“Anyway. Your schedule will be clear in a couple of months?”
“Yeah, no, sure. We can front-load everything we need to, get everything done before you go into labor so that we can be here as long as the baby needs us.”
“Larry’s going to want you to tour.”
Zac shrugs. “He’ll have to deal with it. Paternity leave is my right as a worker in the grand state of California.” He pauses. “Isn’t it? Don’t we have that?”
She shrugs. “I figured you’d just tell him to fuck off.”
“That too.” Zac smiles. Then he raises his head to yell, “I swear to God, man, if you don’t get down here, I’m coming up after you.” Even as Cal yells something unintelligible back, Zac lowers his voice to tell Anya, “He’s never going to do it.”
“He will. You underestimate how much he’s changed.”
Zac frowns. “Nuh-uh. You underestimate how much he’s changed. He won’t cave.”
She gives him a strange look. “That’s not what’s happening here.”
“They’re pressuring him.”
“Yes, they are, but that’s not relevant.”
“It sort of is. Since he doesn’t want to go. And he’s looking at tickets anyway.”
She gives him a pitying look. “Oh, you’re so cute when you’re saying boneheaded things.”
“He doesn’t want to go and they want him to and he’s not going to cave. He’s looking at tickets because he feels guilty, but he’s not going to buy them because he’s not going to cave. You’re babysitting so I can watch Dancing with the Stars.”
“He wants to go,” Anya tells him scornfully. “He loves them, he misses the shit out of them, he wants to spend Christmas in Nebraska so bad he can taste it.”
“Then why hasn’t he bought the tickets yet?”
“Because he’s scared of having to tell them about us.” She licks butter delicately from one finger, then stares forlornly down into the empty popcorn bag. She makes a sad noise. Zac scowls at her. Good. She should be sad. She’s wrong about everything that’s ever happened in life.
“He’s not scared. He’s happy.”
“You can be happy and scared at the same time,” she tells the empty bag. “That happens all the time actually, because the more you have to be happy about, the more scared you are to ruin it. I can relate to that. You can’t?”
“You have too many feelings. You people with all your stupid mixed-up feelings.”
She rolls her eyes and goes to throw the bag in the trash. “He’s finally getting them back. June fucking called him the other day. He’s afraid that taking us to Nebraska with him will make them kick him out again. But he has changed, and he does feel more confident, and that’s why he’ll overcome the fear and take us out there for Christmas after all. And that’s why he’ll stand up to them if they have a problem with all of us. He’ll feel shitty about it, but he’ll do it.”
Zac crosses his arms. “I guess we’ll see, won’t we?”
“I guess we will. And when you’re babysitting for me on Monday, you’ll be thinking nothing but nice thoughts about how smart I am.”
He scoffs. “Yeah, okay.”
“Now make that other bag of popcorn. I need it. Put it in. In. Now.”
“Your popcorn talk is a lot like your sex talk,” he says, and when she whirls on him, he tears out of the kitchen at full speed, because the only thing he’s got up on her right now when it comes to survival is the fact that he can outrun her.
* * *
Cal finally comes downstairs when Zac and Anya are halfway through the episode of American Horror Story they began while waiting for him. It’s a show that they all started together but which Cal has long since given up on. Turns out his love of cheesy ’80s horror doesn’t mean he has the stomach for more edgy psychological horror. Zac and Anya usually summarize the episodes they watch once they’re all in bed with the light off, catching him up, because he’s genuinely interested in most of the plots—he simply can’t watch it.
Zac doesn’t mind the recaps. He loves finding these unexpected little quirks in Cal, even after all these years of friendship. Also, it’s kind of fun to reenact the episodes. Zac doesn’t care what anyone says, his sadistic nun performance is both believable and nuanced.
They turn it off as soon as he appears, and with instant unspoken agreement, they scoot apart to make room for him in between them. PJ’s a half-awake weight in Zac’s lap, a sippy cup of juice clutched tight in his hands, his head heavy against Zac’s chest. Cal leans over and kisses him on the forehead, smoothing wispy curls out of the way first. Then Cal slumps back into the cushions and sighs.
Zac says, “So? Did you do it?”
“Anxious about it, huh?” Anya asks him, peering around Cal as best she can since she can’t lean forward so easily anymore. “Can’t bear the tension? Is it because you know I’m right?”
“You’ve never been more wrong in your life, woman.”
Cal eyes each of them in turn. “What did you two do?”
“Nothing,” Zac protests.
“Not a thing,” Anya says at the same time.
“Did you bet?” Cal sounds exasperated. “Jesus. You have got to knock that off. My decisions are not a game for you two to play with.”
“If they were, I’d be winning,” Anya says under her breath.
“Hold up, lady, that’s not true. Which one of us said that Cal wouldn’t want to go anywhere for our honeymoon?” He puts on a high-pitched voice, one that has Cal lifting an offended eyebrow. “‘I just want us to be together. I don’t care where we are. We should save the money for PJ’s college fund.’”
“Which one of us nailed that he’d want to sleep apart before the wedding?” Anya says.
Yeah, in retrospect, Zac doesn’t know what he was thinking on that one. Cal’s a fucking eighty-year-old schoolmarm on the inside. “Okay, but I’m the one who called the massive freak-out about knocking you up. Boom. Lawyered. King me.” Zac lifts his chin, and Anya rolls her eyes, apparently wise enough to know that she’s been bested.
“Which one of us is sitting right here, listening to this?” Cal says, although he seems mostly resigned. Cheerfully resigned, though. He looks less tense than he did coming down the stairs, which is kind of the point. “But by all means, continue to make my choices a source of amusement and competition for yourselves.”