Chapter 43
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Sara
TWO MONTHS LATER
Home is a beautiful disaster these days.
Nick’s sleek bachelor pad is no more.
I don’t know if there’s a manual for this kind of thing. Honestly, I don’t know how any of us are surviving, but here we are.
Nick’s office? At the kitchen table.
Samuel in one arm. A Zoom meeting in full swing with his shirt definitely not on under that bathrobe.
I’m sitting at the counter, hunched over my laptop. Back to freelancing.
Mostly for companies who don’t seem to care about deadlines, but who also send the most awful feedback. You know, the kind that makes you want to go home, slap on a cozy hoodie, and bury your head in a pile of laundry.
Instead, I drink too much coffee and eat the banana muffins I somehow managed to bake this morning after surviving a sleep-deprived nightmare with three babies.
The muffins are the only thing in my life I have control over, and let’s be real: they’re probably the only reason I’m still awake.
Thank God for Evelyn.
Her voice carries softly through the nursery, wrapping around the room in a gentle hug.
“‘In the deep, dark woods, where shadows play, the creatures come out when night turns to day…’” she reads, her tone smooth, weaving a spell.
I glance over, watching her carefully, as if every word she speaks is important. Lily stirs slightly in her arms, her small fingers curling around the fabric of her sweater, as if even she knows there’s something soothing in her voice.
“‘They climb the trees, they swim the streams, they fly on wings and dance on beams,’” Evelyn continues, her eyes scanning the page. She looks up at Ethan in his basket, her gaze soft but intense, trying to paint the world she’s reading about into their little minds.
I smile without meaning to, watching her. There’s something powerful in how she can take a sweet little story and turn it into something magical.
“‘One by one, the stars do fall, lighting the world for one and all. But beware, child, of the shadows near, for when the moon is full, they come to fear.’”
I don’t know what we’d do without her. She really has been a lifesaver.
Not like Meatball, who’s currently snoring at my feet, no doubt planning his next protest against our parenting.
And the wedding planning.
Planning a wedding while you’ve got triplets crying in your ears and a fiancé who keeps accidentally leaving his Zoom meetings on mute for forty-five minutes while wearing a bathrobe and cradling a baby is not exactly straightforward.
Suddenly, Samuel makes a noise
A low grumble followed by an unmistakable splat. I glance over at Nick. He freezes mid-meeting, his brow furrowed in that serious, CEO mode, eyes locked on the screen as if he’s trying to pretend this isn’t happening.
Too late.
The smell hits before the look of sheer horror takes over his face. I can’t help it, I’m already laughing.
“Nick!” I say between giggles. “Come on, we have to change him. That sounded terrible.”
Samuel slumps into full meltdown mode, his little face scrunched up in that “I just destroyed my diaper” way that’s both pitiful and hilarious at the same time. He starts wailing, performing a concert for the ages.
“I, uh, I… just a minute, team,” Nick says into his laptop, trying to act calm as he rocks Samuel, who’s clearly not cooperating.
I can barely hear the conference call as I continue to watch him shift uncomfortably. It’s taking him way too long to realize that he’s about to need a lot more than just a few quick minutes.
“Just… one second,” he mutters, tapping on his screen as he tries to turn off his mic. But the more he struggles with it, the messier the situation gets.
Samuel kicks his tiny legs, and I swear to God, it’s leaking out of the side of his diaper.
I can’t stop laughing.
“Did you seriously just forget to mute yourself?” I ask, unable to hold it in.
Nick groans and hits the wrong button. His face is turning as red as a tomato.
“Uh… gentlemen, just… uh… give me a moment, please,” he says, suddenly desperate. Then he slaps the laptop shut. “I’ll just… be right back.”
Evelyn also chuckled from the other room. Lucky for her, Lily and Ethan are being angels… for now.
“Come on. Really?” Nick’s voice is muffled as he tries to untangle Samuel from the mess. “I can’t even go a week without some disaster happening.”
I stand up, still laughing, but then pause. I look at Nick, holding Samuel as though he’s holding a ticking time bomb, and feel a little guilty for laughing so hard.
He’s trying to be the calm, cool CEO in the middle of a diaper apocalypse, and it’s working—just not for much longer.
“You know, you’ve got to stop scheduling Zoom meetings during peak diaper explosion hours,” I say, walking toward him. “We need to set some ground rules for working from home with triplets.”
“Ground rules?” Nick looks at me incredulously, his free hand gesturing vaguely toward the mess. “What do you propose? No crying during meetings?”
I can’t help it, I snicker. “Well, yeah. But also, maybe no poop explosions, either. That might help.”
“Oh, perfect,” he replies sarcastically, trying to adjust Samuel, but the little guy just keeps wiggling. “Maybe we can also set a rule about no one else in the house interrupting my meetings with ridiculous demands, like ‘feed me’ or ‘I have to poop right now.’”
I laugh, but there’s a fondness in it. A moment of normalcy in the chaos. This is us now, and we’re figuring it out, disasters and all.
“You know,” I say, “I was thinking, maybe we could set a wedding date. Maybe in… oh, I don’t know, five years? That sounds realistic, right?”
Nick gives me a mock glare. “You’re going to leave me with a whole company to run, three crying babies, and an unplanned wedding? Nice.”
“Well, we could just do a Vegas elopement,” I suggest, teasing. “I’ve heard they have great chapels. Maybe we could even get a package deal with the diaper service.”
“That’s actually not a bad idea,” Nick says, his eyes narrowing mischievously. “We could have our wedding right after the babies’ diaper changes.”
“Perfect!” I laugh, sitting on the arm of the couch and throwing my arms up. “We’ll get married in the living room, with a backdrop of baby formula stains. I’ll even wear the bathrobe you’re currently sporting… if you promise not to wear it to our first dance.”
Nick looks at me, then Samuel, then back to the screen where his meeting attendees are probably wondering if he’s still alive. “I promise, I won’t wear the bathrobe… but only if you promise not to throw up on your dress before the ceremony.”
I chuckle. “Deal. But only if we have cupcakes. Big ones. With lots of frosting.”
“Deal,” he says as Samuel lets out a squeak, and then, finally, a triumphant burp that somehow makes the whole mess worth it.
“I guess we’ve got wedding planning down to a science, huh?”
“Oh, yeah,” I say, grinning. “It’s all in the details, baby.”
And with that, the chaotic noise of parenthood rings louder than the Zoom call as I pick up the baby wipes. It’s messy, it’s ridiculous, and it’s exactly how we like it.