HomeState — breakfast tacos, queso, iced tea.

HomeState had been Ben’s idea.

The second they left the doctor’s office and stepped into the bright Los Angeles afternoon, he’d taken one look at her and decided she needed food. Cleo vaguely remembered agreeing. She vaguely remembered getting into the car. She vaguely remembered the drive.

Everything between the sonogram room and the restaurant felt strangely blurred around the edges.

Because she couldn’t stop looking at the picture.

By the time they slid into their usual booth near the back of the restaurant, she’d already looked at it dozens of times. She knew because she’d tried to stop herself. She’d folded it away twice. Put it in her purse once. Every attempt lasted less than a minute before she was pulling it back out again.

Now it sat between her hands on the table.

And she was staring at it.

Again.

The restaurant buzzed around them with the familiar energy of a busy Los Angeles lunch rush. Plates clattered from the kitchen. Conversations drifted from neighboring tables. Somewhere near the counter an espresso machine hissed loudly before disappearing beneath the steady hum of voices.

Cleo barely registered any of it.

Her entire world had narrowed to a glossy black-and-white photograph smaller than her hand.

Seven weeks.

Seven weeks and a few days.

The doctor had said it so casually.

As though she hadn’t immediately committed every number to memory.

As though Cleo wasn’t already counting backward and forward at the same time. Seven weeks ago she hadn’t known. Seven weeks ago this tiny life had already existed, quietly growing while she went about her days completely unaware.

The thought was almost impossible to process.

Her thumb hovered near the edge of the image.

Not touching.

Just tracing the outline of it.

The sonogram itself wasn’t particularly impressive to anyone who didn’t know what they were looking at. It wasn’t one of the later scans she’d seen online where babies had recognizable faces and tiny fingers and obvious features.

This was different.

Tiny.

Early.

A blurry little shape suspended in grainy shadows.

And somehow she couldn’t stop staring.

Because she knew exactly what she was looking at.

She knew what the doctor had pointed to.

She knew where the heartbeat had been.

The memory hit her all over again.

That sound.

God.

Her throat tightened unexpectedly.

The heartbeat had been so fast.

Far faster than her own.

A rapid flutter filling the examination room before she’d even fully processed what she was hearing.

She could still hear it now if she closed her eyes.

Still feel the way her chest had seized.

Still remember reaching for Ben’s hand without even realizing she’d done it.

A soft smile pulled at her mouth.

“There you are.”

The words slipped out before she could stop them.

She wasn’t speaking to anyone else.

Just the little photograph.

Just the tiny person who had somehow become the center of her universe in less than an hour.

The thought should have terrified her.

And maybe part of it did.

There was absolutely fear somewhere underneath all of this. Questions. Unknowns. The overwhelming reality that she had never done this before and suddenly she was responsible for an entire human being.

But none of those feelings seemed loud enough to overpower the wonder.

Not today.

Today she just felt fascinated.

Obsessed, honestly.

Like she couldn’t gather enough information.

Every time she looked down she noticed something new. Another detail. Another shadow. Another tiny reminder that this wasn’t theoretical anymore.

This was real.

The server appeared at some point.

Cleo noticed because a glass of iced tea materialized beside her elbow.

Then chips.

Then queso.

Then eventually breakfast tacos would arrive.

The sequence happened around her while she remained completely focused on the photograph.

Ben ordered.

Of course he did.

Cleo hadn’t even opened the menu.

She wasn’t entirely sure she’d touched it.

A quiet laugh escaped her.

If someone asked what she’d eaten for lunch later, she probably wouldn’t have an answer.

Her attention drifted back to the image immediately.

Seven weeks.

Seven weeks and already so loved it almost hurt.

Her eyes stung unexpectedly.

Not enough to cry.

Just enough to make her blink.

Because sitting in a booth at HomeState with afternoon sunlight filtering through the windows and a sonogram spread carefully between her hands, the reality finally settled somewhere deep inside her chest.

There was a baby.

Not eventually.

Not someday.

Not hypothetically.

A baby.

Their baby.

Growing quietly beneath her heart.

And she couldn’t stop looking at the first picture she’d ever been given.

Ben didn’t ask for the picture.

He wanted to.

God, he wanted to.

The second the doctor had printed it and handed it over, something in him had gone strangely quiet and animal, some deep inner part of him lifting its head at proof. He had seen the little grainy shape on the screen. He had watched the doctor point with the tip of one clean, efficient finger and name the impossible thing before either of them could fully breathe around it. He had heard the heartbeat too—fast, insistent, unreal.

Not like music.

That was the first thought that had surprised him.

He had expected, maybe, some part of him to reach for comparison automatically. Rhythm, tempo, pulse. His whole life had trained him to translate feeling into sound. But the heartbeat hadn’t felt like music. It had felt older than that. More direct. Like the body had its own language and, for once, he was not supposed to turn it into anything else.

Just hear it.

Just believe it.

Now Cleo sat across from him in their usual booth with the sonogram between her hands, and Ben watched her disappear into the image without trying to pull her back.

That was the trick of it, he was realizing.

