They parked down the street from the cul-de-sac where Maria’s parents lived. It was a busy neighborhood on a busy Christmas night, with the sounds of merriment spilling out of open front doors. A light dusting of snow swirled on the pavement with heavy snow clouds reflecting the light of Chicago in the distance. “You grew up a Britechester kid. Fancy.”
“Fancy?”
“Yeah, us Copper Hill-billies thought the Britechester kids were so rich. It’s like, practically Chicago.”
Jordan’s humble upbringing wasn’t the only reason he felt nervous about tonight. “So, how many people know that I ran out west and came crawling back home like a loser?”
Maria frowned. “Aw, don’t say it like that.”
He shrugged. Was it not true?
“Me,” she said. “Well, but I only told Lou, I swear.”
“Okay.”
“But Lou is dating Jamie. And Jamie’s sister is dating Ingrid’s brother now, and obviously they know Ingrid went with you, and you know how Ingrid is. So, sorry, probably everyone knows.”
Good thing she could cradle this tiny puppy in one arm, because she needed the other hand to take hold of Jordan and drag him into the house, because for sure he was thinking about running away.
“They’re gonna love you,” she said.
It wasn’t a lie, exactly—it was hope.
Inside, most of the guests had already arrived. The house smelled delicious. Johanna burst across the room to hug her grandfather.
Maria’s mother greeted them at the door. “Oh, Maria. You brought your puppy?”
“Mama, she’s just a baby. We couldn’t leave her all alone on her first night in a strange house. Look at how sweet.”
Dom shouted across the room so everyone could hear, “Who’s having a baby?”
“No, Dad, not a baby. She’s a puppy.”
“Huh.” Dom came over and looked at the puppy like his daughter had brought a sewer rat into the house. He never liked the idea of pets in the house, but they were allowed to have a hamster once.
“But is she going to pee on my rugs?” Judith asked.
“I won’t let her. I brought pee pads,” Maria said.
“Jordan, in the flesh!” Dom boomed.
“Yes, sir.”
“I was beginning to think you were imaginary.”
Never mind that they had seen her parents in the flesh just two weeks ago, when they stopped by the house for a couple hours. Jordan didn’t assume he’d forgotten that day, but it seemed Maria’s father had only this one singular thing to say to him and nothing else in the whole world.
“You know that’s a thing they do in Japan? Imaginary boyfriends. They bring them to holiday dinners to please their parents. They rent them out like escorts. You’re not a paid escort, are you Jordan?”
Maria gasped. “Dad!”
Dom laughed at his own joke. At least, Jordan hoped he was joking.
“No, sir. Pretty sure I’m real,” Jordan said.
Maria shook her head and whispered, “Ignore him.”
Then Judith tilted her head at the puppy, softening a little, and said, “Oh, but look at those big, big eyes. She’s a happy girl. Oh, she is sweet. I think maybe I’d like to hold her. Wait, has she peed recently? Maybe take her pee first, but then I’d like to hold her.”
There was one familiar face at this party—Ian—so Jordan went to him and decided that they would stick together tonight. But they weren’t in the same boat here. Ian belonged at this party, now and since the earliest days of his childhood when these three families first began. On the other hand, Jordan was the freshest face in the room if you didn’t count the puppy.
Jordan wasn’t cripplingly shy. He might have been reserved, but he was friendly and could hold a conversation if someone approached him. But this room would have been overwhelming for even the best conversationalist. There were so many loud personalities with so many varied opinions. He honestly wouldn’t remember who anyone was, or how they were related to each other.
Most of these people were not his kind of people or his kind of personalities. He doesn’t have opinions about philosophy or current politics, and he already knew well how Ingrid’s family felt about not having opinions. Weren’t many of Maria’s family just the same?
The guy in the vest with the slicked hair was Wesley. He dated Laney, Ian and Ingrid’s older sister, of course. “Of course,” Jordan said, as if he should have known that already. Probably he should have known it if he were a better friend to Ian or had paid attention to anything Ingrid talked about on their road trip.
