“It’s driving me nuts,” I finally blurted, making his eyes widen in surprise. “It takes ten extra minutes that I don’t have unless I wake up earlier.”

“Oh.” He paused with his fork halfway to his mouth. “Okay. Well, don’t wait on me tomorrow—just leave whenever.”

I watched him as he dug into his food. His agreement had come too easily.

“You’re just going to do it before I’m ready to leave, aren’t you?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied with a nod, not looking up from his food.

I watched him eat, love and tenderness for him washing over me in a wave. He was the sweetest person I’d ever met. Knowing that I’d almost turned away a man that cared so much about me that he checked my car every morning made my chest ache. What a horrible mistake that would’ve been.

“It’s my brother,” he said when his phone rang. He looked at me with big questioning eyes.

“Go ahead,” I said, laughing. God, he was too cute for his own good.

“Abraham!” he answered happily, his eyes meeting mine as he smiled. “What’s up?”

He waited for a second, then chuckled. “Yeah, man, I’m fine.”

Silence again.

“I was actually going to call you tonight.”

I dropped my hands to my lap and clenched them together. We’d taken for granted that his family would be happy about our news and mine wouldn’t, but what if we’d been wrong? What if Alex’s family wasn’t as excited as we’d assumed they would be? What if they thought we were idiots? What if they said something that took away the shine of excitement in Alex’s eyes, made his smile disappear?

“We’re having a baby,” Alex announced.

I watched him carefully, looking for any change in expression, but none came.

“Yeah, the doctor said July.” He paused. “Ha ha. We took all the precautions, but clearly my sperm are superior.”

Alex reached over and put his hand over mine, rubbing along the white knuckles.

“Thanks,” he said into the phone. “We’re pretty stoked.” He scoffed. “I can say stoked. You can’t, because you’re a grouchy old man in a young man’s body.”

Alex dropped the phone to his shoulder. “He’s going to get Ani,” he whispered, practically giddy. “I’ll put her on speaker so you can hear her reaction.”

“He’s happy for us?” I asked, just to be sure.

“Yeah.” Alex leaned forward and kissed me. “He knew something was up,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows. “More of that woo-woo twin stuff, but he was waiting for me to fill him in. He finally lost patience.”

“That’s so weird,” I murmured.

“Makes it hard to keep a secret,” he replied. Then his eyes widened, and he put his phone on speaker.

“Hey, asshole.” Ani’s voice rang out. “What do you want?”