Chapter 19
By the time Mac parks outside the baby store, I already know this is going to be a nightmare.
Not because I hate shopping. Not because I mind helping.
But because there are seven of us in one SUV, three of those seven are pregnant, one of them is Emma and therefore the only stable force keeping this entire outing from becoming a felony, and I’m pretty sure Kya has changed her mind about what she wants for the baby approximately nine times since we left the clubhouse.
And we’ve only been in the car twenty-three minutes.
“I don’t want jungle animals,” Kya announces from the second row as Emma eases Jason out of his car seat and Amy hops down beside her.
Brooke turns in the passenger seat so fast she nearly loses the pretzel she’s been eating. “What?”
“I said I don’t want jungle animals.”
“You literally sent us a picture of a giraffe mobile two days ago,” Shaina says.
“That was before,” Kya says like that should explain literally anything.
Mac kills the engine and deadpans, “Before what, exactly?”
“Before I realized giraffes are weirdly aggressive-looking.”
I close my eyes for one second and tip my head back against the seat.
Emma, because she’s the only person here who still believes in patience as a concept, says gently, “Baby, I don’t think the giraffe is going to come out of the mobile and start anything.”
Kya looks personally unconvinced.
Brooke presses a hand to her chest. “No, wait. I kind of get it.”
Mac turns to look at her slowly. “You are not helping.”
“I’m just saying,” Brooke insists, already emotional and we haven’t even made it through the front doors yet, “some baby stuff does feel…aggressive.”
“Baby stuff is not aggressive,” Ana says from beside me in the back.
“That is because you are not currently carrying a human who has made your emotional range legally questionable,” Mac says.
Shaina snorts.
I laugh before I can stop myself, and it’s the first real one I’ve had since Ambrosia. Not the brittle kind. Not the one I’ve been forcing every time someone glances at me a little too closely.
A real one. It feels weird. Good weird. Painfully weird.
Because laughter and humiliation are apparently allowed to coexist, which feels rude, honestly.
“All right,” Emma says, adjusting Jason on her hip while Amy reaches for my hand automatically.
“Nobody buys anything big without checking measurements first, nobody lets Kya make a nursery decision while hungry, and if Brooke cries in the onesie section, we’re all going to act like that’s completely normal. ”
Brooke lifts her chin. “I probably won’t cry.”
Mac opens her door. “That confidence is adorable.”
“I hate all of you.”
“No, you don’t,” Emma says warmly.
And that’s the thing about this group. Even when they’re being obnoxious, they’re home. That should probably make the ache in my chest smaller.
It doesn’t.
But it does make it easier to breathe around.
Inside, the store smells like powder and fabric softener and whatever chemical formula corporations have developed specifically to make women spend too much money on tiny clothes.
Brooke gasps within ten feet of the entrance. “Oh my God.”
We all stop. Because that tone means something has already happened.
She’s standing in front of a rack of infant overalls with one hand pressed dramatically over her mouth and tears already gathering in her eyes.
“I can’t do this,” she whispers.
Carter is not here and somehow I still feel bad for him.
Emma smiles softly and goes to her first. “Honey, breathe.”
“They’re so little.”
“I know.”
“They have little pockets.” Brooke’s voice breaks on the word pockets like she’s witnessing a miracle in real time. “What does a baby need pockets for?”
“Absolutely nothing,” Mac says flatly, though even she’s staring too long at a pair of tiny sneakers on the shelf to her left.
“That’s what makes it worse,” Brooke says, fully tearing up now.
Kya’s lip wobbles instantly in response, because of course it does. “Oh no, don’t do that. If you cry, I’m gonna cry.”
Ana mutters, “And there it is.”
Shaina grabs a cart. “Okay, everybody stay hydrated and keep moving. If we stall out in the first baby clothes section, we’ll be here until dinner.”
Jason, currently trying to chew on the strap of Emma’s purse, offers no opinion.
I take the second cart and follow them deeper into the store while the group naturally splinters into manageable chaos.
Mac wants structure. Brooke wants to cry over every blanket. Kya wants to reject and adore things in equal measure. Shaina and Ana want to stir the pot. Emma wants everyone to survive.
And me?
I mostly want to stop thinking.
Which is probably why I’m here in the first place.
Because if I’m busy comparing stroller wheels and nursery bins and baby monitor reviews while Kya debates whether ducks are “too smug-looking,” then maybe I don’t have to think about Jimmy Baker and the exact shape of his face when he looked at me like I’d become a problem he didn’t know how to solve.
