Since our Shannon was only considered to be moderately premature, and she’d been five pounds at birth, we were able to bring her home after a six day hospital stay.

I grinned all the way home, forcing myself to stay quiet while Greg fussed about our lack of preparations for the baby.

“Seriously, we were supposed to have at least another month before she arrived, if not the full six weeks. And what happened to everybody saying first babies usually come late? Do I really have to do everything different from the norm? I mean, really. I’ve heard of marching to the beat of your own drummer, but I think I take it a little far sometimes. And little Missy back there snoozing in her safety seat needs to learn that her daddy is a planner. This kind of spontaneity isn’t good for my nerves.”

“Greg, I know you’re joking, babe. But, you need to relax. Everything happened the way it was meant to, I firmly believe that. Although, if somebody had quit working like it had been suggested, maybe he could have been home helping me.”

I didn’t say anything more until we were out of the car and I was unlocking the door the apartment, fully aware of Greg staring at me the entire time before he finally caved and asked what I was talking about.

“Help you with what? I was kind of busy growing a human over here—in case you missed that part.”

I closed the front door behind him, and leaned over to kiss his temple before guiding him to my old bedroom door. “Helping with this,” I said and casually opened the door to my old room.

Greg’s mouth hung open as he walked into the completely decorated nursery. The room was downright brotastic—Mario Bros that is.

Luke and I had found the furniture, and I’d hired a friend of his to come paint the walls while Greg was at work. The walls looked like a scene from the old school Nintendo game come to life. Pixelated white clouds, red and white toadstools, green grass, and gold bricks with question marks on them covered the walls in a large, wrap-around mural.

A seamstress had taken the Mario Brothers fabric I’d found online and made me a quilt and bumpers for the crib. All of the accessories were right out of the videogame. Even the plushies were little toadstools, stars, or geese.

After he’d walked around and looked at everything, running a hand along the curved rail of the white pine crib as he cuddled Shannon against his chest, Greg gave me a teasing grin.

“I knew you really wanted a boy. I can’t believe you made this into a gamers nursery. Although I have to admit—this room is freaking awesome and I really couldn’t have designed it better myself. At least, if I’d been designing it for a boy.”

Greg winked to let me know he was teasing, but I shook my head with fake distaste.

“Seriously? A boy? Only a boy can enjoy Mario? Not cool, babe. I mean, that’s kind of sexist, don’t you think? I figured that our child would be a gamer no matter what gender they’d been assigned at birth. Besides, I can think of many girls that can kick both of our collective asses at any game you put in front of them.”

I would’ve teased some more, but I looked over and saw that Greg was crying. I rushed over and put my arms around him, touching my forehead to his while making sure not to squish our baby.

“What’s wrong, Greg? Is it something I said? Because I was just fucking with you. I know you’re not a misogynistic jerk. Is it the nursery itself? If you hate it, I’ll have it redone tomorrow. Everything can go and will make it all pink and poofy or fill it with rainbows and unicorns. But no glitter. Fuck that shit.”

Greg shook his head. “Glitter isn’t baby safe, so don’t worry. But no, Bromeo. It’s not the room, it’s what you did.”

Okay, I was getting worried now. “What I did? Whatever I did–I’ll undo it. Just tell me, and I’ll fix it!”

“Everything,” Greg sighed. “Everything good and wonderful, you did it for me. And as for that question you asked me at the hospital? I’m a fucking asshole for not saying yes immediately. Of course, it’s a yes… It’s always going to be a yes, because it’s always been you and it always will be you. I don’t need to second-guess myself on this one… I just need you. I’m sorry for not saying yes right away.”

We carefully kissed each other with our daughter snuggled between our chests. When we broke our kiss, I leaned back and cupped his left cheek with my palm.

“It’s always been you and it will always be you for me too, and since I’m the asshole that didn’t want to take the risk so we might’ve figured it out sooner—maybe we can both take the blame on that one. And trust me when I say that I didn’t ask you to marry me so I could give you health insurance. I asked you because I fucking love your ass so much.”

Greg smirked. “Let’s not talk about you fucking loving my ass while I’m holding our child, m’kay? Now tell me… How did you even afford this? Should I be worried? Did you like, I don’t know… Sell a kidney or something?”

“Nah, babe. It’s fine… I needed to start spending money anyway. I’ve been socking it away long enough. Especially now that I have the corporate sponsors, it’s probably time I relax and start enjoying the fruits of my labor.”

“Sponsors? Savings? Who are you and what did you do with my slacker bro?” Greg asked with disbelief.

“Babe, I’m a gamer—not a loser. I keep trying to tell you how much I make when I live-stream, remember? I promise, I wasn’t bullshitting you. You are welcome to look over my accounts. Hell, if you want you can take over running them while I play and make the money. Seriously! Let’s make this a family business. I keep trying to tell you that my gaming is a legit job—it also happens to be one that I enjoy, and can work at in my underwear.”

Greg shook his head and looked around the nursery some more. “I think our friend Seamus may have had a point… We really do need to listen to each other better.”