“Can I come over and meet her?” Mom asks.
“Yeah, of course. When do you want to?”
“I’m free this weekend.”
“Ah, shit.”
“Watch your mouth, Noah.” Absent or not, that woman is my mother.
“Sorry. I have a photoshoot this weekend. I’ll be out of town.”
“I work next weekend, but the one after that I don’t.”
I take a mental note. “Yeah, come over then. Just call me first or something so we know to be home.”
“Are you still in the same apartment?”
“Yep.”
“Take care, see you in a while.”
I end the call, dread building inside, and I can’t figure out why until I’m putting groceries away at my own place. My life growing up was dysfunctional. Absent mother, no father … I’m worried that if Lauren is reminded of that, her faith in me will go out the window.
* * *
“I’m not going to have to break up any fights, am I?” Justin asks, eyeing Colin and me.
“Nah,” I say, grabbing a beer and sinking onto the couch. We’re over at Colin’s for a video game party. “We’re cool.”
Colin nods. “As long as he doesn’t fuck up. Again.”
Justin laughs. “It’s been, what, four months now and it’s still so weird to me.” His eyes go to me. “You fucked Colin’s sister and you’re going to be a dad.”
“Shut up.” I shake my head and turn on the PlayStation. Justin’s been a mutual friend since college and has enjoyed every minute of heckling Colin and me about this. Though he hasn’t had many chances to be an ass to both of us at the same time. Colin might have handled the news better than I thought, but things didn’t go back to normal until recently. And it’s a new normal. There’s judgement in my best friend’s eyes for the first time. And I get it: torn between your sister and your best friend. It’s not a comfortable place to be. He shares the same doubts as the rest of the Winters family, that I’m going to fuck this up and hurt Lauren and abandon my child.
If he knew how much Lauren meant to me, he’d have no reason to worry, or he’d get pissed I’d been crushing on his little sister way back when.
“And you two are together now. Things are going good?” Justin asks me.
“They are,” I say, deciding less is more right now, though they are. A month has passed since Lauren and I made things official, and I’ve never been happier. I spend most nights at her house, and I want to spend all my spare time with her. It’s finally feeling like we’re together because we want to be, not because we have to in order to raise our child. It’s crazy when I think about it, and almost scares me that something bad is going to happen to mess this up.
And that thing is me.
Justin laughs. “So you’re fucking Colin’s sister on a regular basis now.”
“You’re such a shithead,” Colin mumbles.
“Really though,” Justin says. “Things are good with the pregnancy?”
“Doctor says everything is perfect and it’s been pretty easy on Lauren.”
“That’s good. June had a rough pregnancy. Like bad enough to make us think twice about having another.”
“Ah, yeah, I remember,” I tell him, thinking back two years to when Justin and his wife had their baby girl. Seems like so long ago.
“We find out what we’re having tomorrow,” I say and trade my beer for a PlayStation controller. “I’m pretty excited.”
“Yeah, that’s a fun part. June did the whole lame gender reveal party thing. I wasn’t even allowed to know what we were having until she opened the box with pink balloons.”