Page 32 of Wicked Brutal

Becca asks, “Are you happy?”

Ally’s hand moves to her stomach — automatic, she doesn’t even notice she’s doing it anymore. “Yeah.”

Becca smiles. It costs her something; I can see it cost her something, and she does it anyway. “Then I’m happy for you.” She hugs Ally again, and this time she laughs into it, and Penny starts crying harder.

Cat groans. “Now you’re making me cry.”

“Good,” Becca says.

“I hate all of you.”

Danny looks away from the couch, and I move up beside him. “You okay?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

He glances at me. “That’s it? That’s the whole intervention?”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Nothing.”

“Then yeah. That’s it.”

His mouth twitches, and I bump my shoulder into his. He bumps mine back. Done.

The girls spend another half hour with Ally after that. Cat wants to know if she needs anything, anything at all, and starts a list. Penny wants a full inventory of which foods don’t make her want to die. Becca asks whether she’s sleeping. Ally answers more than I expect her to, and eventually she starts laughing — really laughing, the loud one that almost nobody gets — and for a little while the baby isn’t a threat or a countdown or a problem to be solved. It’s just a baby. Ours.

Then I check the time. Six. I look at Ally, and she reads it off my face. “Your parents?”

“Yeah.”

The smile goes out of her.

We're in my car, sitting in my driveway. Ally is staring at my house with tears in her eyes.

I reach across the console and take her hand. Her fingers are freezing. “We need them,” I say. “And if Arthur’s getting looped in tonight, I am not letting my parents find out they’re going to be grandparents because Iz calls his dad and the news travels up the parent phone tree.”

That gets a tiny laugh out of her. “Is there a parent phone tree?”

“Absolutely there’s a parent phone tree. Our mothers have a group chat and I refuse to know what’s in it.”

“You’re making that up.”

“You’ve met our mothers.”

“...Fair.” I rub my thumb across her knuckles, and she looks out the window for a few seconds. “Your dad knows you like me.”

“Yeah.” That part’s unavoidable — Dad knows more about the original reason I started watching Ally than I ever wanted a parent to know about my romantic life. He knows I noticed her. He knows I cared enough to notice too much. What he does not know is that somewhere between the lake and October, noticing turned into kissing, kissing turned into sneaking around, and sneaking around eventually turned into me putting a baby in her. That’s going to be a fun update.

“Your mom doesn’t know anything,” Ally says.

“No.”

“Does she know we’re even—“

“She knows we’ve known each other our whole lives. She knows I don’t hate you.”