Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
NATHAN
Three suitcases. Four cameras. One woman who looks like she's walking into a prison sentence rather than a furnished guest room.
Avery stands in my doorway, backpack slung over one shoulder, hair escaping from a braid that's seen better days. Behind her, the Anchorage skyline glitters with early evening light—the kind of golden hour she'd normally be chasing with her lens instead of moving into my apartment.
"You're sure about this?" she asks for the fourth time since I opened the door.
"I'm sure."
"Because I can still find a place. There's a studio in Spenard that allows pets, which means they'd probably allow me—"
"Come inside."
She steps over the threshold like she's crossing into enemy territory, eyes cataloging every surface. I watch her take in the living room—the leather couch, the built-in bookshelves organized by genre and author, the complete absence of anything that could be described as whimsical.
"It's very..." She searches for the word.
"Clean?"
"I was going to say sterile. Like a hospital, but with better lighting."
"Thank you?"
"Not a compliment." But she's almost smiling.
The guest room tour goes worse. I prepared it with excessive attention to detail.
Possibly excessive. The bed has new sheets—high thread count, temperature regulating.
The closet contains empty hangers spaced exactly two inches apart.
The nightstand holds a carefully curated stack of pregnancy books, bookmarked at relevant chapters.
She stares at the books like they might bite her.
"You highlighted passages," she says.
"Only the important ones."
"There's a color-coding system."
"Yellow for nutrition, green for fetal development, pink for emotional changes—"
"I'm going to need a moment."
She sets down her bags and moves to the window, which overlooks the Chugach Mountains.
From this angle, I can see her profile—the slight curve of her belly that's just started to show, the way her hand drifts there unconsciously.
Sixteen weeks. Our baby is the size of an avocado now.
I know this because I have an app. Several apps.
"There's something else," I say.
"More books? A laminated feeding schedule for a baby that won't exist for five more months?"
"On the wall. Behind you."
She turns, and I watch her face when she sees them. The photographs from the wedding—her photographs—that I had professionally framed. Mia and Dimitri's first dance. The sunset over the vineyard. A candid shot of guests laughing that somehow captures joy better than any posed portrait.
"Where did you get these?" Her voice is strange.
"Mia sent them. After." After I asked. After I spent three weeks pretending I wasn't thinking about the woman who'd left a Polaroid and disappeared. "I thought you might want something familiar. In the room."
She doesn't respond. She walks to the largest frame—the sunset shot, all purple and gold—and traces the edge with one finger.
"You framed my work," she says finally.
"Is that okay?"
"It's..." She turns, and her eyes are bright. "It's really okay."
The moment stretches. I clear my throat.
"I should start dinner. Unless you'd rather order—"
"I can help."
"You don't have to."
"If I'm living here, I'm not going to be a houseguest who hides in her room. I can help with dinner."
Twenty minutes later, I deeply regret accepting her offer.
"That's not how you dice an onion." I watch her massacre the vegetable with a technique that would make any culinary instructor weep.
"It's in pieces. That's diced."
"Those pieces are wildly inconsistent. They won't cook evenly."
"They'll cook eventually. Same thing."
"It's absolutely not—you're going to cut yourself."
"I've been cutting onions my whole life."
"You've been assaulting them. There's a difference."
She brandishes the knife at me, which does nothing to calm my concerns. "Do you want help or do you want to critique my form?"
"I'm beginning to think those are mutually exclusive."
We argue about onion technique for another five minutes before I give up and hand her the tomatoes instead. Somehow, this goes even worse. She squeezes one too hard, seeds spraying across my previously immaculate counter, and I must make a sound because she bursts out laughing.
"Your face." She gasps. "You look like I just committed a felony."
"Tomato seeds in the grout is basically a felony."
"It's a mess. Messes clean up."
"Messes are prevented through proper technique."
She scoops a handful of tomato pulp and, before I can react, smears it across my cheek.
I freeze. She freezes too, like she's just realized what she's done. Tomato juice drips down my jaw onto my shirt—a shirt that cost more than her van's monthly insurance.
"Oh my God." She whispers. "I'm so sorry, I don't know why I—"
I grab the olive oil.
"Don't you dare—"
The oil hits her collarbone, runs down into the neckline of her shirt.
She shrieks, grabs the jar of pasta sauce, and suddenly we're in full warfare.
Sauce flies. Oil splatters. Something that might be garlic hits the ceiling, which I'll deal with later because right now she's laughing so hard she's doubled over and I'm laughing too, really laughing, the kind that hurts your ribs.
We end up against the counter, both of us dripping various condiments, her shoulder pressed against my chest. Her hair smells like marinara and underneath that, something floral. The laughter fades but neither of us moves.
"You have sauce in your eyebrow," she says softly.
"You have oil on your—" I reach up to wipe it from her chin and suddenly we're too close. Her breath catches and mine does too and her mouth is right there, red with tomato juice, and I want—
The oven timer screams.
We spring apart like teenagers caught by parents. She busies herself wiping sauce from her arms while I rescue the garlic bread with hands that are definitely not steady.
"I should shower," she says to the floor.
"Yeah. I'll clean up."
"I can help—"
"It's fine. Go."
She goes. I spend the next forty minutes scrubbing my kitchen back to acceptable standards while very carefully not thinking about what almost happened.
Dinner is quiet. We eat at the table like civilized people, making careful conversation about nothing important. She asks about my work; I ask about her photography. We don't mention the food fight or the moment against the counter.
