Page 14 of XOXO, Yours

“Wait,” he says.

He scrolls.

“Wait, wait, wait.”

He looks up at the ceiling tiles like they owe him an explanation. Then he turns and looks at me, and his eyes are enormous.

“Did you know?”

I arrange my face into nothing. I’ve had a lot of practice. “Know what?”

He tips the screen just far enough for me to see a message from Oliver. Cora is her.

Oh, hell.

“I plead the fifth,” I say.

“You knew.” It isn’t an accusation. He says it like I’ve been holding out on the ending of a really good book. “It’s Oliver’s.”

“I’m her sister. I know everything. It’s in the bylaws.”

And Payton Blankenship—six-foot-four, folded into a plastic chair—looking every bit a fantasy cowboy… well, his eyes go bright and wet right there under the fluorescent lights.

“I’m gonna be an uncle,” he whispers.

It is the single most unfairly sweet thing I have ever witnessed.

His phone buzzes again. He reads it and groans.

“Kelsie says I’m not allowed to tell Mom and Dad. Oliver gets to do it.” He glances down the row at his parents, who are sharing a vending machine coffee and have no idea. “This is going to kill me.”

“You’ll survive.”

“I’m not built for secrets, Jules.”

I believe him. Everything he feels is right there on his face, out in the open, like it’s never once occurred to him to hide it. I don’t know what that would even be like.

Two women blow through the doors a few minutes later like they’ve been summoned by some kind of family bat signal, husbands in tow. One husband scans the exits the way men do when they’re doing reconnaissance. I watch a lot of police procedurals. The other is tall and rumpled and apologizes to a chair in a British accent when he bumps it. Kelsie and Addison, I learn—the two sisters Cowboy mentioned. Both of them beeline for Payton, and there is a lot of fierce whispering and at least one smack to the back of his head.

Then the double doors open, and Oliver walks out with my sister.

Hope’s up before I can blink. I catch her wrist.

“Wait.”

“Jules—”

“Just. Wait.”

Because Cora’s in a green party dress and a pair of hospital socks, mascara gone to ruin, and she hasn’t seen us. She’s looking at them. At all of them, rising out of their chairs. I watch a silver-haired woman cross the room and pull my sister into her arms like she’s been doing it for years.

Hope goes still beside me.

I tug her back a step, into the doorway of the vending room, out of the way. Then another.

We stay there. We watch Pops put his big hand on top of Cora’s head. We watch Oliver tuck her into his side and tell his parents, low and careful, that the baby is his. We watch Mimz clap her hands like she personally arranged the whole thing. We watch Payton hoist that paper sack over his head and announce that he brought pancakes, which he feels demonstrates excellent uncle energy.

And I watch Cora’s face. The thing it has always done when someone is kind to her—flinch, then soften, then brace. Except tonight it stays soft.