“Well… this isn’t exactly skydiving over the Alps,” I think, staring up at the ceiling tiles like they might blink back at me. Sterile white. A little yellowed around the fluorescent lights. Smells like antiseptic and lemon-scented air freshener, and underneath that—just barely—the ghost of someone’s bad coffee. A baby wails faintly two rooms over.

I bounce my knee. Can’t help it. Been doing it since we walked in twenty minutes ago. The chairs are those stiff kind—the kind that make your butt fall asleep in ten minutes flat—and my palms keep sticking to the fake leather armrests.

Beside me, she’s still as a painting. Legs crossed, fingers laced in her lap. Her sundress is soft blue today, almost matches her eyes. I like when she wears blue. Brings out that stormy-gray in her stare, especially when she side-eyes me for fidgeting too much. Like she’s doing now.

I flash her a grin.

She rolls her eyes.

God, I love her.

She’s all calm, collected elegance in this sea of nervous energy. I don’t know how she does it. I always told people she could walk down a Paris runway without breaking a sweat, but she chose me instead—a loud, impulsive ex-frat bro who proposed with a ring pop on a mountain trail in Peru. And she said yes.

A year ago, we were barefoot in a field behind our old house, chicken feathers in her hair, dancing under string lights with mud on my dress shoes. She laughed so hard she cried.

Now here we are. In this fluorescent fishbowl of a waiting room. Hoping.

The wall clock ticks loud. Too loud. Every second sounds like it’s counting down to a punchline I’m not ready to hear. I reach over, lace my fingers through hers.

She lets me.

I give her hand a squeeze.

And I know we don’t talk about it much—not out loud—but I see it. The way she watches the neighbor’s toddler toddle past our front gate. The way she lingers at the baby aisle when we’re just supposed to be buying toothpaste. The quiet way she folds the tiny hand-knit sweater her grandma sent “just in case.”

God, I want this for her. For us. For the version of me that never thought he’d want to trade cliff-diving in Thailand for bottle-warming at 3 a.m.—but here I am. Praying for sleepless nights.

The nurse finally calls our name.

We stand.

And I take a breath that tastes like nerves and hope and the leftover trace of her lavender shampoo.

“Ready?” I whisper.

She nods.

And we walk in together.