Most notably, Wesley was a United States Congressman for the 6th district of Washington State. Yes, he actually was. That was slightly intimidating. He was big into environmentalism, and Jordan thought that could be something they had in common. Jordan was an avid outdoorsman and cared about the environment quite a lot.
“I have solar panels on my camper,” Jordan offered.
Although Wesley also had a little to say about gas-guzzling RVs and how Jordan really should look into some of the newer electric models. As if Jordan could afford a brand new electric RV. Wesley exhibited the kind of arrogance that really rubbed Jordan the wrong way, so it seemed they would not be on the same page after all. And if Jordan lived in the 6th district of Washington State, he wasn’t sure he’d vote for the guy.
Jordan was happy to end that conversation and make an excuse to finally meet Maria’s little brother, Leo. And he knew it was Leo right away because he had an uncanny way of looking just like his sister, who happened to have Jordan’s favorite face in the whole world, but rounded with baby fat and some peach fuzz on his chin. Leo was nice to talk to, very friendly and welcoming. Actually, the polar opposite of a lot of the people here, and it was refreshing.
He was studying political science at Sierra Nova University, and he pointed out his girlfriend across the room, who was talking to all the other women who looked just like her and had names Jordan wouldn’t remember. It would have been an excellent idea if everyone wore name tags tonight.
Everybody always forgot about Leo, so Jordan clung to him in hopes that everyone would forget about him, too, but that didn’t happen. Maria saw them talking together and squealed with delight to know how they were getting along. She waved them both across the room to join her. And everyone.
Of all the twenty-somethings in attendance tonight, there was one girl missing. And her absence was obvious since she was usually the loudest voice in the room. Dom asked, “What is Ingrid up to? Anyone know?”
Lou turned to Jordan—with what felt like malice, he would say, and it wouldn’t have been the first time. “Yeah, where is she, Jordan? Aren’t you guys besties or something?”
“Besties? Uh, no. I haven’t spoken to her since the day I dropped her in California.”
But that got their father’s attention. Dom looked horrified. “You took Ingrid to California? Why would you take an innocent young lady and drop her all alone in California with the drug addicts and the vagrants?”
Suddenly Jordan felt like he was in trouble for Ingrid’s whole life. “Because… she asked me to?”
And, no, that was not a good enough answer.
Everyone knew that Ingrid had gone to explore California, but the fact that Jordan had left her there, alone, an innocent young lady, added a layer of distaste in his someday father-in-law’s eyes.
“Dad, she’s twenty-five,” Maria argued. “He doesn’t need to babysit her.”
Jordan appreciated the support, but it didn’t convince her father much. Dom shook his head at it all. “Ian, haven’t you heard from your twin sister?”
Ian shrugged. “She texted me a couple weeks ago. I think she’s not dead. She’s—I don’t know—doing what she does.”
Everybody nodded then, like that made perfect sense. Jordan was glad that someone had heard from her. At least she was probably not dead. Because if she was, Jordan figured it would somehow be all his fault.
Thankfully, Judith’s theatrical cooing broke the tension and everyone looked over at her, holding the puppy to her face. “Who’s a good good girl? Yes, you are! Oh, yes, you are!”
And then, tying the night for cuteness overload, with cake smeared all over her little face, Johanna ran past her mother and aunt and absolutely everyone to tackle Jordan with a hug. “Jordan, I was trying to find you for so long!”
“I’m right here, kiddo.”
“Do you wanna play hide and seek? This house has so many good places to hide. I need to show you them all!”
“Yes! Absolutely!”
Jordan had never wanted to play hide and seek more in his whole life! Hopefully he got to be the one to hide.
———
Maria was salty now. “You don’t have to make it harder on him. You know Dad’s difficult enough. You don’t have to feed him ammunition.”
“We were kidding,” Lou said, blank faced and so over this night already. They hadn’t even eaten dinner yet.
“Dad wasn’t kidding.”
Lou shrugged. “Sink or swim. Why does he care so much if Dad likes him, anyway?”
Maria sighed a long one. “I don’t know how to explain that to you. I know you’ve never cared if anyone disliked you a day in your life.”
