They are not. Cat hates Erik, and Erik hates Cat, especially after watching him scoot his asshole against Erik’s toothbrush less than twelve hours ago. However, they are both very fond of Sadie, and have therefore established a truce of sorts.
To facilitate peaceful cohabitation, Erik has disseminated decoy toothbrushes all around the house.
“Okay, listen . . .” Anders scratches his neck. “Don’t you guys have a budding engineering firm to run? Do you even have time to take care of Garf— Cat?”
“We have nothing but time,” Sadie cuts in, as though Grantham & Nowak is not growing exponentially, as though they haven’t been busier than ever. Erik fondly remembers how anxious Sadie was when they both left their previous jobs. What if, with working and living together, you get tired of me? It sounded so unlikely, he could only laugh. “And as you know, the house we’re building upstate is almost finished. Cat could come up with us on weekends. In fact, we’ve been thinking about getting a dog—and I think we can all agree that Cat would love to torment a puppy. Wouldn’t you, Cat?”
“Meow.”
Erik’s phone buzzes again. This time he takes his eyes off Sadie to check his texts.
Clearly, Mara told Liam about the baby. Clearly, she told him last.
Erik: Congrats, man.
Erik: Unrelated question: Are you guys ever scared of your wives?
The replies are instantaneous.
Liam: 100%.
Ian: Hannah’s still not my wife, but yeah. Shitless.
Erik sighs, slides his phone back into his pocket, and decides to intervene. He goes to Sadie, wrapping his arm around her shoulders. Her slight weight settles into his side. Sorry, Erik tells his brother with a look. But she’s very cute and very terrifying. “What about joint custody?” he proposes.
Anders glares at him, and then nods, defeated.
Sadie smiles, triumphant.
Cat is nowhere to be seen. Must be in the bathroom, Erik thinks. Looking for toothbrushes.
IAN
The words come out of Ian’s mouth before he’s fully processed them. By the time he notices Hannah’s raised eyebrows and her dubious expression, it’s just too late to take them back.
She stops in the middle of the hallway.
Ian stops, too.
She looks at him, skeptical.
Ian tries not to avert his eyes.
It’s not easy: The Jet Propulsion Lab is crawling with interns, students, engineers. They’re all at the end of their workday, and they’re all trying to exit the building from that door over there. The one that’s maybe ten feet away.
And, apparently, Ian and Hannah are about to have this conversation right in front of it. Perfect.
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing.” He shakes his head. “Let’s just go home. Forget that I—”
“Did you just ask me why we are not married?”
“No. Well, yes, but . . .”
“In response to me asking you if we should get Thai tonight?”
Ian scratches his temple and looks at his feet. “Perhaps not my best segue.” His hand lifts to her back, and he tries to nudge her toward the parking lot. “Let’s go home.”
Hannah stays put. “Where’s this coming from?” she asks, just as NASA’s deputy administrator strolls in and out of Ian’s field of view, waving cheerfully. Hannah’s eyes fall on the phone in his hand. “Aah.”
“Aah?”
“Aah.” She nods knowingly. “You’ve been talking with Erik and Liam.”
Ian frowns. “What does that have to do with it?”
“You get like this when you talk to them.” She grins and grabs his sleeve, pulling him into the parking lot.
“I get like what?”
“Homey. Marriagey.”
“I don’t.”
“Yeah, you do.”
“I’m pretty sure I’ve never mentioned marriage before.” In fact, he’s been very careful not to mention anything that’s even remotely connected. Everyone knows that Ian and Hannah are together, but when Ian’s manager asked him if he’d be taking his “wife” to her barbecue—Dr. Arroyo, right, who leads the A & PE team?—he made sure to say, Yes, I’ll bring my partner. When Sadie pushed her bridal bouquet of Danish lilies into Hannah’s very unreceptive, mostly slack hands, he made sure to nod while Hannah listed the reasons marriage is an archaic institution grounded in a capitalistic landscape.
It’s not that he doesn’t want to get married. It’s more that he knows her, and her issues with commitment. She’s already come so far, and it’s not like Ian doesn’t feel how much she loves him every minute of every day. Which means that he can accept the way she is, and the fact that she’d laugh in his face if he bought a ring, went on one knee, and proposed.
“You never mentioned marriage, and yet here you are.” Hannah’s eyes are inscrutable as they walk to his car. “Thinking of proposing because my best friend is having a little ginger baby.”
“The baby might not be ginger—”
“It will be.”
“Okay, it will be. But it was an unrelated question. I was just wondering if . . .”
“If?” Ian’s car is . . . well, Ian’s car. But Hannah plucks the keys from his fingers and slides in on the driver’s side.
“Hypothetically,” he continues, settling for the passenger seat.
“Hypothetically?”
He looks straight ahead. Swallows. Swallows again. “If I were to ask. Hypothetically. What would you say?”
There is a thick, suspicious silence on the driver’s side of the car. Not at all auspicious. And when it pulls his gaze in Hannah’s direction, her expression isn’t serious, or annoyed, or anything else that he can discern.
“I guess you’ll have to try and see,” is all she says.
Ian presses his lips together and smiles. “I guess I’ll have to try and see.”
But her free hand slides into his immediately as they drive away, and he thinks that maybe, maybe, he knows what the answer will be. And maybe, maybe, he should ask soon.
So they pick up Thai that night. And Ian doesn’t look at his phone again.
Acknowledgments
Like 99.9 percent of my writing output, these novellas originated as fan fiction, and their journey to what they have become involved approximately 999 wonderful people. First of all, each novella started out as a gift for a friend: thank you to Becca for the perfect roommates prompt, to Marie for liking small spaces, and to Celia and Sheppy for being into . . . polar bears? Yes, polar bears. Also, infinite thanks to Celia, Kate, and Jen for beta reading the original fics—and to Jen for slogging through the expanded versions. Guys, I do not deserve you and I know it.
My unparalleled agent, Thao Le, had the idea to adapt the fics into a series and guided me through the process; my brilliant editor, Sarah Blumenstock, made them as good as they could be; my beloved friend Lilith created not one, not two, but three perfect covers. And on top of my amazing Berkley team （Tina Joell, Tara O’Connor, Bridget O’Toole, Liz Sellers, and Jess Brock . . . ILY GUYS）， I had a fantastic team at PRH audio （Laura Wilson, Karen Dziekonski, Katherine Punia, Heather Dalton, Brisa Robinson, and Becca Stumpf）。 And and aaaand, I cannot forget my film agents, Jasmine Lake and Mirabel Michelson, or Cindy Hwang, Tawanna Sullivan, Penguin Creative, and the entire production team at Berkley, who constantly work behind the scenes to make everything better. Like I said: 999 wonderful people, and that’s before getting to Andrea, Jess, and Jenn at SDLA, who are consistently The Best, and, of course, all the friends who tirelessly listen to me whine: my Grems, my Berkletes, my fellow 2021 debuts, my Reylos, my Edgy Ladies, and every single person who has taken the time to read, listen to, and spread the word about my books. I am, let’s be honest, shockingly lucky to be surrounded with such amazing and talented people, and incredibly privileged that they put up with me.