“Are you speaking from experience, Sandra?” Nicoletta sent her a flirty grin.
“No! God no. Have you seen Alex’s yang? It’s a monster.”
Nico busted out laughing, and so did Marie and Elizabeth. “As a matter of fact, no. But I’ll be sure to ask him about it the next time I see him.”
“Can we please not talk about Alex’s yang?” Marie’s voice, though she was wiping tears of hilarity from her eyes, was pleading. “It’s like talking about my little brother’s yang.”
“Your little brother is hot, though.” Elizabeth pointed at Marie with her knitting needle. “And, for the record, feel free to discuss Alex’s yang with me.”
“Moral of the story: some women like it, some women not so much.” Sandra seemed to be determined to push the conversation forward.
“I wouldn’t like it.” Ashley still had her ears covered.
“How do you know unless you try it?” Roscoe nudged his sister again.
Ashley batted his elbow away. “I don’t want someone else to pick my nose, doesn’t mean I need to try it first to know.”
“Personally, I can’t get behind it. See what I did there?” Sandra grinned at Roscoe. He grinned back.
“Then why are we talking about it?” Fiona asked, her tone dry and impatient.
Sandra didn’t answer right away, instead glaring at Fiona, and the glare intensified the longer she looked.
Silence stretched and became uncomfortable; all of us, one by one, looked up from our knitting and glanced between Fiona and Sandra.
Visibly confused, Fiona lifted an eyebrow. “Sandra?”
“Because I can’t talk about how sad I am,” she blurted. “So I have to talk about something else.”
Wait, what?
“Why are you sad?” I asked, examining my friend. She did look a little sad.
“I just—I feel like everything is changing.” Sandra took a gulp of her drink and hid behind the glass.
Fiona and I shared a look before she asked, “Changing how?”
“Well, you’re pregnant. Janie’s pregnant.” Sandra gestured to their bellies. “Soon someone else will be in the family way.” Sandra glared at Elizabeth and Elizabeth gave her wide eyes of innocence in return. “And then—between sleep deprivation and hunting for deals on diapers, we’ll drift apart. Pretty soon it’ll be months between meetups, or years. And then once-in-a-blue-moon reunion specials. And then we’ll only see each other at weddings and funerals.”
Janie’s eyebrows puckered. “Three of us live in this building—including you. It seems highly improbable for us to drift apart given our proximity.”
“Are you seriously going to tell me that having a kid won’t interfere with your social schedule? Because I remember how things were with Fiona when Grace was born. We didn’t see her for months.”
Fiona didn’t look hurt, but she did look concerned. “Sandra—”
“By the way, you know I love Jack and Grace, so this isn’t a complaint about your ridiculously stunning family. This is me trying to prepare myself for less frequent knit nights. Or poorly attended knit nights.”
Another moment of silence settled upon us, and when Sandra spoke again, her voice was softer, her melancholy more obvious. “Things aren’t going to be the same.”
“Things are changing, it’s true.” Fiona’s tone was gentle.
“And maybe we won’t see each other as often.” Marie’s cadence was also soft, and maybe a little introspective. “But just because we won’t see each other doesn’t mean we won’t know each other.”
“You sound like a greeting card,” Sandra grumbled, then sighed, and then shook her head. “I’m sorry, Marie. That wasn’t—”
“Don’t apologize to me.” Marie held her hands up. “Knitting means never having to say you’re sorry.”
That drew a small smile from Sandra and another sigh. “I don’t want things to change. I don’t want things to end.”
She sounded so sad, so desolate, that I couldn’t help my heart’s answering pang of despondency. Things were changing, and not just because Janie and Fiona were about to have their babies.
Abruptly, Marie stood, placing her knitting on the seat behind her, crossed to where Sandra was on the opposite sofa, and pulled her into a hug. Then I stood, as did Fiona, Elizabeth, and Nico. We all followed suit. Soon we were piled on top of, and next to, and behind Sandra, embracing her and each other.
And then we heard Janie’s gruff, “Thor!”
Turning, we found the tall redhead struggling to rock forward, as though she wanted to also hug Sandra, but couldn’t gain enough momentum to lift herself from her seat.