But Jamie was swooning over all of it. Her approval tempered Maria’s saltiness, but somehow that annoyed Lou, too.
“I think he’s adorable with JoJo,” Jamie gushed. “They are so sweet together.”
“They really are,” Maria grinned, and they settled onto the couch to coo about it all even further. Does he want more kids? How many? When?
If they were sweet together, then that annoyed Lou, too, because JoJo used to ask Lou to play hide and seek, and now she didn’t anymore. She was annoyed at Jordan for being the reason why. She was annoyed at her sister, whose life was blooming a mile a minute and there wasn’t room for Lou in it anymore. She was annoyed at Jamie, who thought it was all just delightful. She was even annoyed at her mother who hated dogs until just five minutes ago, and now she had puppy slobber all over her face.
And no, Lou did not want to hold the stupid puppy.
But then, like a switch had been flipped, Jamie wasn’t delighted anymore. Her swoony face went green with envy, her eyes trained on a tiny rock on Maria’s finger.
Lou looked at the ring. She watched Jamie look at the ring and then glance back at her own naked finger, sadly. She looked at her sister wearing the ring when they all knew she rarely wore jewelry like that. The diamond kind, on that very specific finger.
The ring was so small. You could miss it entirely, like most people here did tonight. But not Jamie. Jamie had wedding bells and babies on the brain, and it made that tiny diamond shine like a spotlight for her.
There was something Maria wasn’t telling them, but she didn’t even need to say it out loud. All she had to do was wear that ring tonight, and Lou already knew that she and Jamie were going to fight about it later.
———
JoJo dragged him upstairs to play hide and seek, but after hiding a couple of times, she needed to show him her mother’s childhood dollhouse. “These are a hundred years old,” JoJo said, which was equally impossible as it was charming. The closed door muffled the chaotic gathering downstairs, and the quiet room soothed him, even as JoJo demanded, “You be the dragon. Make a fire noise. What noise does fire make? Can it be louder? Louder???”
He settled on an approximation of dragon fire that satisfied her imagination well enough, and he was glad to please someone tonight. Being a disappointment already to Maria’s father weighed heavy on his mind, even though he hardly knew the man. He felt silly for hoping it might have been different, as if her father’s approval might have unwritten some age-old wrongs. What ever could? If it was atonement he was after, this wouldn’t be the way.
They played for twenty minutes before Maria came to find them.
JoJo said, “Mama, you can’t play. This one is an evil witch, and she made those princesses go to sleep, and the dragon, too. They’re all sleeping now, and you can’t wake them up.”
“Wow, that’s some story. Can I just watch?”
“Wait, I know who can fight the witch,” JoJo said, and she rushed out of the room. Somewhere there was the sound of toys jostling in a toybox, the sound of determination and mess.
Jordan moved up from the floor, his legs tingling from being sat on for so long. He was probably getting too old to play dolls on the floor anymore. Maria took his shoulders into her hands and kneaded.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “That was bad down there, huh?”
He didn’t like the way she looked at him now, since that night in the desert. Like he was so fragile, like he might break down again at any moment. His problems, unsolvable as they were, were on their way to becoming old, numb wounds. Scar tissue, tender but tough.
“My dad just doesn’t get it,” she went on. “Ingrid is twenty-five years old. She doesn’t need a babysitter. But he probably still thinks of her as a little girl. Well, she acts like one, I guess.”
“Well, maybe he has a point then. It sounds pretty bad when you tell it like it was.”
“I know the truth,” she said.
The walls were lined with pictures from her childhood. Some familiar faces, and some surprising ones, too.
“So, you and Ingrid? What happened there?”
“Huh. Once upon a time, I guess.” Maria looked up at the wall and thought about it. “She was different back then. No. No, she wasn’t different, really. Just, at some point it got personal. It was about a boy.”
“And you trusted her going on a road trip with me?”
“No way. I trusted you.”
That answer pleased him. He hoped to never disappoint this woman, because her trust in him was fueling his life.
