“She tell you that?”
“Didn’t have to. I know her.” He bumps my shoulder with his, stands, and lifts a baby off Peyton before she has to ask.
Talisa brings out a milk tart she made, and it’s gone in five minutes. Amelie gets the last slice by asking twice and looking pitiful. Coffee goes around. The babies start to melt down, one by one.
Nick’s got Jett against his shoulder, bouncing him without thinking about it, and he watches the rest of us while he does it. Mack in the middle of a story. Amelie between Paige and Justine. He doesn’t add anything to it.
By the time the plates are cleared and the babies bundled, it’s dark out.
Elle and Ben go first, a twin apiece, Beau winding through their legs. Ben tells me he caught the first show. Elle tells him not to encourage me.
Quinn hugs me too hard and too long and tells me to fly out to LA and drag his father home. Justine thanks Josie for the third time.
Peyton and Noah herd the triplets toward the door, Noah with one of them asleep on his shoulder and a fat diaper bag over his back, Stevie Nicks hot on his heels.
Mack ducks back in for a jacket he forgot, says goodnight to Paige at the foot of the stairs in a voice he thinks is quiet, and is gone before I can make it weird for him.
The Ashfords go together. Talisa carries the leftovers, Amelie half asleep on her feet beside her, Mack already out at the truck. Nick’s last.
“Thanks for the food,” Nick says.
“Don’t make it weird, Ashford.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” He goes.
I listen to his truck back down the drive and turn out onto the road.
Then it’s just us. The triplets gone, the teenagers gone, the grown-up kids gone, the house quiet except for the two of us and the wreck of a kitchen.
Josie washes. I dry. We’ve done it ten thousand times, and we don’t talk through most of it. Just the clink of plates, the water running, her handing me a pan with her fingers overlapping mine a half second longer than the job needs. She still does that.
I stack the gold plates back on the high shelf. She hands me the glasses one at a time. The house ticks as it cools.
“Nick looked tired,” she says.
“Nick always looks tired.”
“No. Tired tired.” She passes me the gravy pot. “He sat there holding Jett and watching everybody else’s life happen.” She shrugs. “He’s lonely, Liam.”
“Okay.”
“You should set him up with somebody.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Why not?”
“Because deep down, I can’t stand the man. I’m not going out of my way to find someone to set him up with. He’s my frenemy, Josie. In case you forgot.”
She laughs. “He’d do it for you.”
“He would not.”
“He would, and you know it.” She pulls the plug. The water gurgles down, and she leans back against the sink, drying her hands on the towel she pulls off my shoulder. “Just think about it.”
“I’m not thinking about anything.” There’s no way in hell.
Her face goes soft. She puts her hand flat on my chest, then slides it up to the side of my neck.