That should be easier than it is. Because the truth is, no matter how hard I try to shove it aside, I keep replaying it anyway.
The office. His hands. His mouth.
The way everything in me lit up with this impossible, reckless feeling I’d been carrying around in one form or another since I was sixteen and stupid enough to think a crush could just quietly die if you ignored it long enough.
Then the aftermath.
The tension. The distance. The way he looked like he’d been hit by a truck the second he realized.
And maybe I could’ve survived all of that if he’d just said one honest thing after.
One. Just one.
Instead, he gave me regret dressed up as concern and expected that to somehow mean something different.
It didn’t.
“Allie?” Emma’s voice pulls me back before I can sink too deep into that spiral.
I look up and realize I’ve been standing in front of a display of pacifiers for long enough that it’s probably weird.
Emma’s watching me with that same calm, knowing look she always has when she’s already figured out more than you’ve said.
“Hmm?”
She nods toward the cart. “You want to help me compare these diaper bags, or are you planning to dissociate in aisle seven all afternoon?”
I laugh softly, because of course Emma would say it that gently and still somehow hit the bullseye. “Depends. Are the diaper bags emotionally loaded?”
“Everything in this store is emotionally loaded,” Mac says, appearing beside us with two different baby wraps over one arm. “That’s how they get you.”
Brooke, still visibly fragile but now clutching three tiny sleepers to her chest, nods solemnly. “She’s right.”
We make it to the furniture section somehow without casualties. That’s where things really start going off the rails.
Kya hates every crib. Not one crib. Not most cribs. Every crib.
“This one looks too fragile,” she says, poking one like it personally insulted her.
Emma glances at the tag. “It’s solid oak.”
“It looks emotionally fragile.”
Shaina nearly chokes laughing.
“What does that even mean?” Ana asks.
“It means,” Kya says, fully serious, “if I put my baby in there, it needs to look like it could survive an apocalypse.”
Mac, who is currently checking the hardware on a dresser with the intensity of a contractor inspecting a build site, says without looking up, “You are not preparing for the apocalypse. You are preparing for a newborn.”
“Same stress level.”
Honestly, fair.
Brooke wandered off toward a shelf of baby books and is now standing there with tears in her eyes again while reading the back of Guess How Much I Love You like she’s just discovered literature.
Emma goes to rescue her.
I should feel lighter here. And in some ways, I do.
It’s hard not to when Kya is arguing about a wall decal of stars and Brooke is trying to decide whether a baby can somehow “tell” if their nursery has enough love in it.
But eventually, the women always circle back. Not because they’re nosy. Because they love too hard to let something sit once they know it matters.
It happens in the feeding section.
Of all places.
We’re standing around a shelf of bottles and breast pumps and various pieces of plastic that all look vaguely threatening, and Emma is comparing sterilizer kits while Mac reads reviews aloud like she’s preparing legal evidence.
Kya is holding a set of bottle brushes and making a face. “Those look like weird little toilet scrubbers.”
“They are not toilet scrubbers,” Brooke says.
“They look like toilet scrubbers.”
“They’re bottle brushes.”
“They can be both.”
“Please don’t say that near my child,” Emma says mildly.
That gets another laugh out of me. A real one again.
And because the universe is cruel, that’s apparently when Ana decides I’ve had enough fun and deserve to suffer. “So,” she says, way too casually, “are we gonna talk about it?”
I should’ve known. I really should have. I look at her. “No.”
Shaina grins. “That’s not how this works.”
“It actually can be.”
Mac doesn’t even glance up from the box she’s reading. “No, it can’t.”
Kya gasps softly and clutches the bottle brushes to her chest like she’s been waiting all day for this. “Oh my God. Is this finally happening?”
Brooke immediately looks stricken. “Should we not ask in public?”
“We’re in a baby store,” Mac says. “Nobody here cares.”
“That’s not comforting.”
Emma turns to me then, not pushing, not prying, just steady. “You don’t have to tell us anything you don’t want to.”
And there it is.
The reason Emma always gets me first. Not because she talks the most. Because she doesn’t. Because she somehow manages to make space instead of pressure, and that makes me want to tell her things more than anyone else in this entire club.
I stare down at the bottle set in my hand for a second too long.
Then I exhale. “He freaked out.”
The whole group goes quiet.
Even Kya.
Brooke’s mouth falls open. “What?”
I shrug one shoulder, trying for casual and failing immediately. “He just…freaked out.”
Shaina’s eyes narrow. “How?”
That’s the problem, isn’t it?