18. Nash
EIGHTEEN
nash
Tourist season meant Nell spent most weekend evenings over at Claire’s…and tonight, that meant I got to go to Maggie’s for the first time.
We’d talked about it that morning before she left—Nell playing with her toys in her room, Maggie and I picking up little pearly buttons off the living room floor.
“I’ll come by after close,” I’d said. “If you want.”
She’d looked up from the button she was holding, a soft smile on her face. “I want.”
Simple as that.
So at a quarter to midnight, when the last tourists had cleared out and Marco was wiping down the bar and Tess was counting out tips, I told them to close up and walked the six blocks to Maggie’s building in the October cold with my hands in my pockets.
I’d been thinking about her all day.
Not the way I’d been thinking about her for the past two months: that simmering low-grade desire I’d managed and contained while telling myself I was fine.
This was different. She was mine now and I knew it, and that thought sat warm in my chest all through the Saturday night crowd and the tourist rush and Dave Prentice nursing his usual at the end of the bar.
She’s mine.
I was still getting used to being allowed to think it.
Her light was on when I came around the corner. Second floor, the window I could pick out from the street. A lamp was on in that window, lighting it up with gold, and I could see her silhouette.
She opened the door before I was even all the way up the exterior stairs.
“Hi,” she said, smiling. She looked…tired. Guess I’d kept her up past her bedtime, two nights now. That was fair. She stepped back to let me in, and I walked past her to see her apartment for the first time.
Cute, like her. Cozy. A bookshelf of collected kids’ books, which struck me as also very her and made me feel things.
She was quiet, and when I turned around to look at her, I clocked something as just…just a little wrong. She was wearing sweats and a t-shirt just like she had the first night we slept together, her hair in a messy bun just like that night, dark circles around her eyes.
It struck me all of a sudden that she wasn’t actually mine.
She was gonna end it…again.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
She nodded, glancing over at the small grey couch. “You should sit down.”
I huffed a laugh. “Yeah…no way.”
Her brow furrowed. “Why?”
“Because if you’re about to tell me you can’t again, I’m not sticking around to talk about why—” I started.
Her eyes widened in confusion. “No, no—that’s not it at all.”
“Then what—”
She held her finger up and turned to walk down the little hall, taking the first right. When she came back, she had a very familiar white plastic stick in her hand.
I blinked at it as she held it out to me.
Took it in my hands…looked back at her.
“What is this?”
“It’s not a covid test,” she said.
“Yeah, I know,” I laughed. “But…it’s not possible, right? Positive after—what, last night—?”
She shook her head. “No,” she said. “I think the condom broke that first night. It’s…it’s the only explanation.”
“You haven’t been with someone else—”
“I hadn’t seen Bryce in almost six months in person,” she said. “Only you.”
I looked at the test again.
Two pink lines. Clear. No ambiguity.
I did the math I hadn’t let myself do until right now—October, September, two months of good morning Mr. Nash and swear jars and festival bathrooms and her asking me to fill her up when it was already done. Already decided. Already happening before either of us had admitted what this was.
The first night.
The night she walked in not knowing who I was. The night she told me about the second bedroom and the life she’d been building for two. The night I gave her mostly orange juice and listened and told myself it was just the kind of thing I did.
“Nash,” she said quietly. “Say something.”
I looked up at her.
She was watching me with those blue eyes, careful and steady, waiting for my face to do what it was going to do. Even now. Even after everything I’d said last night. She was still waiting to find out if I meant it.
That landed somewhere it had no business landing at midnight in her living room.
“You’ve been sitting with this all day,” I said.
“Since this morning.” A pause. “Delia took me to the pharmacy.”
“And you waited—”
“I needed to tell you in person,” she said. “I needed to see your face.”
I set the test down very carefully on her bookshelf, right next to The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and crossed the room in three steps and put my hands on her face.
She went still.
“I meant it,” I said. “Everything I said last night. All of it.”
“Nash—”
“The promise stands,” I said. “Nothing about this changes anything except that it’s sooner than I thought.” I paused. “If you want to keep it.”
She nodded. “I do. I meant it all too.”
“Then what are you so nervous for?”
She let out a relieved breath, her eyes sparkling—then she flung her arms around my neck.
I held on.
She was warm against me, her arms tight around my neck, and I felt some last held thing in her release—the day of sitting with it alone, the waiting, the watching my face to see if I meant what I said.
I meant it.
I turned my face into her hair.
“The first night,” I said quietly. “You came in because the light was on.”
“I didn’t even know it was your bar,” she said into my shoulder.
“I know.”
“I just needed somewhere to be.”
“I know.” I pulled back enough to look at her. “And now you’ve got somewhere.”
She searched my face.
“Here,” I said. “With me. With Nell.” I paused. “With this one.”
Her hand moved without thinking — just barely, just the beginning of a gesture toward her stomach—and then she caught herself and looked slightly embarrassed about it.
“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t stop.”
She looked at me.
I took her hand and placed it there myself. Flat against her stomach, my hand over hers.
“You know I’m gonna love this baby just as much as I love Nell, right?” I asked. “That I’m gonna love you as much as I love Nell—”
“This is so fast, though—”
“I’m an adaptable guy,” I laughed, voice hoarse. Shit, even I was getting emotional. “Maggie…I knew I was gonna spend the rest of my life loving my little girl the moment I found out she existed. Same way with you. Same way with our kid.”
She stared at me.
I hadn’t planned to say it. It had just—come out, the way things did when you stopped being careful. The way anywhere you are had come out and you’re it had come out and apparently now love was coming out at midnight in her living room over a positive pregnancy test.
Adaptable guy.
“Nash,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“You just said you love me.”
“I did.”
“We’ve known each other for two months.”
“I’m aware of the timeline,” I said.
She looked at me for a long moment. Something working through her face that I was learning to read—the processing, the sorting, the Maggie-specific way of taking something big and turning it over until she knew what to do with it.
“I love you too,” she said. “I said it last night.”
“You did.”
“So why does it feel different hearing you say it?”
“Because I don’t say it,” I said simply. “I haven’t said it. Not to anyone…not to anyone who isn’t family. But I think you’ve been family from the very beginning.”
She pressed her face into my chest and didn’t say anything for a long moment. I let her have it, my hand moving slowly up and down her back, wanting this, needing this as much as she did.
“Take me to bed,” she said finally. Into my shirt.
“You’re tired,” I said.
“I’m pregnant,” she said. “And I want you to hold me while I sleep.”
Just that. Just that simple.
I pressed my lips to the top of her head.
“Okay,” I said.