of cooking utensils and glasses, Van tackled the lighting fixtures, the television, the speakers, and all the electronics, and Bailey did the bedrooms, unrolling rugs, hanging clothes in the closets, and making up the beds with her best hospital corners, a skill she had learned entirely from watching reality shows about yachting.
At eight,exhausted but finally finished, they ordered pizza and opened a case of Bud Heavy, sitting around the big wooden table on the deck and comparing their minor injuries and laughing about the couch cushions RJ accidentally let fly out the back of his truck on Jeffrey’s Neck Road. It felt like they could have been twenty again, a summer weekend by the water, nothing to worry about except for making each other laugh and carry on.
“Anyone want to play a game?” Fran suggested.
“Quarters?” suggested RJ.
“Flip Cup?” Colin tried.
“I can’t chug beer anymore.” Bailey shook her head.
“Let’s play truth or dare,” suggested Van, and everyone looked at him, bewildered.
“Dude, are you a middle school girl?” asked Colin.
“Truth or dare, Colin?” Van shot back.
“Dare.” Colin looked amused.
“I dare you to drink a bottle of baby formula.”
Colin pretended to object but went inside to grab one and they all cheered.
They went around, Bailey admitting to a sex dream about the Amazon delivery guy, Augusta chewing a piece of gum that had been in RJ’s mouth, Van taking off his shirt and doing ten push-ups on the deck.
When RJ picked dare, he was obviously hoping to be asked to jump off something tall wearing a costume, but instead Bailey dared him to open up his phone and show everyone the pictures in his hidden folder.
“Whoa, that’s gangster, Bailey,” Augusta cautioned. “RJ, you don’t need to do that.”
“Wait, now I really want to know what RJ has hidden on his phone.” Bailey laughed. Would it be super gross porn? Photos of someone they knew?
“Fuck it, I’ll do it if everyone else will.” RJ grinned.
