27. FINN
Chapter twenty-seven
FINN
By eight in the morning, I’m standing in my kitchen with my phone in my hand, staring at an article titled Ten Things Every First-Time Parent Should Know Before the Second Trimester.
My thumb hovers over the link, then Bailey’s voice moves through my head.
You don’t have to turn every feeling into something to research.
I set the phone facedown on the counter.
My kitchen is quiet after that. Too quiet, considering I’ve apparently been using internet panic as background noise for weeks.
Without it, all I have is coffee dripping into the pot, and the uncomfortable realization that I don’t know what to do with my hands when they’re not trying to solve something.
I reach for my phone again.
Stop.
Swear under my breath.
Then grab my keys instead.
That is how I end up outside Bailey’s house an hour later, holding coffee, a bag from Nora’s, and absolutely no printed list.
Bailey opens the door with a look that says she already suspects me of something.
My whole chest tightens, because even tired, even cautious, even with her hair twisted up and one sleeve falling over her hand, she looks like the place my brain has been trying to get back to since the appointment.
“I brought coffee,” I say, then immediately correct myself. “Decaf for you. Normal for me. Muffin too.”
“It’s early.”
I hold up the bag. “There’s also a plain croissant because I’m learning that plain food is sometimes what works best for you in the morning.”
She steps aside to let me in. “This is very thoughtful. Also, you look like you’re trying not to announce something.”
“I am. I want to take you somewhere today.”
Her expression shifts, careful now. “Where?”
“Mendocino. Lunch. Walk by the water. I promise not to talk about baby stores, gear research, lists, or appointments unless you bring it up.”
She studies me for a second, and I let her. I don’t fill the silence. I don’t make the obvious joke about being list-sober for almost three hours. I just stand there and hope she can see I mean it.
“A day trip?” she asks.
“Yes. I’ll drive, and you get to relax.”
“With no hidden agenda?”
Her shoulders soften, not all the way, but enough for the tightness in my chest to ease. “None.”
“I need ten minutes,” she says.
“Take your time.”
She gives me a look. “And you’re going to do what while I’m getting ready?”
“Stand here. Drink coffee. Behave like a normal adult.”
“That last part feels ambitious.”
“It is,” I admit. “But I’m committed to staying away from the internet today.”
While she gets ready, I stay in the living room with my coffee and leave my phone in my pocket. It shouldn’t feel like an accomplishment, but it does.
The drive north starts quietly, but not bad quiet.
Bailey sips her decaf, and I keep both hands on the wheel because the coast road is wet and twisting, all dark trees, damp pavement, sudden slices of gray ocean through the windshield.
February has settled heavily over the coast, mist clinging to the cliffs and low clouds hanging over the water.
I glance at her when we hit the first long stretch of road. “I’m only going to ask this once, then I’ll be good for the rest of the day. How are you feeling?”
Bailey turns her head toward me, and for a second, I think she might call me out for lasting less than twenty minutes.
Instead, her mouth softens. “A little tired. Not nauseous right now. Mostly okay.”
“Good.”
“And I appreciate the one-time-only format.”
“I’m maturing as we speak.”
“Let’s not get carried away.”
A laugh slips out of me, easy and relieved, and for the first time in days, the air between us feels less like something we have to handle carefully and more like something we can breathe.
We talk about music after that because it’s a safer topic and because Bailey has very strong opinions about what you listen to in the car, depending on where you’re driving.
Apparently, my road-trip playlist is “aggressively male,” which I argue is not a real criticism until she points out that three songs in a row include men yelling about highways, heartbreak, or both.
She switches to one of her playlists, and I prepare myself to be gracious about losing stereo privileges in my own truck.
The first song is good.
The second is also good.
The third is excellent, which kind of surprises me.
Bailey notices immediately. “You like this one.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“I will admit this might be a good choice for a coastal drive.”
Her smile turns smug, but softly. “Careful. That almost sounded like a compliment.”
“It was.”
By the time we reach Mendocino, the rain has lifted into mist. The town is built for slow wandering through little shops and art galleries, with glimpses of the ocean beyond the streets.
Bailey presses closer to the window, taking it in, and I feel ridiculously pleased with myself for picking a place she seems to be enjoying.
At lunch, her gaze keeps drifting to my fries, so I slide the basket closer.
She takes one, smiling a little. “I wasn’t asking.”
“I know.”
“You just handed them over?”
“I’m generous when properly motivated.”
Her eyes flick to mine. “And what motivated you?”
“You looked like you were having your first craving.”
She looks down at the fry in her hand like it suddenly matters more than it should.
“You might be right,” she says.
For once, I don’t try to turn it into anything bigger.
