They hadn’t spoken in three years. Not really.

Not since the rehearsal dinner, when she told him he was selfish, and he told her she was exhausting, and the bartender said, “Do you want that shot with or without the lime?” and she said, “Yes.”

But grief doesn’t care about unresolved tension. And neither does the lawyer reading the will.

So here they were. In the kitchen of a two-bedroom house with a baby monitor crackling on the counter, a casserole neither of them made on the table, and a custody document with both of their names on it.

David stood by the fridge, arms crossed, looking like he'd rather be anywhere else—but he hadn’t left. That was something.

You (she) stood across from him, holding a bottle of formula like it was a grenade.

“You’re not even good with kids,” she said flatly.

David didn’t flinch. “And you are?”

“I don’t have to be. I Google things.”

He gave a slow, infuriating shrug. “I can keep things alive. I work on a farm.”

“She’s not a tomato plant, David.”

“That’s not what I said.”

The baby monitor squeaked. A soft whimper. Both of them froze.

He moved first.

Of course he did.

When he came back ten minutes later with a sleepy toddler draped over his shoulder and the faintest spit-up stain on his shirt, she tried not to feel it—whatever that thing in her chest was. Warmth. Panic. Something in between.

He glanced at her. “She likes The Very Hungry Caterpillar. I did all the voices.”

She blinked. “You did voices?”

“Don’t tell anyone.”

They had no idea how to do this. Not the diapers. Not the 3 a.m. cries. Not the ache of losing someone they both loved, separately and in different ways.

But little by little, through burnt pancakes and daycare drop-offs and emergency Target runs, they started to become something like a team.

They argued. A lot. She accused him of being too careless. He said she was trying to control everything because she was scared.

They weren’t wrong about each other. And maybe that’s what made it work.

Because somewhere between the messes and the midnight bottle warmings, somewhere between grief and growth, they started becoming something else too.

Not just guardians. Not just roommates. But something that looked a lot like love.