His body wanted to do everything at once. Laugh. Cry. Ask if she was okay. Ask if she needed water. Text his mother. Call his father. Open his own phone and stare at the calendar with a panic so sharp it could draw blood. Tell someone at the restaurant that he had just heard his baby’s heartbeat, which was insane and inappropriate and almost irresistible.

But Cleo was very still.

Not in a bad way.

Not frozen.

Still like someone standing inside a cathedral and understanding, all at once, why people lowered their voices there.

So Ben lowered everything in himself to meet her.

His foot stayed planted beneath the table, close enough that his ankle could brush hers if she reached for him. His hand rested near the edge of the booth, palm open, available but not demanding. He kept his breathing slow on purpose, though his chest kept trying to forget the instruction.

Every few seconds, her face changed.

Barely.

Most people would have missed it.

A softening at the corner of her mouth. A tiny pinch between her brows. The way her lashes lowered and lifted like she was looking and remembering at the same time. Once, her thumb hovered so close to the edge of the sonogram that Ben had to curl his fingers into his palm to keep from reaching over and covering her hand.

He didn’t.

It felt important that he didn’t.

This was her first silence with their baby.

He could protect it.

The server came by, and Ben handled it without really looking away from her. Iced tea. Water. Chips. Queso. The breakfast tacos she liked. Something extra because he no longer trusted himself to know how much food was enough food. He heard himself speak in a normal voice, which seemed absurd considering his entire internal world had become a room full of flashing lights.

The server left. The restaurant kept moving.

HomeState buzzed around them with its usual bright, casual chaos—people leaning across tables, someone laughing too loudly near the front, the warm smell of tortillas and eggs and coffee drifting between booths. Normally, he liked this place because it let them be part of the city without being swallowed by it. Familiar enough to feel safe. Busy enough not to stare.

Today, it felt like they had smuggled a miracle into a lunch rush.

Ben looked down at the table when the queso appeared, more to give Cleo privacy than because he cared about queso. The bowl steamed gently, orange-yellow and glossy beneath the light. Chips spilled unevenly in a basket. Her iced tea had a wedge of lemon sliding slowly against the glass.

Ordinary things.

He had never been so grateful for ordinary things.

The doctor’s office had been too bright, too clean, too full of paper and numbers and instructions. Seven weeks and a few days. Due date estimate. Prenatal labs. Next appointment. Vitamins. Foods to avoid. Call if this. Don’t panic if that. Everything real enough to be medical now.

But here there were chips.

Here there was sunlight.

Here Cleo could stare at the first photograph of their child until the world stopped tilting.

Ben reached for a chip, then realized he didn’t want it, then ate it anyway because doing something with his hands seemed safer than doing nothing. It tasted like salt and corn and absolutely nothing, because his attention was still on her.

There you are.

She had said it so softly he almost thought he’d imagined it.

The words had gone through him clean.

Not dramatic. Not loud. Just a mother recognizing someone.

That was when Ben had almost lost it.

He turned his face slightly toward the window for a second, jaw working, eyes burning in a way he refused to let become obvious. Not because he was ashamed. Not because he didn’t want Cleo to see him moved. She already had. Plenty.

But because she was somewhere sacred and wordless, and he didn’t want his feelings to become another thing she had to hold.

So he sat there.

Steady.

Or something close to it.

He watched her blink against tears that didn’t fully fall. Watched the fascination overtake the fear again. Watched her keep searching the same small blur as if the baby might reveal more of themself if she loved the image hard enough.

Maybe that was what motherhood looked like at seven weeks.

Not knowing much.

Loving anyway.

The thought made his chest hurt.

A plate arrived in front of him. Then hers. He murmured a thank-you. Shifted the glass of water closer to Cleo’s hand. Moved the basket of chips slightly nearer. Tore open the little napkin-wrapped set of silverware and placed the fork beside her plate without making a production of it.

Tiny things.

Pathetic things, maybe.

But they were what he had.

Her food sat untouched for a while. He didn’t tell her to eat. Not yet. He just cut one of the tacos in half because she sometimes did that when she was distracted, then left it there for whenever her body found its way back to hunger.

His own plate might as well have been decorative.

He looked again at the photograph.

From his side of the booth, the sonogram was upside down.

It still hit him.

The grainy shadow. The bright little shape. The place where the doctor had said the heartbeat was, where the whole room had changed around a sound too fast and tiny to belong to anything so powerful.

Seven weeks.

He had been in Australia seven weeks ago, waking beside Cleo in hotel rooms with unfamiliar light leaking through unfamiliar curtains. He tried to count backward and immediately stopped because the feeling was too much. Their baby had existed then. In Sydney. In Melbourne. On that beach in Brisbane where he’d carried her sandals and watched her walk along the edge of the water, hair blowing across her mouth, laughing at something he’d said.

Their baby had been there.

Unseen.

Quiet.

Already beginning.

Ben’s hand tightened around his napkin under the table.

He wanted to say something then, but he didn’t trust the first thing that rose in him. It was too big. Too messy. Something like I heard them and I don’t know how to survive loving someone this much already. Something like I’m terrified of every flight I have to take away from you now. Something like I thought I knew what wanting a future meant, and I didn’t.

None of that was useful yet.

Not while she was still looking.

