30. Duncan
DUNCAN
One year later, I wake up to Millie singing in the shower.
Not well, which makes it better. She's attempting something from that musical she saw three times last month, hitting maybe forty percent of the notes and inventing the rest. I lie there listening with my eyes still closed, cataloging this moment the way I've learned to do with the good ones—the sound of her voice echoing off tile, morning light warming the sheets, the faint smell of coffee from the timer I set last night.
Our penthouse. Still strange to think of it that way instead of my place or her apartment.
We moved in together six months ago after her lease ended and she looked at me over breakfast one morning and said, "I don't want to go home anymore.
I want to stay here." So we consolidated her furniture and my minimalist bullshit and somehow created a space that feels like us rather than either of us separately.
The shower cuts off. I hear her moving around the bathroom, humming now instead of singing. When she emerges wrapped in a towel with wet hair leaving damp spots on her shoulders, I'm already up and pouring coffee the way she likes it.
"Morning," she says, padding across the hardwood in bare feet.
"Morning yourself. How're you feeling?"
She takes the mug I offer and drinks half of it before answering. "Fine. Good, actually. The nausea's mostly gone."
Eight weeks pregnant. She told me three weeks ago after taking six different tests because she didn't believe the first five.
I'd been in a meeting when she texted: "Come home.
Now." and the attached photo showed a plastic stick with two very clear pink lines.
I left immediately, walked out in the middle of a pitch about market expansion that my VP is probably still annoyed about.
Found her sitting on the bathroom floor with tears streaming down her face and five other positive tests lined up on the counter like evidence.
"We're having a baby," she'd said, voice breaking on the last word.
I'd knelt next to her and pulled her against my chest. "We're having a baby."
Now she's standing in our kitchen drinking decaf coffee I ordered special because regular makes her nauseous, one hand resting unconsciously on her stomach even though there's nothing to see yet. I've noticed her doing that more lately, the automatic protective gesture she doesn't seem aware of.
"What're you thinking about?" she asks, catching me staring.
"The nursery." I've been thinking about the nursery for three weeks straight, running through options every time I have a spare moment.
"I think we should do the room next to ours.
It's big enough, gets good light in the mornings, and it's close but not so close we'll wake the baby every time we move. "
"You've been planning this."
"I've been extensively planning this." I pull up the notes app on my phone and show her the list I've been building.
Paint colors, furniture options, which wall should hold the crib to optimize natural light without creating glare.
"I'm thinking something neutral. Soft gray or maybe that warm beige we saw at the design store last month.
Something that works regardless of whether we find out the sex ahead of time. "
She reads through my notes with an expression somewhere between amused and touched. "You made a spreadsheet comparing crib brands."
"The reviews for convertible cribs versus standard are all over the place. I needed to organize the data."
"Duncan, we have seven months to figure this out."
"I know. But I want to get started." I set my phone down and move closer, wrapping my arms around her waist. "I want to paint that room and build furniture and argue with you about whether we need a changing table or if that's an unnecessary expense."
"We definitely need a changing table."
"See? This is why we should start now."
She laughs and kisses me, quick and coffee-flavored. "Okay. We'll start planning the nursery. But after breakfast because I'm starving and this baby apparently requires constant feeding."
I make scrambled eggs while she sits at the counter eating toast with an alarming amount of butter.
We've fallen into this routine over the past year, these domestic patterns I never had with anyone else.
Morning coffee, shared breakfasts, evenings on the couch arguing about what to watch.
Small, unremarkable moments that somehow add up to something extraordinary.
It's bizarre when I think about it. At one point we hated each other.
Really hated, not the performative kind.
I looked at Millie Harris in high school and saw everything I was afraid of—talent I couldn't match, confidence I couldn't fake, a future that seemed certain when mine felt increasingly fragile.
So I tried to diminish her, convince both of us she wouldn't make it.
Now she's sitting in my kitchen—our kitchen—pregnant with our child, and I can't imagine wanting to be anywhere else or with anyone else.
"What?" she asks around a mouthful of toast.
"Nothing. Just thinking about how different things are."
"Different how?"
"Different as in, ten years ago I was a complete asshole to you and now you're carrying my baby and letting me make you breakfast." I plate the eggs and slide them across the counter. "The character development is frankly incredible."
She snorts. "You're not that different. You're still annoyingly competent and you still overthink everything."
"True. But now I overthink in service of us rather than in defense of my own ego."
"That's growth, I guess." She starts on the eggs. "Although I will say, high school Duncan never would have made me breakfast without expecting something in return."
"High school Duncan was an insecure dick who measured his worth by whether other people felt smaller around him. Current Duncan is trying," I say finally. "Still works in progress, probably always will be. But trying."
She reaches across the counter and takes my hand. "I like trying Duncan. He's much better than high school Duncan, who I wanted to punch roughly seventy percent of the time."
"Only seventy percent?"
"The other thirty percent I wanted to prove wrong by becoming wildly successful, which arguably worked out."
I bring her hand to my mouth and kiss her knuckles. "It did. You're wildly successful and I get to watch you be brilliant on a regular basis, which is frankly unfair to everyone else who doesn't get that privilege."
"Smooth."
"I'm very smooth now. It's part of my charm."
Her phone buzzes on the counter where she left it. She glances at the screen and her entire expression shifts—not bad exactly, but careful in a way I've learned means she's processing something unexpected.
"What is it?"
She turns the phone so I can see. A notification from the Academy's official account: "Congratulations to this year's Best Actress nominees!"
Below it, a list of five names. Millie's is third.
Second nomination in two years. Same category, different film. This time for the indie drama she shot right after last year's Oscars, the one where she played a mother dealing with grief and addiction.
