Patrick comes crawling out the vent with a little vial. “I solved the puzzle.”
“By yourself?” I ask.
“Yup.”
“Well done.”
“Liam helped him,” Dylan says.
Then Liam’s voice comes over the speaker: “No, I didn’t. You talked over me. Oh, and congratulations on the wedding and baby.”
Dylan stares at the camera and mutters, “Congrats on your wedding and your baby.”
“Not your best,” I say.
“Daddy brain.”
Patrick puts the vial inside a test tube rack and the door unlocks. “We did it!”
That wasn’t exactly a group effort, but he’s sweet to include us.
Mario is in the lobby and pops up from the couch when he sees us. “Alejo!”
“Hey. All good with the moving company?”
“It’ll be okay, but I’m so sorry I missed the escape room.”
I wrap my arm around Dylan’s shoulders. “That’s not all you missed.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Arthur
Sunday, July 5
I stare at Jessie, dumbfounded. “Pregnant, like pregnant? With a baby?”
“I mean, I hope that’s what’s in there.”
“And they’re getting married.” I scoot in beside her on the love seat, tugging a shaggy brown throw blanket over our tucked-up legs and feet. My new favorite weekend morning routine: the Two-Headed Grizzly.
Jessie’s hands are wrapped around a coffee mug. “Yup. Married. In less than a week.”
“But they’re our age! How did this happen?”
“Well, when two people love each other very, very much—”
I give her a swift kick under the blanket. “I just mean how are we just now finding out about this?”
“They weren’t even planning on telling anyone this soon. It was a whole thing. Like, we were at Samantha’s parents’ house”—Jessie pauses, sipping her coffee—“it’s me, her sister, and a few other people, and Samantha’s set up this whole video-game tournament. So we’re about three hours into it, and Samantha’s phone starts ringing—and at first she ignores it, because she’s in the middle of pulverizing her cousin Alyssa, but then it rings again, right? So she steps away to investigate, and it’s Dylan, and she’s kind of sitting there on the futon talking to him, really quietly, and there’s this moment where her face goes like this.” Jessie rolls her eyes up to the ceiling, letting her mouth hang open. “So she ends the call, and for a minute, she’s just staring into space—and obviously we’re all a little worried. But then she laughs and says, ‘I guess I have something to tell you.’”
My hand flies to my mouth. “Dylan proposed over the phone?”
Jessie just looks at me. “Arthur.”
“You mean the pregnancy? How would he know before she did?”
“Is that a serious question?” I nod, and she slowly closes her eyes. “Your cluelessness is truly groundbreaking. You know that, right?”
“That sounds like a compliment, but I’m not sure it is one.”
“It’s not one.” Jessie laughs. “Holy shit, I love you so much. Yeah, so Samantha, the person carrying the baby in her body, was aware of the pregnancy—”
“Some people don’t know! There was a whole show about—”
“Do you want to hear this or not?”
I nod quickly and pantomime zipping my lips.
“Okay, so it turns out, Samantha’s, like, four months pregnant, but they’d only told immediate family, because—long story, but basically the plan was to announce the pregnancy at their wedding, which was also a surprise—they’ve been telling people it’s a barbecue.”
I blink, thinking about Dylan’s sudden interest in owning a fancy Bloomingdale’s suit. “Let me guess—Samantha’s cousin isn’t getting married.”
“Alyssa’s twelve,” Jessie says.
I press my hand to my cheek. “So why’d they decide to announce everything this weekend?”
“I don’t think they meant to. Sounds like Dylan had a panic attack, maybe, and it just slipped out? He didn’t, like, tweet it or anything, but he told Ben and Patrick and . . .”
Mario, I think—but I shake the thought away. “Is Dylan okay?”
“Yeah, totally, he just felt bad. But I think they’re excited to finally be able to talk about it.”