So he let her look.

Minutes passed that way, though he couldn’t have said how many. The food cooled. Condensation slid down her iced tea. His phone buzzed once in his pocket and he ignored it. He watched Cleo’s shoulders, the line of her neck, the way her lips parted around silent thought.

She was not lost.

She was arriving somewhere.

He could wait at the door.

Eventually, the ache in his chest became gentle enough to speak through.

He didn’t reach across the table. He didn’t touch the photo. He didn’t try to make her lift her head.

His voice, when it came, was low enough that it belonged only to their booth.

“You don’t have to stop looking.”

The words settled between the clatter of plates and the murmur of strangers.

He swallowed, then tried again, softer.

“I keep hearing it too.”

The heartbeat.

He didn’t need to say the word. He knew she would know.

His gaze dropped to the sonogram again, then back to her face. His mouth curved faintly, but his eyes were still wet around the edges.

“I know we’re in public, and there’s queso, and I’m trying very hard to act like a guy who can handle lunch,” he said, his thumb brushing once over the side of his own water glass. “But I’m pretty sure part of my brain is still back in that room.”

A breath moved through him, slow and careful.

“And you can be there as long as you need.”

He paused, letting that be enough if that was all she wanted from him.

The booth felt suddenly quieter despite the restaurant, the space between them protected by the smallness of his voice and the way Cleo held the photograph like it had weight beyond paper.

Ben glanced at her plate and softened further.

“I ordered your tacos,” he added after a moment, not to drag her out of anything, just to lay something practical beside the wonder. “No rush. They’re here when you want them.”

A beat.

“And queso is also standing by in a support capacity.”

There. A little doorway. A small one. She could step through it or not.

His hand moved then, slowly, across the table. Not toward the sonogram. Toward her wrist, stopping short enough that she could choose the last inch if she wanted.

He left his palm open.

Available.

“Cleo,” he said quietly.

Her name nearly broke him.

He had said it thousands of times, probably. On stages of intimacy and irritation and desire and ordinary life. Cleo, where are my keys. Cleo, look at this. Cleo, come here. Cleo, I love you.

Now it sounded different.

Like he was saying mother without touching the word too hard.

He looked at her, and all the calm he had been working so carefully to hold did not crack, exactly. It deepened. Became something with roots.

“They’re really in there,” he whispered, wonder catching in his voice despite his best effort. “I know you know that. I know. I just…”

His laugh came out almost silent.

“Seven weeks, and they already have us acting insane in a taco place.”

His eyes dropped to the picture once more.

Upside down, blurry, perfect.

Then he looked back at her.

“I don’t want to rush this part,” he said. “The staring. The not knowing what to do with yourself. The part where it’s too small for everyone else to understand and too big for us to breathe around.”

His hand remained open on the table, still waiting.

“We can just sit here.”

The sentence felt like a promise when he said it.

Not grand. Not enough to fix the fear or answer the future.

But enough for now.

Ben leaned back slightly, giving her room while staying close enough to reach. He took one slow breath and let his eyes return to the sonogram, to the tiny shape that had turned his whole life luminous and terrifying.

The world kept moving around them.

Orders called out at the counter. Someone laughed. The espresso machine screamed itself awake again. A server passed with a tray balanced high on one palm. Outside, Los Angeles blazed indifferent and golden through the windows.

But Ben stayed exactly where he was.

Across from Cleo.

Beside the first picture of their child.

Calm because she needed calm. Steady because the wonder was already wild enough. Full of a love so new and enormous it hadn’t learned language yet.

He looked at the sonogram until the blur became familiar.

Until he could almost convince himself he knew where to find their baby in the shadows.

Then, very quietly, more to the photograph than to anyone else, he said, “There you are.”

And for the first time since the heartbeat filled the doctor’s office, Ben let the future come all the way in.

Cleo didn’t answer right away.

Not because she was ignoring him.

Because she was still staring at the picture.

Her thumb traced carefully along the white border for what had to be the hundredth time, eyes moving over the same grainy shadows she’d already memorized. At some point she knew she was supposed to put it away. At some point she knew normal people probably looked at sonograms, smiled, and continued eating lunch.

She was beginning to suspect she was not normal.

A small laugh escaped her nose.

The photograph tilted slightly in her hands.

“I think I’m going to be unbearable about this.”

The confession came quietly.

Honest.

Her gaze stayed on the image another second before finally lifting.

The movement felt strange.

Like surfacing.

The restaurant came back into focus piece by piece. Sunlight through the windows. People moving between tables. The basket of chips. The bowl of queso. Her iced tea. The plate in front of her.

Then Ben.

His expression hit her immediately.

The softness.

The wonder.

The way he was trying so hard to keep himself together while pretending to be normal in a restaurant.

Her chest tightened.

“You ordered already.”

It wasn’t really a question.

More an observation.

She glanced down at the tacos she’d completely failed to notice arriving.

A smile tugged at her mouth.

“I didn’t even open the menu.”

The realization felt absurd enough to make her laugh.

For a moment she simply watched him. Really watched him.

The man who had somehow managed to sit across from her for however long this had been without demanding the picture, without interrupting her thoughts, without asking her to come back to earth before she was ready.