I just let myself be glad we’re here.
Lunch is easy. We talk about small things, the kind we somehow skipped over before everything got complicated. Favorite takeout. First concerts. The books she rereads when she needs comfort. The fact that she hates mushrooms unless they’re chopped small enough to disappear into something else.
Bailey tells me her favorite ice cream is mint chip, but only the bright green kind because the white kind “just feels wrong.” I tell her mine is rocky road, mostly because one of my foster mothers used to buy it when I was a kid, and it still tastes like one of the few uncomplicated things I remember from back then.
I ask her about the first place she ever wanted to travel, and she tells me about a picture of the Oregon coast she kept taped inside her high school locker.
She asks me what I wanted to be before hockey became the obvious answer, and I admit I once thought about becoming a firefighter because I liked the idea of being the person who showed up when things were bad.
The conversation doesn’t fix anything, but it’s good.
For the first time in weeks, it feels like we’re not only talking about the baby or the next appointment or the fear waiting underneath all of it. We’re learning each other in ordinary pieces.
By the time we leave, some of the tension has eased from her shoulders, and I can feel the shift in myself, too.
After lunch, we drive toward the water and take one of the paths along the bluffs.
The ocean is rough below us, white foam breaking against dark rocks, wind tugging at Bailey’s hair until she gives up trying to keep it neat.
I offer her my beanie, and she narrows her eyes like she’s deciding whether this crosses the line into smothering.
“It’s a hat,” I say.
“It’s also your hat.”
She takes it and pulls it on. It swallows half her forehead.
I stare at her, trying to contain my smile.
“What?” she asks.
“You look cute.”
Her cheeks are pink from the wind, but I let myself believe at least a little of it has something to do with me.
We walk for a while without talking. The path curves along the cliffs, the town behind us, the ocean beside us. I keep my hand near hers, but don’t reach right away. Bailey solves it by sliding her hand into mine.
“Thank you for today,” she says.
“It’s not over.”
“I know. I’ll thank you again later for the second part of the day.”
She looks out at the water, but her thumb moves once over the back of my hand. “I was scared we were becoming all baby.”
My chest goes quiet as I listen.
She keeps her eyes on the ocean. “All appointments and symptoms and links and everyone knowing and everyone having thoughts. I know that’s part of it. I know it matters. But I missed this.”
“Walking in the cold?”
“Being with you without feeling like we’re both standing under an emergency exit sign.”
I breathe out slowly.
“I missed it too,” I admit. “I didn’t know how to say that without making it sound like I wanted to ignore everything else.”
“I don’t want to ignore it.”
“I know.”
“I just don’t want it to erase us.”
The wind moves between us, cold and sharp and clean.
I look down at our joined hands. “I don’t know how to stop trying to prepare.”
Her fingers tighten.
“I’m serious,” I say. “I hear you when you say you need me here, not researching my way into an anxiety spiral. I do. But then the fear shows up, and my brain starts looking for something useful to do. A question. A plan. A product with safety ratings. Anything that feels like proof I’m not failing already. ”
Bailey turns toward me then, the beanie low over her forehead, her face softer.
“I don’t think you’re failing.”
“I know you don’t.” My voice comes out rougher than I expect. “I’m trying to believe it before I wear us both down trying to prove it.”
Her fingers tighten around mine. “You don’t have to get it right all at once.”
I let out a breath and look toward the water. “I know. I just don’t know how to be calm about something that matters this much.”
“You don’t have to be calm,” she says. “You just have to let me be there with you when it’s hard.”
That gets through in a way reassurance doesn’t.
I step closer. “I’m going to mess up again.”
“Probably.”
“Comforting.”
“I’m not here to lie to you.”
“Also not so comforting.”
“But today is good,” she says.
I look at her, and everything in me settles around those four words.
Today is good.
Not perfect. Not fixed. Not proof that the fear is gone.
But good.
I lift my free hand to her cheek and kiss her there on the bluff with the ocean loud below us and the wind pressing cold around our bodies.
For a few seconds, there is no appointment. No list. No heartbeat playing on a monitor in a room that made me feel more than I knew what to do with.
There is just Bailey.
The woman I wanted before the test.
The woman I want now.
The woman I am trying, clumsily and completely, to love well enough until I’m brave enough to say the word.
On the drive home, she falls asleep somewhere south of town, curled toward the window with my hat still on her head. My phone buzzes in the cup holder at a stoplight.
A notification lights the screen.
Recommended for you: Best infant car seats of the year.
I stare at it.
My thumb twitches.
Then I turn the phone facedown and look back at the road.
Bailey shifts in her sleep, her hand resting near mine on the console.
I take it gently, careful not to wake her, and keep driving.