“I just hope you don’t think I’ve been secretly chatting with Ingrid all this time. I really don’t know what she’s been up to.”
“It’s okay, honey, I saw your phone. I know there’s nothing but trash from Colette on there.”
Then Johanna returned with a sea monster—a good one, she said—who defeated the evil witch and awoke all the sleeping princesses. And what Jordan wouldn’t give for a kind sea monster to come along and solve all of his problems so swiftly.
There was a brief moment of calm tonight. Finally, most of them were actually having a good time. Even Jordan.
Laney shared a toast with Judith, whose red wine almost splashed over the rim of her glass as she raised it into the air. And Laney briefly wondered if somebody should cut her off.
Of course not! That was the only right answer.
Because everybody was having fun right now. If you tried to cut off the hostess in her own home at Christmas dinner, nobody would be having any fun anymore. Maybe ever again. So Laney just smiled politely and left the matter up to fate.
Not my mom, not my problem.
———
After their little refresher upstairs, the second half of the evening went better. Mostly. Dinner was delicious, and they enjoyed their meal with the company of Leo and his girlfriend, Leilani. The topic of conversation was their mutual love of the northern deserts of Nevada. They nearly crossed paths for a time, with the young couple attending Sierra Nova University, deep in their final exams week, when Jordan and Maria finally traveled through. Jordan pulled out a map on his phone, and they raved about the restaurants and hotspots they loved the most.
Judith overheard their excited chatter and joined them at the table. “So when do you go back to Nevada?”
“Uh,” Jordan stammered, glancing back at Maria as he realized that she really didn’t tell her parents everything. Having met them now, he understood why she needed to protect her peace. But still, it left him unsure of what to say.
“He’s not quitting,” Maria answered for him. “Just taking a break.”
“Well, I’m not going back very soon, so…” Jordan shrugged. “It’s kind of quitting. Quitting for now.”
“Oh, that’s okay,” Judith said.
“It’s not okay, Mom.”
Of course, Maria couldn’t explain why that wasn’t okay without unloading a ton of Jordan’s personal woes at this dinner table. Thankfully, she had no intentions of doing that.
Judith had a confused look on her face. “Honey, I don’t understand. Do you really want him climbing rocks? It sounds dangerous. Isn’t it dangerous?”
“We were always very careful,” Jordan said.
“We just have some things to get settled,” Maria said. “He’s not quitting.”
“You’re quitting?” Dom overheard and felt the need to interject himself. “Are you a smoker? That’s a terrible habit, I didn’t know you were a smoker.”
Great, now her dad thought he had a smoking problem, too. “No, I’m not a smoker. I’ve never smoked. I’m quitting rock climbing.”
“Oh, good,” Dom said. “That’s good, probably. I just don’t see the sense in it.”
“Dad, please don’t,” Maria pleaded.
But of course Dom would. “It’s an unnecessary risk, if you ask me. I respect that there is risk involved in everything. For example, you might drive a scenic road to the top of a mountain, and take in the view that way. Is there not risk? Of course, there is! A deer runs in front of your car, and you could die. You could hike up the mountain on a sturdy foot trail and slip to your unfortunate demise. Or if it’s the athletics you’re after, you could run marathons. People die from marathons, too. Heart attacks in the middle of the road! But you have to admit, they all weigh notably different in their risk load.”
Thankfully, having had his say, Dom heard another conversation across the room that interested him more, so he spared them any further lecture.
But Judith had an idea. “Oh, but maybe you could climb in one of those gyms, with all the ropes and things. I bet they even have medically trained staff on hand.”
“Maybe,” Jordan said, hoping to pacify her, wishing he didn’t feel like he was on trial.
“You can go on weekends.”
“It’s okay, what’s done is done,” Jordan said. “I have responsibilities here, and I really just don’t want to dwell on it anymore.”
“You know, it’s probably not as exciting as the rocks, but you should take up golf. The boys all love it. But just make sure you wear some sunscreen. You’re just so pale, I bet you fry up like a potato chip.”
“Frisbee golf,” she added decidedly. “That’s very popular these days.”
