Page 136 of Vegas with my Ex’s Best Friends

Later, upstairs, there's no performance about it. Liam pulls me in by the hand and kisses me slow and a little crooked, like he's been waiting all evening and now there's nowhere to be. He's grinning into it, which shouldn't work and does.

“Your brother shook my hand,” he says against my mouth.

“He did.”

“I'm extremely proud of everyone.”

“Go to sleep, Liam.”

“After,” he says.

Andrew puts his hand on the back of my neck and I let my head drop back against his shoulder.

Ethan sits on the edge of the bed. “You okay?” He means it the way he means it.

“Yeah.”

“Connor—”

“He came,” I say. “He shook Liam's hand. He told me the house was good.” I look at Ethan. “He said there's a next time.”

Ethan nods. Something settles in his face.

It’s progress.

Tonight, that's enough.

Chapter forty-nine

Epilogue—Riley

Afew months later, the yellow nursery is still aggressively bright, and none of us have touched it.

The house is never quiet anymore. Bottles drying on the rack. Tiny socks on the couch because Andrew folds them and someone immediately unfolds them.

At least one man is awake at any given hour—I know which one by the sound. Liam hums when he’s up at 3am, badly, to himself, the same three bars of something he can never remember the rest of. Andrew doesn’t make noise at all, which means I only know he was up because the dishwasher will be emptied by morning. Ethan moves fast between the bassinet and the kitchen and back, and if I ask what he’s doing he says recalibrating the schedule, which means Olivia had a bad hour and he’s identified a pattern and he’s ninety percent sure he’s right.

He usually is.

It’s 2:17am and I’m in the nursery doorway with our daughter against my chest. She’s down—her fist curled into my shirt, her face doing the thing newborns do where they look ancient and very new at the same time. The kitchen still smells like the garlic bread Liam burned forty minutes ago. He offered to clean it up and fell asleep in the rocking chair. He’s still there. Mouth slightly open. Completely useless.

I love him so much it’s embarrassing.

Andrew is on the floor behind me with the laundry basket, going through it in the methodical way that means it’ll actually get sorted instead of just relocated to a different pile. He’s been at it for fifteen minutes without a word.

Ethan gave up the feeding-time spreadsheet three weeks ago. He said he was letting go of the system. He now has a notes app with color-coded entries for every feeding. I haven't said anything. Some people need the data.

The front door opens downstairs. A key, not a knock—Connor has a key now. Sarah’s voice, and then his, low. The sound of the coat closet.

We do this every week. It wasn’t decided. It just started.

I come downstairs with the baby and Connor is already in the entryway, and the thing that happens to his face when he sees her—every time, still, like it gets him every time—is something I think about when everything feels like too much. He holds out his hands before I ask. He’s still a little tentative, still holds her with his arms slightly away from his body like he’s afraid of something, but he takes her.

“Hey, you,” he says to her. Just that.

She makes a sound—some small noise that means nothing and everything—and his whole posture shifts.

“She remembers me,” he says.