The man who had quietly built lunch around her while she disappeared into a photograph.

Her eyes stung unexpectedly.

Not from sadness.

Something much more dangerous.

Affection.

The kind that arrived suddenly and completely.

“You know what’s weird?”

Her gaze dropped back to the sonogram.

“I keep thinking about where this ends up.”

She carefully lifted the picture.

Not for him.

For herself.

Studying it again.

“My parents still have mine.”

A smile appeared before she realized it.

“In a photo album somewhere. There’s a baby book too. My mom brings it out every couple of years and tells the same stories.”

She laughed softly.

“The first ultrasound. The first outfit. The first everything.”

Her throat tightened around the thought.

Because suddenly she could see it.

A shelf.

A box.

An album.

Years from now.

This exact photograph tucked safely between pages.

Maybe a little worn around the edges from being handled too much.

Maybe because she’d shown it to their child fifty times.

“Can you imagine?” she asked quietly.

Her eyes lifted to his.

“Sage or Briar looking at this someday and being completely unimpressed.”

A grin pulled at her mouth.

“‘Mom, that’s literally a blob.’”

The laugh that escaped her felt lighter.

Warmer.

She finally set the sonogram down long enough to reach across the table.

The last inch.

The space he’d left open.

Her fingers slipped into his.

“I think they’re already ruining us.”

The words came with so much affection it hurt.

Then she squeezed his hand and glanced at her tacos.

“Also, if queso is standing by in a support capacity, I feel like I should probably respect its service.”

The joke lingered between them, softening something in her chest.

For the first time since they’d left the doctor’s office, the world felt a little more solid beneath her feet.

Not less overwhelming.

Just easier to hold.

Cleo looked down at the sonogram again.

The same tiny blur.

The same photograph she’d spent the last hour studying like it contained answers hidden inside the grainy shadows.

Maybe it always would.

Maybe twenty years from now she’d still stare at it and remember exactly how today felt.

Slowly, carefully, she slid the photograph across the table.

Toward Ben.

Not because she was done looking at it.

She wasn’t sure she would ever be done looking at it.

But she’d had it all to herself since the doctor handed it over, clutching it through the parking lot, through the drive, through the entire beginning of lunch as if putting it down might somehow make it less real.

Now she wanted him to have a turn.

Her eyes followed the sonogram as it crossed the table between the basket of chips and the bowl of queso.

“There.”

A smile touched her mouth.

“You can stare at the blob now.”

The affection in her voice made it impossible to sound insulting.

She watched his face instead of the picture this time.

Watched the way his attention immediately dropped to it.

Watched the way his expression softened before he even seemed aware it had happened.

Something warm unfurled beneath her ribs.

God.

She loved him.

The thought arrived so simply it almost caught her off guard.

Not dramatic.

Not new.

Just true.

She loved the way he’d sat there and let her have this.

Loved that he’d ordered food without asking questions.

Loved that he’d quietly cut her taco in half because he knew she’d be distracted enough to appreciate it later.

Loved that he’d somehow managed to make room for her wonder without demanding she make room for his at the same time.

Her gaze drifted down to the plate in front of her.

The taco sat exactly where he’d left it.

Waiting.

A small laugh escaped her.

“I completely forgot food existed.”

She finally picked up one of the halves, the tortilla still warm beneath her fingers.

The first bite tasted like actual food instead of obligation.

Eggs.

Potatoes.

Salsa.

Something grounding.

Something normal.

Cleo chewed slowly, eyes lifting back toward Ben.

Toward the sonogram resting in front of him now.

The sunlight coming through the restaurant windows caught the edge of the glossy paper, turning the corner silver for a second.

A ridiculous surge of tenderness hit her.

Because she’d spent the last hour staring at the photograph.

But this—

Watching him look at it—

Somehow felt different.

Maybe even better.

A little more dangerous.

A little more emotional.

Like she’d finally handed over proof of something he’d already known but could now actually see.

Her foot nudged his beneath the table.

Gentle.

Affectionate.

“You know,” she said after swallowing, a smile pulling at the corner of her mouth, “I was worried I’d be the emotional disaster today.”

Her eyes flicked toward the sonogram.

Then back to him.

“But you’re looking at that picture like somebody handed you the meaning of life and wrapped it in medical paperwork.”

Another bite.

Another smile.

Softer this time.

“And honestly?”

She leaned back against the booth.

“I get it.”

The smile lingered on Cleo’s face for another second before she looked away, partly because she knew if she kept watching him look at the sonogram, she was going to end up emotional all over again.

And she had only just started eating.

That felt important.

The doctor had practically given her a small novel’s worth of instructions before they’d left, and she was fairly certain “survive exclusively on feelings and iced tea” wasn’t on the approved list.

So she reached for a chip instead.

The basket sat between them, slightly crooked from where Ben had nudged it closer earlier. Cleo grabbed one absentmindedly, breaking off the corner before dipping it into the queso. The cheese stretched briefly before snapping, and she took a bite while her foot drifted beneath the table.

Not consciously.

Not really.

Just instinct.

Her sneaker found his and nudged lightly against it.

Once.

Then stayed there.