Jordan felt his soul melting a little.
Maria had an out for him. “Sweetie, I wonder if you should check on the puppy? I haven’t seen her sniffing around in a few minutes.” That was a little white lie. From where she sat, Maria could see Misty curled up in the living room comfortable and calm.
But Jordan was more than happy to go make sure.
When he was out of earshot, Judith said, “He’s very handsome, isn’t he? Do you think he’s more handsome than Joseph? Joseph was very handsome, too, of course. In a different way. He was a very proper man, very polished. Joseph was more like Laney’s Wesley over there. Wesley is not bad looking, either. Though maybe a little skinny.”
“Mom, you don’t have to compare them all like that.”
“But Jordan is a little more rugged. That’s not a bad thing. No, that’s not bad at all. A man who works with his big strong hands.”
Well, she wasn’t wrong. But Maria didn’t want to think about her mother ranking every unrelated male at this party—which was most of them—on a top ten list of lust, her fiancé included.
“How much of this wine have you had tonight?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve had some.” Judith waved a hand. “Would you like some? The Thompsons brought it. It’s very good.”
“I think I better,” Maria said. She had a feeling there wasn’t enough wine in the whole house for this night.
Jordan wasn’t the only new face in the room. He would never wish tonight’s torment on anyone else, but if Leo’s new girlfriend could take the heat for just ten minutes, Jordan sure would appreciate a little breather.
“Leo, who’s your girl?” Ian asked.
“Don’t worry,” Lou said, “You don’t need to remember her name. He’ll have a different one next Christmas.”
“Shut up, Lou! She might hear you!” Leo hissed under his breath as Leilani reemerged from the bathroom. Leo turned to the room, to his parents and Ian and Lou. “This is Leilani, Mom, Dad. We met at school this semester.”
How wonderful. They had all the usual questions for her. What’s your major? Where are you from? Are your parents religious? That was maybe not a usual question in most families, but for Judith, it was certainly fair game.
Leilani told them a little about herself. She was a sophomore, twenty years old, majoring in craft arts with a special fondness for jewelry, and her family lived in Sulani. And yes, her parents were very spiritual, in their way.
Dom opined, “Oh, it’s terrible what the tourists did to the natives there, driving up the price of everything, and now they can’t even afford their own land.”
And if Leilani came from a family whose generations of homes and communities were displaced by resort hotels and spas and surf shops—she did, by the way—she smiled politely and didn’t say so.
The Corelli siblings all cringed in unison. “Any of that wine left?” Lou muttered.
Judith rose to the occasion. Wine was always a good answer at this family’s holiday parties. “Let me refill your glass,” Judith offered, topping up empty glasses on the coffee table, finally reaching Leilani’s empty hand with no wine glass in it.
“Oh, no thank you,” Leilani said. “I can’t have any. I’m pregnant.”
Everyone gasped simultaneously and stared at Leo. Leo, whose face went stone-cold gray, stammered, unprepared to confirm or deny.
“You’re pregnant?!?” Lou said, or everyone said with her under their breath like a collective question in the room.
Dom, returning to the conversation from his own thoughts, said, “Who’s pregnant? Maria?”
“Not me, Dad.”
“Leilani is pregnant!” Leo announced, after finally having collected himself, like it was a wonderful thing and not the flaming pile of holy shit that it was.
“Holy shit,” Lou said out loud.
Judith asked, “Leo, are you going to marry this girl?”
“No!”
“No?” Leilani frowned, her lip quivering.
“Mom!” Leo whined. “I only met her three months ago! We can’t get married!”
“But you can be a father?”
“Paternity test,” Dom said. “Then he’ll be a father.”
“I’m not a slut,” Leilani cried. “I know whose baby this is!”
“Don’t get married just because you’re pregnant,” Maria said from the back of the room, with that hushed kind of life wisdom that nobody ever talked about, that tidy old shotgun wedding.
“What if I don’t want to marry him, anyway?” Leilani huffed, mad at him now.
