Page 86 of Play the Game
Evan
Why are you more excited about me being your girlfriend than you are about me having a whole entire baby who belongs to you?
Me
Because I don’t know the baby yet, but I do know you, and without you and me there would be no baby. You come first. Today and always.Keep up, Rhodes.
So why are you naked in a dressing room with half my family outside and my grandmother tossing dresses at you?
Evan
I might have mentioned that you were coming with me to the gala where we are hard launching this pregnancy thing to my parents and I had no fucking clue what to wear. Then Jo said she and Jordan are going to the gala too. Suddenly Cece’s friend was keeping her fancy dress store open late, and it all kind of spiraled from there.
Dress shopping while pregnant is not for the weak.
Me
Do you need a save? I can make up some kind of work emergency or just tell my mom I need to kiss you every two hours or I wither away. She’ll probably let you go. The rest of the girls will totally understand. Cece will know the truth, but there’s no getting around that.
Evan
Nah. I may not love dress shopping while pregnant, but I do love them. And they promised me cake when we’re done here, so I’m fighting the good fight.
Me
Well, we appreciate your service.
Evan
[Picture attached of Evan, Pam, Cece, Jo, Amelia, and Hannah sprawled on a dressing room couch, laughing]
Clicking on the picture Evan sent, my heart catapults into my throat at the image of her, smiling wide, surrounded by most of my favorite people. The way she’s right in the center, my mom’s arm around her and Cece holding her hand. The way theother women lean in so they’re all a unit. And I can see so clearly how it could be. My family. Birthdays and holidays. Girls’ nights and weekends for her. Saturday dinners in the brownstone. All of us weaving into each other’s lives. And my girl and me, right in the center of it.
Walking out of the kitchen with my phone in my hand, I open the door to one of my mostly empty guest rooms, scanning the space. Years ago, when we moved into the brownstone, Cece insisted that I take this first-floor apartment—the only one with three bedrooms. I didn’t understand it then, but looking around this third bedroom, I understand it now. Because I was never meant to live here alone or even just with a partner.
Somehow, Cece knew that I would end up here. That I would be the first of us to need an apartment meant for three.
Now I just have to convince Evan that her place is here with me. With the family we have, and the family we’ll be. I know she isn’t ready for that yet, but she will be, and I’ll be waiting when she is. I’ve already started making plans, and this room is the place where those plans start.
Me
Happy looks good on you, Rhodes.
Evan
Happy feels good.
Smiling, I close the door to the guest room and head back to the kitchen, lifting the towel covering the bread dough I have rising on the counter to check on it, then grabbing the notebook I set on the counter earlier and flopping on the couch. I flip it open to the place I left off and get to work. I’m so absorbed in what I’m doing that I don’t register the footsteps coming down the stairs until it’s almost too late.
“Honey, we’re here!” Noah’s voice booms into my apartment as my front door flies open.
Fuck.
Slamming the notebook shut, I shove it under a cushion and catapult off the couch, practically tripping over my feet on my way to the kitchen.
“Ow, fuck,” I mutter when I take the turn into the kitchen too fast and slam my hip into the corner of the island. I rally fast, one hand reaching for my bowl of dough and the other yanking open the dishwasher. I shove the bowl into the blessedly empty machine and close it as quietly as I can, standing up and shoving my glasses up my nose, turning just in time for Jordan, Elliot, and Noah to stroll into the room. It occurs to me that hiding bread dough in the dishwasher so my brothers don’t find out I can make said bread dough is insane behavior, but that’s a problem for later Cooper. That, and whether I can get my brothers out of here in time to save the dough.
“What’s up, guys?”