"Well," she says, setting the phone face-down. "That's happening again."
"How do you feel?"
She's quiet for a moment, turning her coffee mug in slow circles on the granite. "Honestly? Excited. Which is weird because last year I was terrified and this year I'm just... excited to see what happens."
"That's good. That's growth too."
"Maybe." She looks up at me and smiles, genuine and unguarded.
"Or maybe I just care less about the outcome now that I know it doesn't define me.
I did good work. The nomination proves people noticed.
Whether I win or lose doesn't change the fact that I'm about to have a baby with someone I love in a home we built together. "
I move around the counter and pull her into a proper hug, her head tucked under my chin. "I'm proud of you. You know that, right?"
"You keep saying that."
"Because I keep meaning it."
We stay like that for a while, just holding each other in the morning light.
Outside, the city wakes up—traffic building on the streets below, people heading to jobs they hate or love or tolerate, everyone moving through their own narratives completely unaware that in this penthouse twenty floors up, I'm thinking about how lucky I am that Millie Harris decided to forgive me.
"We should tell people," she says eventually, voice muffled against my chest. "About the baby. Before I start showing and someone figures it out."
"Who do you want to tell first?"
"My mom. Then Brianna. Then probably LaToya because she'll kill me if she finds out from social media."
"What about a public announcement?"
She pulls back to look at me properly. "Do we have to? Can't we just... exist with this for a while before it becomes a story?"
I understand what she's asking. Last year was exhausting, our relationship dissected by millions of strangers who had opinions about everything from our contract to my past to whether we were actually in love or still performing.
We survived it, but barely. And now she's asking if we can keep this one thing private, at least for a while.
"We can keep it quiet as long as you want," I tell her. "Although eventually physics will make that difficult."
She laughs and rests her hand on her stomach again. "True. But we have at least a few months before I can't hide it under strategic clothing choices."
"Strategic clothing choices. Is that what we're calling maternity wear?"
"We're calling it whatever keeps photographers from getting a shot they can sell for six figures."
"What if we did something small?" I suggest. "Not a press release, just... maybe tell close friends and family first, then do a single social media post on our own terms before anyone else can break the story?"
She considers this, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth the way she does when she's thinking through options. "That could work. Something simple. Photo of us together, caption announcing we're expecting, comments turned off so people can't immediately fill it with their opinions."
"When?"
"After I tell Mama. She deserves to hear it from me first, not from Twitter."
We spend the rest of breakfast making plans.
Who to tell when, how to manage the announcement, what to say when people inevitably ask invasive questions about timing and whether this was planned.
It feels good, strategizing together rather than having our lives managed by publicists and lawyers trying to control a narrative.
That afternoon, Millie video calls her mother while I pretend to work in the next room but actually listen to the entire conversation. When Deena screams with joy loud enough that I hear it clearly through the closed door, I smile so wide my face hurts.
Two days later, we post a photo. Nothing fancy—just the two of us on our couch, her hand resting on her barely-there bump, both of us smiling like we have a secret. The caption is simple: "Coming this summer. We're excited for this next chapter."
The internet loses its mind, but in a good way this time.
Congratulations flood in from people we know and strangers who've been following our story since the contract leak.
Articles get written about our "redemption arc" and how we've "built something real from something fake," which makes Millie roll her eyes but also smile.
Three weeks later, I'm in the spare room that will become the nursery with paint samples taped to every wall. Millie stands in the doorway watching me hold each one up to the light, comparing how they look in natural versus artificial lighting.
"You're insane," she observes.
"I'm thorough."
"You've been in here for an hour comparing shades of gray that look identical to me."
"They're not identical. This one has blue undertones and this one has green. It matters."
She comes to stand next to me, taking both samples from my hands and tossing them onto the drop cloth I've spread across the floor. "The baby won't care about undertones, Duncan. The baby will care that we love them and keep them alive and don't accidentally put the diaper on backward."
"You can put diapers on backward?"
"I have no idea. That's what I'm worried about."
I pull her close, hands settling at her waist where her stomach is just starting to curve outward. "We're going to figure it out. And if we put the diaper on backward a few times, the kid will survive."
She kisses me soft and slow, hands coming up to frame my face. When we break apart she's smiling in that way that still makes my chest tight even after a year together.
"I love you," she says. "Even when you're being ridiculous about paint colors."
"I love you too. Even when you're pretending you don't care about paint colors when I know you absolutely do."
"Fine. I like the one with blue undertones better. Happy?"
"Extremely."
We stand there in the empty room that will soon be full of furniture and toys and every manner of baby paraphernalia I've been researching obsessively for weeks.
Outside, the city stretches endlessly in all directions.
But in here, in this room that smells like fresh paint and possibility, everything feels contained and manageable and exactly right.
This time next year, there will be a baby here. Our baby. A tiny human who will be part Millie's brilliance and part my stubborn determination to do better than my father did. Who will grow up knowing they were wanted, planned for, loved before they even existed.
It's terrifying. It's also the best thing I've ever been part of creating.
"Come on," Millie says, tugging my hand. "Let's go look at cribs online so you can make another spreadsheet comparing features."
"You say that like it's a bad thing."
"It's not bad. It's very you."
We leave the nursery and head back to the living room, where her laptop is already open on the coffee table. We spend the next two hours looking at baby furniture, arguing good-naturedly about what we actually need versus what stores are trying to convince us we need.
At some point she falls asleep with her head on my shoulder, one hand still resting on the bump that's becoming more visible every day. I close the laptop carefully and just sit there holding her, watching the sun set over Manhattan through our windows.
Ten years ago, I hated this woman. Five years ago, I didn't think about her at all. One year ago, we were strangers bound by a contract neither of us wanted.
Now she's my entire world.