The contact settled something inside her.

A small anchor.

A quiet confirmation that he was right there.

Not across a continent.

Not halfway through a tour.

Not on the other end of a phone call.

Here.

At HomeState.

Looking at the first picture of their baby.

The thought still felt ridiculous.

Wonderful.

Terrifying.

Mostly wonderful.

She picked up her iced tea and took a sip, watching condensation slide down the side of the glass before setting it back down.

“You know what I keep thinking about?”

Her gaze drifted toward the restaurant window.

Outside, Los Angeles carried on exactly as it always did. Cars rolled through the intersection. People hurried down the sidewalk with coffees in hand. Someone walked a dog past the storefront.

The entire city was continuing normally.

Meanwhile her life had quietly split into a before and after.

Cleo laughed softly to herself.

“There’s probably somebody sitting three booths over having the worst day of their week.”

Her eyes moved back to Ben.

“Somebody got dumped. Somebody got fired. Somebody’s arguing with customer service.”

She shook her head.

“And meanwhile we’re over here trying to act normal after hearing our baby’s heartbeat.”

The word slipped out more easily now.

Baby.

Not hypothetical.

Not future tense.

Baby.

Her foot pressed gently against his beneath the table.

The smile that followed was smaller.

Softer.

Almost private.

“I don’t think it’s fully hit me yet.”

She reached for another chip.

Another bite.

This time she actually noticed she was hungry.

A promising development.

“I think right now my brain understands the facts.”

Seven weeks.

Healthy.

Heartbeat.

Due date.

All the information the doctor had given them.

“But I don’t think my heart has caught up.”

Her eyes flicked to the sonogram again where it sat in front of him now.

A photograph she’d reluctantly surrendered.

One she’d probably steal back in five minutes.

Ten, if she was being generous.

The thought made her smile.

Ben looked at the sonogram like it might look back.

Which was stupid, obviously. He knew that. His adult, functioning, ostensibly literate brain understood that he was staring at a medical image printed on glossy paper. A grainy black-and-white smear of shadow and light. Something a stranger might glance at and politely pretend to understand.

But his body didn’t care what his brain knew.

His body had decided this was sacred evidence.

So he held still with the photograph in front of him, one hand resting near the bottom edge, not quite touching it at first. The same way Cleo had hovered over it earlier, careful as prayer. He understood that now. The instinct not to smudge it. Not to bend it. Not to treat it like paper when it had become, absurdly and completely, a doorway.

His eyes moved over the image again.

There.

He could find it now.

The little place the doctor had pointed to. The blurry shape that had made the room tilt. The space where the heartbeat had come from, impossibly fast and alive and real.

His throat tightened.

The restaurant moved around them, indifferent and bright. Someone laughed behind him. A chair scraped against the floor. The smell of queso and warm tortillas drifted over the table. Cleo’s foot stayed against his beneath the booth, gentle pressure, and that was the only reason he didn’t feel like he might float straight out of his own body.

He looked up when she said he was staring at the picture like someone had handed him the meaning of life wrapped in medical paperwork.

A laugh came out of him before he could stop it.

Soft. Wrecked.

“Yeah,” he said, voice low. “That’s unfortunately accurate.”

His gaze dropped again.

“I mean, this is terrible paperwork.”

His mouth curved faintly.

“Very unclear. No useful labels. Extremely dramatic use of shadow.”

The joke barely covered anything. It wasn’t meant to. It just gave his feelings somewhere to put their hands for a second.

Then she talked about the world continuing around them. Someone three booths over having the worst day of their week. Someone getting dumped. Someone fighting customer service. All of Los Angeles moving like nothing had happened.

Ben looked past her toward the window.

Cars slid through the intersection under hard afternoon light. A woman in sunglasses walked by with an iced coffee in one hand and a leash in the other, the dog trotting along with no idea it was passing the exact place where Ben Wilder had just quietly become someone else.

The city did not pause.

No sirens. No cinematic shift in the sky. No choir.

Just sunlight and traffic and queso.

He looked back at Cleo.

Her face had softened from the first stunned silence into something more lived-in, but he could still see how far away part of her was. Her eyes kept flicking toward the photograph. Her hand kept finding food almost incidentally, like her body had finally remembered it had needs but her mind was still in that darkened little room with the machine and the heartbeat.

He didn’t blame her.

Part of him was there too.

“I keep thinking that,” he said quietly. “How weird it is that everybody else is just… ordering lunch.”

His fingers finally moved to the photograph, touching only the white border.

“Like, excuse me, sir, do you understand I heard a sound today that rearranged my organs? And you’re asking for extra salsa?”

His eyes lifted, and the corner of his mouth bent into something tender.

“Which is fair. The salsa’s good. But still.”

He watched her take another bite, watched her actually taste it this time, and relief passed through him in a small, quiet wave. Nothing huge. Nothing worth pointing out. Just the simple satisfaction of seeing her come back into her body by degrees. Eating. Drinking. Nudging his foot. Making jokes.

He could handle that.

He could be the person who noticed when she forgot food existed and made sure a taco waited for her when she returned to earth.

His thumb dragged slowly along the border of the sonogram.

“And I don’t think my heart has caught up either,” he admitted.

