“Oluo! What the hell are you doing calling my girlfriend? Are you trying to steal her away?”

Steph laughed. “Gloria is a lovely woman, but I’ve got my hands full.” She tugged another woman on screen. “Meet Mrs. Oluo.” They held up matching wedding bands.

“No shit? Congratulations!” It did his heart good to see his friend, his fellow wounded compatriot, so happy.

“Life’s too short not to go for it, man,” Steph said, watching as her wife walked off screen. “She’s pregnant. Four weeks. We’re keeping it quiet for a while, but I wanted you to know you’re going to be an uncle.”

“Shit, Steph. That’s amazing.”

“Not too shabby for lying in the dirt bleeding a few months ago, eh?”

“Not at all,” Aldo agreed.

“So how are you? You sleeping yet?”

Of course she’d know. She’d been there, lived it. Survived it.

He glanced toward the kitchen where Gloria was disentangling Ivan from a dish towel he’d tried to steal. “Not great,” he admitted.

“Been there.”

“You sleeping?” he asked.

She flashed that white-toothed, shit-eating grin through the screen. “Like a baby. Now.”

Aldo sighed. She was going to make him ask. “How’d you do it?”

“So glad you asked,” she smirked. “I talked to someone. I was rattling around feeling like a skeleton among the living. Little things setting me off, scaring the hell out of me, not sleeping. And when I did sleep—”

“Nightmares,” Aldo filled in.

She nodded. “Yeah. Still have them sometimes. But not as bad. Talk to someone. Get it out. If you keep it in, it’ll eat at you from the inside out.”

It was something he’d planned to avoid. He could power through this on his own like he did everything else. Only this time it wasn’t working.

They chatted for a few more minutes about old wounds and new plans. When they disconnected, Aldo stared at the desktop wallpaper on the screen and drummed his fingers on his knees. It was a picture of him and Gloria out to dinner. The waiter had taken it, and they were both grinning at each other like idiots over gyros.

Didn’t he owe it to them both to get all the way better? To give it his all?

He stood up, stretched, and ambled into the kitchen where the scents of caramel and apples and home wafted.

He wrapped his arms around Gloria from behind and nuzzled into her neck.

“You can lecture me about boundaries now,” she said, sunnily.

“Thank you for not respecting mine.”

She laughed lightly and turned in his arms. “I want things to be good for you. As good as they can be.”

“With you here, making—what the hell is that?”

“Caramel apple pie.”

“With you here, making caramel apple pie, and this furry little asshole climbing up my leg, things are pretty damn good.”

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