“Oh, god, that wasn’t how I meant it,” Leo said, launching into all the reasons and whys he could think of to calm her down while reiterating that, no, they would not be getting married in the immediate future. Meanwhile, Judith touched her rosary and quietly prayed for the baby and for them all. Which Leilani noticed.
“I’m not a Catholic,” Leilani said. “So my baby isn’t Catholic, either.”
Then Judith, full of wine and worry, started to cry.
And Jordan, now totally forgotten at the back of the room, breathed a sigh of relief. Everyone’s attention was on Leo and Leilani. Despite his relief, the moment felt heavy with meaning. It brought him back. He recognized that terrified voice of a boy who was not quite ready to be a man, but would need to become one really quick, and somewhere ten years ago in time, he forgave himself a little.
His short reverie was broken when Maria said, “I’m so ready to go home now.”
“Yes,” Jordan agreed. “You grab JoJo, and I’ll grab Misty.”
Maria nodded. “Straight for the door. No goodbyes. We’ll text them goodnight from the truck.”
“On it,” Jordan said.
Nobody would be offended at their hasty exit, because finally, at long last, nobody was paying them any attention anymore.
———
Running out into the crisp, frosty night had been a breath of salvation. That was no exaggeration. All three of them breathed in deeply and exhaled a mountain of stress this night had delivered. Even little JoJo, too young to understand most of it, knew that something had turned sour among the adults.
With Leo’s bombshell news, the party dispersed quickly. “I bet he’s getting lectured to death right now,” Maria said from the comfort of their living room. “Leilani, too, probably. My father will gladly lecture anyone who isn’t his own child, as you unfortunately know.”
The night felt heavy and important for Jordan, despite the stress. He might have been the only one in the room to really understand what Leo was going through, and how sometimes a scared young man might need understanding more than a lecture.
“I know he doesn’t even know me, but if he wants to talk about it, maybe I can help? He probably wouldn’t want to. He only just met me tonight.”
“I love that.” Maria smiled. “It’s a great idea, and I bet he will. I’ll call him in the morning. Whoa, Leo is gonna be a dad. That’s crazy.”
Maria couldn’t stop talking about it all—the baby, the girl who came from Sulani. Will Leo move to the islands? Will they even stay together? And, more seriously, in the likelihood that they didn’t stay together, would they ever even see this baby again? She was so wound up about it, but in a bright way. She was excited to become an aunt for the first time.
“But I have some good news—my mom likes you!” Maria decided not to elaborate on how much or in what ways her mother liked him. She hoped it was mostly the wine talking tonight.
He sighed. “Small victories.”
“Better than no victories?”
“Are you disappointed we didn’t announce it tonight?”
A small frown flashed on her mouth. “Maybe a little. But it’s okay. Tonight wasn’t the right time or place. Tonight was crazy. We have all the time in the world.”
“You know, I think I know the perfect person to tell first.” He nodded his head over at Johanna, playing on the floor with her puppy. The two little ones chased each other and rolled a small ball, and it was a marvel that they had so much energy left after such a long day.
They called Johanna over. There was no doubt she would be happy about the news. Jordan was her favorite, after all. At nearly five now, she’d known Jordan for more than half her little life, since she was just a toddler running around and getting in his way at the hotel. He’d been looking out for wild little Johanna since before he was even dating her mother.
“Hey, funny girl. We have something to tell you,” Maria started. “I think we both like Jordan a lot, don’t we? What do you say we keep him?”
JoJo looked mystified, but eager. “But we are already keeping him.”
“Yes, we are. But there is a way he can join our family, officially. We want us all to be a family together. Your mama and Jordan, we’re going to get married. Poor monkey, you probably don’t even know what marriage is.”
“Willow says if my mama gets married, that’s how I can get a stepdaddy.”
“Yeah, that’s how it works,” Jordan said. “Do you think I could be your stepdaddy?”
“Okay,” she said with emotion in her eyes that suggested it was far more than just okay. “I never had a stepdaddy before.”
Jordan picked her up and she hugged him tightly, pressing her face into his sweater.
“Thank you,” Maria whispered to him.
“Thank you for sharing her with me.”