The sentence left him more naked than he expected.

He looked down at the image again because it was easier than looking directly at her while saying the rest.

“I understand the information. Seven weeks. Heartbeat. Due date. The doctor said everything looks good.” His jaw shifted once. “I heard all of it. I can repeat it back like a very normal man who did not almost cry because of a flickering dot on a screen.”

A breath moved through him, slow and uneven.

“But then I look at this and I’m like…”

He stopped.

For once, he didn’t force a joke immediately. He let the silence hold the part he couldn’t phrase.

Tiny.

Ours.

Here.

Loved.

He swallowed and gave the photograph a helpless little smile.

“I’m like, hi. Sorry. We’re new.”

His eyes burned, and he blinked before the tears could gather too obviously. Not that it mattered. Cleo had already seen him through every version of undone. Bathroom floors, kitchen counters, hotel rooms, doctors’ offices. Still, the restaurant made emotion feel more precarious. Too public for the size of what was happening to him.

He picked up a chip with his free hand, dipped it into the queso mostly because she had mentioned respecting its service, and took a bite.

Then he nodded with solemn approval.

“Support capacity confirmed.”

He pushed the bowl a little closer to her.

“Queso is performing admirably under historic conditions.”

The ordinary motion steadied him. Chip. Bowl. Napkin. Sonogram. Her foot against his.

He glanced down when she nudged him again beneath the table, and the gesture nearly undid him more than anything. That small contact. The familiarity of it. The way they could be sitting across from the first picture of their baby and still communicate through a quiet press of shoe against shoe.

A life did not become real all at once, he thought.

It became real in pieces.

A heartbeat.

A photo.

A taco cut in half.

Her foot finding his under the table.

He looked at the sonogram again and let himself imagine the baby book she’d talked about. Cleo’s mother bringing out old albums. Stories worn smooth from being told too many times. Their child someday bored and affectionate and mortified, looking at this exact image while Cleo insisted that this blurry little shape had once made her cry in a taco place.

Sage or Briar.

The placeholder names still felt like little lanterns they carried through the unknown. Not final. Not fixed. Just names they had used to speak to the future before the future had offered proof.

His mouth softened.

“They’re absolutely going to call it a blob,” he said. “And they’re going to be right, which is devastating because I’m already prepared to fight them.”

He tilted the sonogram a fraction, studying it from another angle as if the baby might suddenly become clearer through stubbornness.

“I’m going to be like, have some respect, tiny cynic. This blob changed the gravitational pull of HomeState.”

His hand stilled.

That was true too.

The whole room felt different because this picture was on the table.

He glanced up at Cleo, and the tenderness of seeing her eat almost embarrassed him with its force. She was sitting there with salsa at the corner of her mouth, eyes still bright, body still full of wonder, trying to act casual around a miracle and failing in a way that made him love her so much he had to look away for a second.

He reached for his iced tea. Took a sip. Set it down.

The condensation had made a little ring on the table.

Someday, would he remember that? The water mark. The way her taco had sat untouched until she came back to herself. The exact shine on the sonogram paper. The fact that the queso had arrived before his heart returned to his body.

Probably.

He was already archiving the whole thing without meaning to.

“I think,” he said slowly, “we should get a box.”

His eyes lifted to hers.

“Not today, necessarily. I’m not suggesting we leave here and go become people who own a labeled memory box before dinner.”

A beat.

“Although, terrifyingly, I am not against it.”

His fingers hovered over the sonogram again.

“But something. For this. For the picture. The hospital bracelet eventually. First tiny socks. Whatever weird leaf your mom decides is spiritually significant.”

His smile tugged faintly.

“The blessing basket might need an annex.”

The thought moved through him with unexpected force: preserving things. Proof. Not because love needed evidence, but because memory did. Because someday this child might roll their eyes at a photo album and still secretly feel the weight of having been wanted from the very beginning.

His voice softened.

“I want them to know what today was.”

He looked at the little blur.

“Even if they make fun of it.”

Another swell of emotion rose so suddenly he had to breathe through it. He kept his face calm by effort, but inside he was still back in the exam room, Cleo’s hand crushing his, that impossible flutter filling the air. He had heard crowds chant his name before. Heard applause so loud it shook through his bones. Heard his own songs come back to him from thousands of strangers.

Nothing had prepared him for that sound.

Nothing had ever been louder in the quiet.

He slid the sonogram carefully back toward the middle of the table, not fully giving it up, not fully keeping it. Shared territory. Their first little relic placed between chips and queso like the most natural thing in the world.

“You can steal it back whenever you want,” he said, eyes warm. “I’m not brave enough to keep custody for long.”

Then, because he felt her still somewhere between the facts and the feeling, because he had heard the vulnerability in her admission and wanted to give it somewhere safe to land, he leaned forward slightly.

His voice dropped again, softer than the restaurant around them.

“Maybe it doesn’t have to hit all at once.”

He let the words settle before adding anything else.

“Maybe we just let it keep arriving.”

His thumb brushed the side of her hand where it rested near the basket.

