time hanging out in one of the booths talking about nothing and everything like they didn’t really have much time to do anymore.
“How are you feeling?” Thankfully, Hannah’s pregnancy had been very normal after the first trimester, but she could not possibly be comfortable.
Hannah sighed and took another sip of her ob/gyn-sanctioned champagne. “Pretty good. I’ve been having some contractions, but my doctor said those were Braxton-Hicks. Fake ones.”
“Are you ready to be a parent?” Sasha knew that Hannah had long-standing misgivings about her own maternal instincts. She didn’t share the same doubts about her best friend. For one thing, Hannah was a lot softer than people thought she was when they first met her. For another, she was going to be a ferocious mama bear when it was called for. She’d pretty much mama-beared Sasha into doing a whole host of things that had changed her life.
Hannah looked over at her husband and smiled. “With him? Definitely. I never feel like I have to teach him how to be a functioning adult person. We fill in each other’s weaknesses. I know that I have him as my backup, and so I feel like I can do anything.”
“Yeah, he might be able to keep you from overthrowing the PTA when they make unreasonable demands.”
Hannah gave her a skeptical look as she finished her glass of champagne. “You know that’s happening. You’ll have to whip support from the moms who think I’m dangerous to the status quo.”
“I don’t know if I’ll ever be eligible to be a member of a PTA.”
“Haven’t you and Patrick talked about kids?” Coming from someone else, that question might be offensive. But this was her best friend—the person whom she’d confessed her deepest innermost thoughts to for over a decade. And Hannah wasn’t going to judge her for her answer either way.
“Not yet.” Sasha hesitated. One thing about being in a relationship with her best friend’s husband’s best friend was that anything she said tended to come back to her as a conversation. Most of the time, it was fine. This was big, important, life-changing stuff, though. “We’re just taking things day by day.”
Hannah grimaced, and that made Sasha doubt her approach. But while her best friend took charge and stormed the barricades whenever an issue needed to be addressed, Sasha tended to skirt around the issue and take bites off the edges until it was more manageable. Their differences made them wonderful business partners but sometimes caused them to get frustrated with each other.
“I mean, we have time, and things have been so good. I don’t want him to start thinking of all the things he’s missed out on by giving up the priesthood. Like—he probably didn’t want children if he was going to go ahead and become a priest?”
Hannah grimaced again and touched her stomach. “No, it’s probably fine that you haven’t talked about this. I actually think that I’m having a real contraction. Like a real, real one.”
Sasha stood up and yelled, “Jack!”
* * *
—
THERE WAS A QUESTION for a few minutes as to whether they would make it to the hospital before Hannah dropped a baby. However, she’d been adamant about having her baby in a hospital and not the “fucking floor of Dooley’s bar,” so they’d rushed her to the University of Chicago Hospital even though she’d looked like she was working harder to keep the baby in than push it out at that point.
Not that Patrick knew very much about the birthing of babies. But they’d made it with minutes to spare. And even though Hannah’s birthing plan had provided for Sasha to be in the room with her and Jack, the hospital put the kibosh on it.
Until they had news that the baby and Hannah were both doing fine, Sasha was pacing so quickly that she’d likely wear a hole in the waiting room floor.
She was biting her thumbnail, like she did when she was very nervous. It was one of her very few tells.
“Do you want to maybe sit down?” Patrick asked, knowing that it wouldn’t go over well.
He was right. She looked at him as though he’d grown a second skull. “Hannah could be bleeding out, and no one could be listening to her. She needs me to go ham on people sometimes.”
“Jack is not going to let anything bad happen to her.” Patrick knew that his best friend would burn the hospital down if they didn’t take care of Hannah.
“Do you have any idea of the