Page 134 of Vegas with my Ex’s Best Friends

“The numbers were wrong by forty square feet.”

“Ethan.”

“It matters for the load-bearing assessment—”

“You had the walls assessed?”

“Obviously.”

“Why are you like this.”

Connor watches them. Not the argument, the way they move around each other. Liam loud and exasperated, not actually angry. Ethan unmoved, completely unbothered. As if they have already had this fight and will have it again next week. Nobody performs anything. They're just two people who live together.

Connor picks up his wine.

After dinner, Sarah looks at me. “You promised us the nursery.”

We go upstairs.

The yellow is aggressive. Sarah stops in the doorway and takes it in.

“Oh,” she says.

“Yeah,” I say.

“It's cheerful,” Liam says from behind us.

“It's very committed to being cheerful,” she says.

Above the changing table, Ethan has pinned a printed chart. Three crib models. Safety ratings. Column comparisons in his handwriting. One option circled in red.

Connor walks over to it.

He reads it for a moment.

“You made a spreadsheet for the crib,” he says.

“It's a comparison chart,” Ethan says. “The safety rating differential between the top two models is not—”

“I can see the ratings.”

He stands there. Takes in the half-assembled glider in the corner, instructions still spread on the floor around it. The parenting book splayed open on the window seat, bookmarked two-thirds through. He doesn't say anything about any of it.

Then he crosses to the doorway. Up on top of the frame, mostly hidden, there's a strip of paint swatches. Yellows shading into greens shading into one neutral beige with a sticky note that just says better.

He looks at Andrew.

“Does he know you have those?” he asks.

Andrew doesn't look up from the corner where he's straightening a stack of storage boxes. “No.”

“Good plan,” Connor says.

He stands there another moment.

Then he looks at me.

“You really live here?” he says. Not quite a question.