“Today it was the heartbeat. And this.” His eyes flicked to the picture. “Tomorrow it’ll be some other tiny thing. An appointment. A craving. You realizing coffee smells terrible now and blaming me personally. Me panicking in a baby store because all the strollers look engineered by NASA.”

His mouth curved, but the softness stayed.

“And somewhere along the way, your heart catches up. Mine too.”

He reached across the table then, not for the sonogram, but for her. His fingers found hers beside her plate, warm and steady.

“No rush,” he said.

A beat.

“No normal either, apparently. We’re both going to be deeply unbearable.”

His smile widened just enough to let light into it.

“You with the picture. Me with everything else.”

He glanced at the sonogram and shook his head faintly, awe returning like a tide.

“I already want to show them the world and also put them in a bubble and also apologize to them for the fact that their father once thought a leather jacket could solve most emotional problems.”

His eyes came back to hers.

“But mostly…”

He paused, feeling for the thing beneath the joke.

Mostly, he wanted to be good.

Mostly, he wanted to deserve the look on Cleo’s face when she watched him look at their child.

Mostly, he wanted to keep them safe in a world that had never seemed more beautiful or more dangerous than it did now.

He squeezed her hand gently.

“Mostly I’m just really glad we’re here.”

Here, in the booth.

Here, after the doctor.

Here, past all the years when they had loved each other badly and beautifully and not always at the right time.

Here, with their first photograph between them.

He lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles once, quick enough not to make a scene, lingering enough that she would feel it.

Then he sat back just a little, still holding on.

“Eat another bite,” he murmured, warm and quiet, not commanding. Just caring. “Then you can stare again.”

His gaze flicked toward the sonogram.

A smile, almost shy, touched his mouth.

“Or we can both stare and let the tacos judge us.”

Cleo listened to him talk and felt something inside her settle a little more with every word. Not because he was fixing anything—there wasn’t anything to fix—but because he understood the strange shape of it. The way the day felt impossibly enormous and completely ordinary at the same time. One minute they were hearing the fastest heartbeat she’d ever known, and the next they were sitting in a taco place with queso between them while strangers discussed weekend plans and work deadlines.

She couldn’t stop smiling when he criticized the sonogram like a disappointed graphic designer.

“You’re right,” she agreed, reaching for her iced tea. “Honestly, for something this life-changing, they could put a little more effort into presentation. Maybe a welcome packet. A helpful arrow. Some labels.”

Her eyes drifted back to the photograph sitting between the chips and the salsa, and the smile softened before she could stop it.

The truth was, she knew exactly where to look now too.

An hour ago it had all seemed impossible to understand. She had spent half the appointment squinting at the screen while the technician pointed things out, nodding along and trying desperately not to miss anything important. Now she could spot the little shape immediately. Her brain had already memorized it. She suspected she could find it in a lineup.

The thought made her laugh quietly to herself.

When Ben talked about the memory box, she rested her chin lightly in her hand and watched him instead of the sonogram. The idea should have felt ridiculous. It should have felt premature. Seven weeks wasn’t very long in the grand scheme of things, and yet the moment he started listing hospital bracelets and tiny socks and future keepsakes, she could already see it taking shape somewhere in their house.

Not because they were sentimental people.

At least, that was what they both liked to pretend.

The reality was that Ben saved concert wristbands and old set lists, and Cleo still had movie ticket stubs from dates neither of them could fully remember anymore. They were exactly the kind of people who would end up with a memory box.

“You know we’re doomed, right?” she asked, amusement warming her voice. “We’re going to become those parents.”

Her gaze flicked toward the sonogram again.

“The ones who keep everything.”

The ones who tell stories nobody asked for.

The ones who somehow manage to cry over baby shoes twenty years later.

Somehow, instead of terrifying her, the thought felt comforting.

His mention of her mother made her groan softly.

“Oh, God. My mom is absolutely going to have a spiritually significant leaf.”

She could picture it already. A pressed leaf tucked into a book. A handwritten note. A story attached to it that would somehow become family mythology.

The image made her smile even wider.

Beneath the table, her foot remained against his, and she realized he was right about something she hadn’t fully understood until now. None of this had become real all at once. The reality wasn’t arriving in one overwhelming wave. It was showing up in pieces she kept discovering.

The positive test.

The first appointment.

The heartbeat.

The photograph.

Ben staring at the photograph.

That one had surprised her.

Because she hadn’t expected watching him become a father to affect her quite this much.

When he admitted he wanted them to know what today was, her chest tightened unexpectedly. She looked down at her plate for a second, blinking against the sudden rush of feeling before reaching for another piece of taco.

“They’ll definitely make fun of us,” she said, smiling into her bite. “We’re creating future ammunition in real time.”

The sonogram sat in the middle of the table, catching a sliver of afternoon light.

She imagined a teenager rolling their eyes at this story someday.

Imagined herself insisting that they had cried in HomeState.

Imagined Ben defending the emotional importance of queso during historic circumstances.

The future felt less frightening when it looked like that.

When he talked about letting it keep arriving, she found herself nodding before he had even finished speaking. That was exactly what it felt like. Every time she thought she had wrapped her head around it, some new detail appeared and rearranged the room again.

This morning it had been numbers on an app.

Then it had been a flickering heartbeat.

