12. Nora
NORA
Harper has been in a sleep regression for three days, and I am existing on caffeine and the specific stubbornness that comes from knowing it will end, probably, at some point, eventually.
She starts screaming again. Ninety minutes since the last time. Reliable, I'll give her that.
I'm already sitting up when I hear Tyler in the hallway. We nearly collide in the dark, both of us zombie-slow, looking at each other for a moment.
"Your turn or mine?" he mumbles. His hair is doing something structural. He's been wearing the same t-shirt for two days.
"Mine. You got the last one."
"Did I?" He blinks. "What day is it?"
"Still Thursday. Technically."
He follows me into the nursery anyway, and we both stand looking at Harper, who is extremely furious about the general situation of being a human being.
"She hates us," Tyler says.
"She doesn't hate us. Her brain is developing."
"She sounds like she hates us."
I pick her up, and she grabs my shoulder. "Living room. I need to sit down before I fall."
We migrate downstairs in the dark. Tyler drops onto the couch with a sound that goes all the way to the soul.
I settle at the other end with Harper, and we don't talk because we're too tired for words; we just exist here while Harper gradually runs out of fury and shifts into something more tired and manageable.
"How long does this last?" he asks the ceiling.
"Could be a few more days. Could be two weeks."
"I'm going to die from lack of sleep."
"You're not going to die."
"You don't know that."
I adjust Harper, trying to get her to take a bottle. She's fighting it, thrashing around, making the whole process significantly harder than it needs to be. Tyler is lying there with his eyes closed, existing.
The sound of Harper gradually calming, the house settling around us, and the refrigerator humming from the kitchen.
Somewhere next door, and a light clicking off are the only things we can hear.
The neighbours have been patient about the crying—or at least quiet about it—but there's a particular awareness that comes with thin walls and a baby in a sleep regression, the knowledge that you're not the only one losing sleep tonight.
Thirty minutes pass. Maybe more. Harper's eyes are drooping. Not asleep but getting there, her breathing evening out against my chest. I lean my head back against the cushion and close my eyes for a second.
"Red."
Tyler's voice. Low and rough. Very close.
I open my eyes. He's turned toward me, and in the dim light, his eyes are exhausted and something else underneath that I'm not letting myself name.
"Come here," he says. "Just for a minute. Please."
I know what the right answer is. I know I should stay on my end of the couch, maintain the distance, and be the sensible professional person I've been trying very hard to be.
I shift closer.
His arm lifts and comes around my shoulders, drawing me in gently, and I tuck against his side with Harper still between us. He's warm and solid, and his arm settles as it belongs there, like this is where it was always going to end up, and I'm too tired to fight the way it feels.
This crosses a line. I know it does.
I don't move.
We sit here in the dim living room, the lamp in the corner casting soft light, not talking.
Harper's breathing slows. Tyler's thumb starts moving in small unconscious circles on my shoulder, back and forth, barely a touch, and every time it moves, I have to think deliberately about breathing normally.
I should say something, create distance. I should be the person I've been trying to be for four weeks.
His arm is warm. The house is quiet. Harper is almost asleep.
My breath catches. Just slightly. Just audibly enough.
Tyler's thumb goes still.
The moment stretches. Both of us are aware of it, yet neither of us moves.
I pull away, getting to my feet with Harper. "I should put her down."
"Yeah." Tyler's voice is slightly off. "Yeah, okay."
I carry Harper to the stairs without looking back. Behind me, I hear him exhale once, slow and deliberate.
"Night, Red," he says softly.
Red. Not Nora. I should correct him. I keep not doing it. I don’t do it this time either.
"Goodnight," I say, and go upstairs.
Harper goes down without a fight, which I’m incredibly thankful for. When I get into my room, I close my door and lean against it.
My shoulder is still warm where his arm was. Not the ambient warmth of the house, but the warmth of contact, of weight, of another person choosing to put themselves there and stay.
I press my fingers against the spot.
Four weeks. Four weeks of living in this house, feeding this baby, sitting across from him, and telling myself it is working, that I am maintaining the distance, that I have it under control.
And then one night, half asleep on the couch with a baby between us, his arm goes around me like it was always going to end up there.
I change into fresh pajamas. Wash my face. Go through the motions of a bedtime routine as though this were a normal night, as though I didn't just sit there and let him hold me and not want it to stop.
I didn't want it to stop.
I get into bed. Pull the covers up. Stare at the ceiling.
Across the hall, I can hear him pacing. Back and forth, soft footsteps on the carpet. He's not sleeping either.
We're both awake in the dark, on either side of a wall, thinking about the same couch.
I touch my shoulder one more time.
He's my employer. I'm his employee. That's the boundary. That's what the wall is for.
But his arm was around me, his thumb making circles; my breath caught, he noticed, and now I'm lying here unable to sleep because the warmth of it won't go away.
Harper will be up again in an hour and a half. We'll meet in the hallway, and we'll both pretend this didn't happen, that nothing shifted, that it was just exhaustion and the middle of the night and nothing that means anything.
But something did shift.
And the most terrifying part isn't that it happened.
It's that lying here in the dark, pressing my palm against my shoulder where his arm was, I can't quite make myself wish it hadn't.