“What?” Ryder asked.
“My mom was Even smaller than I am. How did she fit my brothers?”
“I’m sure Evan slid right out. Third babies,” Ryder quoted, laughing at the situation, but Zoe’s eyes hadn’t un-widened.
“What if I’m brewing up an enormous little football player in there?” Zoe squealed under her breath.
“Zoe?” Ryder said before stuffing another bite in his mouth.
Without a word, she looked sharply at him and seemed to wait for a genius answer.
“How about we table that worry for month… I don’t know, eight?”
“Good call,” she hissed as she blinked away the panic.
The dizzying, invigorating chatter didn’t stop. The Halseth clan, plus his own brother and Claire now, was something else. Ryder had always had friends. Work friends, school friends, even a social circle when he was younger. But this… this easy conversation, teasing and familiar, was bizarre. In a good way.
He leaned back into the stiff seat, his hands resting easily in his lap. A long while without an update was right. But, he supposed, they were pretty busy in there.
At his side, Zoe settled in and drew in her legs. After a few minutes, her bent legs tipped into him again.
On the narrow seat, her feet slipped and she’d pull them back in.
Ryder hooked his arm around her legs to hold them up.
She whispered, “You doing okay?”
He nodded.
“You’re quiet.”
“Even my mother is laughing and visiting, comfortably. Your family is… amazing.”
She lifted her hand and pinched his chin between her forefinger and thumb, pursed her lips as she examined, then glanced sideways and seemed to realize the intimacy of the gesture and dropped her hand.
And looked at his arm around her legs.
“I broke up with Raphe,” she whispered.
“Oh,” he said, waiting, quiet, a flutter of hope he was afraid to acknowledge.
No sadness watered down her look nor even dropped her lips past neutral.
“Areyouokay?” he asked.
“It was stupid to get back together. I forgot how miserable he is to fight with. He’s gentle and polite at baseline, but when he’s in a mood, he loses all manners, and somehow finds all of my buttons and smashes them.” She glanced around the waiting area, and no one was paying attention. Well, nothing more than a few curious or amused drifting look at them. “But…” She bit her lips together and closed her eyes, a smile glittering in her expression she seemed eager to tamp down. Quieter, she angled away from the others and whispered, “You and I get along quite well. I often think about jumping your bones. Like, a lot.”
Ryder’s breath stilled in his lungs. He tilted a look at her, uncertain.
“But… this is complicated enough. If we were to date, and then I discover that you’re miserable to fight with and we break up, before the baby’s even born?”
“Fuck, you’re right.” The fluttering hope fizzled, and he couldn’t deny that he’d suffered the same recurring worry, especially when sleep eluded him.
When would be a good time?
When there was a baby depending on them?
When they were trying to figure out custody?