The night had its ups and downs, but for these three, it would go down as the most unforgettable Christmas ever.
———
After they left the party, Jamie could barely contain all the envy, threatening to spill out of her in bitter tears. Lou knew for sure she’d hear about Maria’s ring tonight, but then Leo spilled the news that he was going to be a father. That news broke most of the room, to be honest, but it couldn’t break anyone as much as it broke Jamie.
“It’s so easy for some people,” she whined. “They weren’t even trying. We could never have an accidental baby. It would have to be a very intentional baby.”
Lou thought Jamie had lost her goddamn mind. “Accidents are not a good thing! He’s fucked. He’s not even done with college, and neither is she. And they both go to school thousands of miles away from their families. They’re fucked.”
“It’s just…” Jamie frowned. It wasn’t just this party. Jamie had been broody for months. She was jealous of everything that everyone else was doing except her. “Why not us?”
Science babies were a thing now. The procedure was expensive and didn’t always take. Lou wasn’t broke, but she also wasn’t inclined to throw ten thousand dollars down the toilet. She also wasn’t really sure she wanted a ten-thousand-dollar baby at all. Or a free one, even. Hell, she forgot to feed her fish half the time!
Twenty years ago, this fight wouldn’t even be a thing they had to think about. Twenty years ago, if you were lesbian, you adopted or you got a sperm donor, and that was that. Now there was this whole new possibility to consider, and Lou didn’t want to consider it.
But Jamie wasn’t ready to stop.
Lou smirked. “That procedure is so new, don’t the babies come out with like three eyes and a tail?”
Jamie wasn’t in a joking mood.
“The sperm bank is cheaper,” Lou continued. “It’s tried and tested since the dawn of time. I can even help you with the turkey baster.”
“You’re so crass sometimes,” Jamie sneered. “I want to have a baby with you. I want our baby. A baby that comes from both of us. It’s finally real. We can do it, and you don’t want to?”
“Have you seen my life? When would I have time for a baby?”
If Lou thought she was done with the baby talk, she had another thing coming. The other thing Jamie wanted more than anything. “Maria was wearing a ring tonight. She doesn’t normally wear a ring.”
“God, it was tiny,” Lou huffed. “It probably doesn’t even mean anything. Ha, he probably got it from a vending machine.”
And Jordan was so sweet with JoJo tonight. Jamie didn’t need to say that part again—she’d been saying it all night.
“Why do you hate him so much? It looks like they’re gonna get married. It looks like you have a new brother-in-law.”
“Jesus. Honestly, at the start, I never thought it would come to that.”
“She was married once before. Did you hate Joseph that much, too?”
Lou scoffed. “That wasn’t a marriage. She was a baby. She didn’t know what she was doing. It was a quick fling with some paperwork. He was never around, then he went to space, then—” Lou made a *boom* with her hands and explosion noises.
“Ew, Lou, you suck.” Jamie stared at her with deep disappointment. “He was a real person. He was JoJo’s dad. And he died. Grow up. You’re gonna be thirty years old.”
Jamie turned and rolled across the bed to face the window. Her boots were still on, road salt soiling the wool blankets, which were so hard to launder, and it killed Lou not to say so. Yeah, maybe I don’t want a stinking baby, but you got your salty boots all over the bed!
Lou sighed hard and left the bedroom—her own bedroom, in her own apartment.
Jamie was here all the time now, because Ian was over with Jessica all the time now. And Lou might have gone to Maria’s house for the night, but she felt like she couldn’t anymore, because Jordan lived there now, too.
Lou didn’t want to be thirty. She didn’t want her sister to get married. She didn’t want her brother and his new random girlfriend to have a baby. She didn’t want Jessica and Ian to move in together. Didn’t want everybody to get married and start having all these babies and for everything to change, when everything was pretty damn good how it was, and why did everyone need everything to change?
But one thing needed to change. She needed to buy a cozier couch.
extras & outtakes:
- Judith has a secret
- can we escape yet?
- Leo & Leilani had an oops!
- Christmas party outtakes & extras
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