Page 125 of End Game

I take a sip of my water and ask, “You said you want kids,” I ask after a few bites. “Is that like, soon?”

“Not before I get through these weddings,” she laughs. “Eventually, yes. Holden and Shawn definitely want them. Carter and I haven’t ruled it out, but probably not. He already has a daughter. Jeremiah and Ethan are sure they don’t want biological children.”

“And you can make that work? In the same house?”

“I’m sure we can, but we will fully figure out what it will actually look like when we decide to take out the IUD. Living with a baby isn’t the same thing as agreeing to become a father. There will probably be some role definition there.”

“Oh, yeah. That makes sense.”

“It’s easy to say we’ll figure it out when it happens. Harder when figuring it out means nobody’s sleeping and someone thought they’d have a very different life.”

The server drops off our food.

As she picks up her sandwich, she adds, “I’d prefer to have at least some of those discussions while I’m rested and not super hormonal.”

“Ambitious.”

“Possibly delusional.”

I smile, but I’m thinking about how often I picture the future for us as our house, exactly as it is, with everyone a little older. Same rooms. Same work schedules. Same Thursday nights.

As if loving what we have means none of it will ever need to change.

“What about work? When you have a baby?” I ask. “Will you keep working?”

“I’m sure I’ll take maternity leave. How long, I don’t know yet, but I want to be able to take some real time off.”

“No answering emails with a baby in one arm?”

“Preferably not.” She smiles. “Getting my bosses to support the leave is probably the easiest part.”

I narrow my eyes knowingly at her. “You work with four of them.”

“I do.”

“You did not say bosses.”

“I’m the Director of Marketing. Jeremiah is the CEO, and Ethan is the CFO. Carter and I work together a lot because he’s over sales. And then Shawn is on the technical side.”

A fry stops halfway to my mouth. “Alexis.”

“What?”

“That is a substantial amount of information to leave out.”

She laughs. “You were having a bad night. Explaining the org chart didn’t feel urgent.”

“So that just leaves Holden.”

“He’s a physician, an intensivist.”

“Right. Somebody had to diversify.”

That gets a startled laugh out of her, and I finally eat the fry.

“Does everybody at your job know? About your dynamic?”

“Yes,” she pauses, seeming to contemplate how much to share. “We went through legal and HR before we told people. It was actually a major company announcement, not just a casual memo posted by the coffee machine.” Her smile thins slightly. “And it didn’t mean everyone suddenly was accepting or behaved themselves, as you know.”