“No problem.” I smiled.
It was about seven, and little Claire was raring to go. She was a happy baby and very babbly. I enjoyed playing with her and just holding her in general, but she seemed to want to lie on the floor and occasionally scoot across the carpet. The way their living room was set up, it was three couches that created a kind of natural barrier so the baby couldn’t escape if someone was watching her.
I flipped on the television for sound and put on a cooking show while she wiggled about. I pulled open my phone to scroll through my newsfeed for a moment when I heard a knock on the door. I expected it was likely Greta, who might not have gotten the memo that she wasn’t needed for the night, but then realized she would have had to have been there much earlier. When I got to the door, I peeped through the hole and saw, much to my surprise, Matt standing on the other side. I opened it for him, and he smiled.
“Hey,” he said. “Mind if I come in?”
“Sure. Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, everything’s fine. You got babysitting duties tonight?” he asked.
“Yup,” I said. “Your niece is adorable.”
“She is,” he said. “Where is she?”
I led him back around to the open floor between the couches, and he sat down beside her, tickling her side and in general getting her attention. My ovaries nearly wept at the sight.
“So, I wanted to talk about our idea again, if it was okay,” he said.
“Sure.” I sat back down on the couch to watch them. He picked her up and was making silly faces at her as she giggled.
“I got a call from my mom, and I think it’s a great idea. I know we said we’d take a few days to think about it, but I think I know. After that call especially.”
I shrugged. “Maybe,” I said. “It could be a fun idea, I just don’t know if I can pull off being a wife, you know? It’s a lot of pressure, and living like that is such a huge change, I don’t know if it would work.”
“Well, you don’t have to think about it that way,” he said. “It’s only a marriage on paper. We could keep living our own separate lives if we wanted. I mean, we already work together and have different days off usually, so we could go kind of be our own people.”
I nodded and watched as he laughed with the baby when she gurgled. It was so adorable watching them together that it was pushing me to think about things I really didn’t think I should be thinking about.
The idea was enticing, at least conceptually. It would be good to use to get Mom and Dad to maybe lighten up a little and have some return to a relationship with them without them trying to force Adam on me. It would help Matt out with his mom. Plus, I liked being around him, and if we decided to have me stay with him while we were carrying on our charade, at least I would be staying with someone that had a big apartment, was fun to be around, and I wouldn’t feel like I was intruding on the lives of new parents.
But it also came with a ton of potential worries, too. What if we were doing really well right now, but a couple of weeks into our situation, we ended up hating each other? Being in close quarters with someone did that often, and if it happened with us, it would cause me problems with the job that I needed to survive and might even cause problems between Hannah and Jordan.
And what if one of us caught feelings and the other didn’t? He mentioned possibly seeing other people. What if he brought a girl home and I reacted poorly to it? There were so many situations and scenarios to think and worry about that it almost seemed overwhelming.
But then, he picked up little Claire and zoomed her around like she was flying while he lay on his back on the carpet. She giggled and drooled, and he laughed. I smiled at how silly he was and how cute it was to see him with his niece.
“I think, maybe, I still need a little more time,” I said. “It’s just a lot to think about, and I don’t want to rush into it if I’m not a hundred percent comfortable.”
He looked over at me and smiled, his niece still at arm’s length above him, giggling away as if it were the best thing in the world.
“I get it,” he said. “Absolutely no problem. You take as much time as you need.”
“Okay,” I said. “Thank you. Now, I think the little one might have had enough excitement for now. Her mama said she is supposed to be in bed at seven-thirty.”