Now it was Ben planning memory boxes and arguing hypothetical cases against future children who hadn’t even been born yet.

Tomorrow it would probably be something else.

A symptom.

A question.

A tiny realization waiting around the corner.

She squeezed his fingers when he reached for her hand, and the warmth of his palm grounded her more effectively than the food ever could.

The restaurant noise faded into something pleasant and distant as she looked at him across the table. Sunlight caught the edge of his glass. The sonogram rested between them. Their lunch sat half-eaten because neither of them could fully focus on it.

For a moment she simply let herself take it in.

This.

Exactly this.

Not the future. Not the nursery. Not the names. Not the million things still waiting ahead of them.

Just this booth.

This afternoon.

This version of Ben, looking simultaneously overwhelmed and completely certain.

Her smile softened.

“I’m really glad we’re here too.”

The words came quietly, carrying far more meaning than their simplicity suggested.

She lifted their joined hands slightly and brushed her thumb across his knuckles before finally stealing another glance at the sonogram.

Then she sighed, completely unapologetic.

“I am absolutely going to stare at it again.”

Her eyes lifted back to his.

“But I’m going to finish my taco first.”

A small laugh escaped her.

“Mostly because if I don’t, you’re going to spend the next twenty minutes pretending not to monitor my food intake, and frankly I don’t have the energy to watch you lie about it.”

Cleo finally took another bite of her taco, mostly because she could practically feel Ben preparing to monitor her progress from across the table. She chewed, swallowed, and pointed a finger at him before he could say anything.

“See? Eating.”

The smile tugging at her mouth made it clear she knew exactly what he was doing.

She reached for another chip, dipping it into the queso this time before settling back against the booth. The sonogram remained in the middle of the table, close enough that her eyes kept finding it every few seconds without permission.

The longer she looked at it, the more ideas she seemed to collect.

“Actually, I’ve already decided what I’m doing for the memory box.”

Her gaze flicked toward him.

“I’m not buying anything fancy.”

That felt important for some reason.

She didn’t want something that looked curated by strangers. She wanted something that felt like theirs.

“I’m going to go to Hobby Lobby and get one of those plain wooden keepsake boxes. Just a decent one. Nothing elaborate.” Her smile grew as the picture formed in her head. “Then I’m going to paint it myself.”

Now that she’d said it aloud, she was almost certain it would happen.

She could already imagine sitting on the floor with paint spread around her, spending far too many hours on details no one would ever notice except her.

“Maybe little wildflowers. Maybe stars. Maybe some kind of landscape.” She shrugged. “I’ll figure it out.”

Her fingers brushed the edge of her water glass.

“I just don’t want it to look like something we ordered online. I want it to look like it belonged to us before we even put anything inside it.”

The thought settled warmly in her chest.

A place for the sonogram.

A hospital bracelet.

Birthday cards.

The tiny things people accidentally carried through a lifetime.

She took another bite, finally making noticeable progress on her lunch, then laughed softly to herself.

“And I want to paint the nursery.”

The word still felt strange.

Nursery.

Not hypothetical.

Not someday.

An actual room in their house.

For an actual baby.

The reality of it sent a flutter through her stomach that had nothing to do with hunger.

Her eyes brightened immediately.

“I don’t want the typical blue or pink thing.”

She shook her head.

“No offense to blue and pink. They’ve had a good run.”

A smile pulled wider across her face.

“But I want something softer than that.”

Her mind was already building the room piece by piece.

Warm cream walls.

Natural wood.

Textures.

Light.

Things that felt calm instead of themed.

“I’m thinking neutral colors. Sage greens. Warm taupes. Soft creams. Maybe some muted terracotta.” She paused, considering it. “Colors that still feel good when they’re ten years old.”

Because she wanted a room that could grow.

A room that felt lived in instead of temporary.

Her eyes drifted toward the window for a moment before returning to him.

“And I want a mural.”

That part she knew with complete certainty.

Not wallpaper.

Not decals.

A mural.

Something painted by hand.

Something imperfect.

Something that looked like somebody had stood in that room and loved the child who would sleep there.

Her smile softened.

“Nothing cartoonish.”

She thought about it for a second.

“Okay, maybe one tiny animal if I get emotionally attached to it.”

A laugh escaped her.

“But mostly I want something peaceful.”

Her fingers absentmindedly found his again across the table.

“Maybe rolling hills. Wildflowers. A sky. Something that feels like a place instead of a theme.”

The idea made her unexpectedly emotional.

Because she could see it.

Not perfectly.

Not every detail.

Just enough.

Enough to imagine standing on a ladder months from now with paint on her hands while Ben inevitably offered completely unhelpful artistic opinions from somewhere behind her.

The image felt so normal.

So wonderfully normal.

And maybe that was what she loved most.

Not the grand milestones.

Not the announcements.

Not even the sonogram sitting between them.

It was the fact that somehow they had already started building little pieces of a future neither of them had fully met yet.

Cleo glanced down at the photograph again, her expression softening.

Then she reached for another bite of taco.

“I think they’re going to have a very pretty room,” she said quietly.

The smile that followed was small and private.

“Even if they spend most of their first year ignoring all my hard work.”