At midnight, I give up on sleep and head to the kitchen for water. She's already there.
Avery stands at the floor-to-ceiling windows, camera in hand, photographing the city lights. She's wearing my old Johns Hopkins shirt—how she found it, why she chose it, I have no idea—and it hangs to mid-thigh, making her look smaller than she is.
"Couldn't sleep?" I ask.
"The baby's doing gymnastics." She lowers the camera. "I think she objects to the pasta sauce."
"Fetal movement is completely normal at sixteen weeks."
"I know. I read your highlighted sections."
She says it like an accusation, but there's no heat in it. I move to stand beside her, careful to leave space between us. The mountains are invisible in the darkness, but the city spreads below like scattered diamonds.
"My parents got divorced when I was twelve," I hear myself say. "Ugly. Loud. The kind where lawyers get involved and holidays become negotiations."
She doesn't respond, just waits.
"I raised my sister after that. Joy. She's twenty-four now, teaches third grade in Seattle. But back then it was just chaos. All the time. No schedules, no stability, nothing you could count on."
"So you built a life where you could count on everything."
"Yes." The admission costs more than I expected. "Control seemed safer. Predictable. If I planned enough, prepared enough, nothing could blindside me."
"How's that working out?"
"I'm standing in my kitchen at midnight with a pregnant woman I met at a wedding, so I'd say the universe has notes on my methodology."
She laughs, soft and surprised. "My parents were the opposite.
Scheduled everything. My whole childhood was mapped out before I was born.
The right schools, the right activities, the right friends.
I was supposed to be an architect. Join my father's firm.
Marry someone appropriate and have two point five appropriate children. "
"What happened?"
"I bought a van and drove to New Mexico to photograph a meteor shower." She shrugs. "They haven't forgiven me."
"Their loss."
She looks at me then, really looks. Her expression shifts, softens maybe, though I can't be sure in the dark.
She gasps.
"What? What's wrong?"
"Nothing." Her hand flies to her belly. "She's just—here. Feel."
She grabs my hand, presses it against her stomach. For a moment, nothing. Then a flutter. Barely there, like butterfly wings against my palm. Our baby, moving. Real. Alive.
"That's her," she whispers. "That's our daughter."
The word daughter cracks something open in my chest. I'm going to have a daughter. We're going to have a daughter.
"Hi," I say to her belly, feeling ridiculous. "I'm your dad. I have no idea what I'm doing."
"Join the club."
We stand there in the dark kitchen, my hand on her stomach, her hand on mine, watching the city lights blur.
Morning brings boundaries.
"We need rules," I announce over breakfast. She's eating pickles dipped in peanut butter, which I've learned not to comment on. "Guidelines. Expectations."
"You made a chart."
"It's not a chart. It's a visual organizational aid."
"It has columns and rows. It's a chart."
I spread the chart across the table. Color-coded, naturally. Household duties, shared spaces, scheduling conflicts. Everything we need to coexist without incident.
She studies it with the expression of someone examining evidence at a crime scene.
"You allocated bathroom time in fifteen-minute increments."
"Morning routines are important."
"You gave yourself seven to seven-fifteen for teeth and skincare."
"That's a reasonable timeframe."
"I take forty-minute showers."
"Forty—why would anyone need forty minutes in a shower?"
"Because I'm growing a human and my back hurts and hot water is the only thing that helps?"
I hand her a pen. "Adjust the chart as needed."
She adjusts it. Aggressively. By the time she's done, my carefully constructed schedule looks like a ransom note and my morning routine has been reduced to six minutes.
"Six minutes isn't enough time for comprehensive oral hygiene."
"Figure it out." She steals my coffee.
The knock comes at noon. Joy, who’s in town for an educational conference, arrives unannounced because my sister has never respected boundaries. She breezes past me into the apartment, stops dead when she sees Avery on the couch, and turns to me with an expression of pure delight.
"You must be Avery." Joy crosses the room before I can warn her. "I'm Joy. Nathan's significantly more interesting sister. He's told me nothing about you, which is fascinating because he tells me everything. Usually whether I want to hear it or not."
"Joy—"
"Shush. Girl talk." She settles beside Avery like they're old friends. "So. You're pregnant with my brother's baby. How's that going?"
"Terrifying. Nauseating. Occasionally magical."
"That tracks." Joy grins. "He's already driving you crazy with the charts and the schedules, isn't he?"
"The bathroom chart has fifteen-minute increments."
"Fifteen? He's gotten worse." Joy shoots me a look. "Go make us tea. The adults are talking."
I go make tea because arguing with Joy is pointless. From the kitchen, I hear them laughing. Conspiring. When I return, Avery is showing Joy photos on her camera and Joy is nodding like she's found her new best friend.
"She's perfect for you," Joy whispers as she's leaving.
"We're not together."
"Sure." Joy pats my cheek. "Keep telling yourself that."
After she's gone, I find Avery in my office. She's reorganized my tool rack—surgical instruments, meticulously arranged by type—into some pattern that defies logic.
"What did you do?"
"Organized by size." She sounds pleased. "More visually balanced."
"It was organized by function."
"Now it's organized by aesthetic."
I stare at the rack. The scalpels are mixed with retractors. The forceps are arranged by length instead of purpose. Chaos.
"You hate it," she says.
I should hate it.
I don't.