“Kelly’s done this before. ‘Forgetting’ to take it, I mean. So now, she takes it at work. Every day. In front of me. Then one morning I caught her trying to trick me with a Tic-Tac, so now, I keep them in here.”

Ryan pulls a pink plastic case from his desk drawer and looks back at the camera.

“You do what you gotta do.”

“Do you think our kids are going to hate us?” Kelly asks in bed on a Saturday.

“What? Why?” He’s a little tipsy and he kind of gets the feeling that this conversation isn’t going to help matters.

“Because we don’t celebrate Christmas. I mean, when I was a kid I used to get so mad about not having a Christmas tree like all my friends did. And I even told my mom that I was going to marry someone that I could totally celebrate Christmas with. It’s so stupid that you’re Jewish.”

“Kelly, it’s April, why are you even thinking about—wait, it’s stupid that I’m Jewish?”

“Whatever, Ryan, you know what I mean. Just because of the whole no-Christmas thing.”

“It’s not like I don’t still give you a Christmas present. Is there some part of this I’m missing somehow?”

“Don’t some Jewish people celebrate Christmas anyway?”

“I’m not joining Jews for Jesus, Kelly.”

“Well, why--”

“Why don’t you just start Hindus for Jesus if it’s so damn important?”

“It’s not,” she frowns, sliding her arms around him and kissing the spot on his neck that she knows he likes. “I just didn’t want my kids to hate me.”

“Our kids are going to hate us no matter what. There’s no point in converting,” he sighs, wondering if this is going to turn into a three-hour debate. He’s got a softball game with his friends in the morning.

But she kisses him on the cheek and shuts up about it, like he actually said something right for a change. It isn’t until the next morning when he’s in the shower that he realizes that he said “our.”

“I think that if I had to choose, I’d want the baby to have my complexion and Ryan’s eyes, because I mean, wow. Excuse my language, but that would be a fucking hot baby.”

“What’s wrong?” Kelly’s asking behind him because he’s sitting on the edge of the mattress with his head in his hands. It probably looks really overdramatic, but he can’t help it, his head really fucking hurts.

“I just wish you wouldn’t bring up babies while we’re having sex. It really kills the mood for me, Kel.”

“I didn’t mean to! You were the one that left the TV on, it’s not my fault that commercial I like came on.”

“Yeah? Well you didn’t have to say ‘maybe we’re making one of those’ like that. I thought we already talked about saying stuff like that.”

“I can say whatever I want to say, Ryan. You’re lucky you were even getting any after you ditched me on American Idol night.”

“Maybe I should just go sleep at my place,” he says because he just can’t take it any longer.

“It’s two o’clock in the morning!”

“Yeah, well.”

“You’re just mad about earlier when I brought you that chair to help you reach the top cabinet in the kitchen.”

“That has nothing to do with anything.”

“Oh really?” She crosses her arms like she’s daring him to disagree.

“I could’ve reached it,” he rolls his eyes.

“Oh yeah, it looked like it was going really well, Ryan.”

“I’m not short.”

“I didn’t say you were short.”

“I’m not,” he says again and reaches for his shoes, even though things like this never really result in him having to actually put them on.

“Ry-an,” she says in that sort of whiny, but kind of endearing way that makes him crawl back into the bed.

He lies down on his back and puts his arm around her when she scrunches up next to him. He wonders how it is that her hair is always so soft in his fingers.

“Ryan?” she says quietly.

“Yeah?”

“Are our kids going to be short?”

“Go to sleep, Kelly.”

“No, I haven’t heard it. I seriously can’t even listen to Usher anymore, and if I have to watch that movie where the babies talk to each other one more time I’m gonna… I’m sorry. What was the question?”

He never should have let Kelly answer his phone, but he was playing Halo and he really didn’t want to pause it for some stupid telemarketing pitch.

“Hello? This is Kelly, who’s this? Oh hi! Yep, Ryan’s girlfriend, uh-huh.”

He hardly even notices when he gets his head blown off.

“Oh my God, that would be so great. Yeah, I’ve really been wanting to meet you too. Okay, see you Friday then!”

She hangs up the phone and goes back to her magazine as though nothing just happened.

“Kelly… who was that?” The controller is forgotten on the carpet now.

“Oh, that was your mom,” she says without looking up.

When they show up on his parent’s doorstep, Kelly brings flowers (these really nice daffodils that are his mom’s favorite, even though he never even told her that). His mom hugs her and actually seems genuinely excited.

Kelly offers to help set the table, but his mom insists that he do it instead and before he can protest, they are already pulling out the baby albums and are huddled together on the couch like it’s his worst nightmare realized.

His dad is out behind the house grilling (his mom called him twice already this week asking if Kelly was a vegetarian) and he can hear Kelly gasping at something in the next room as he pulls a few glasses from the cabinet.

He knows that later tonight he’s going to get a barrage of opinions from her about what their kids are going to look like now that she’s seen his baby pictures. Hopefully she still hasn’t figured out how to use Photoshop.

“What are you smiling about?” his brother Daniel asks with the attitude of a typical high school junior. It makes him a little sick that he’s already been surpassed by him in height.

“A caterpillar die on your lip there, man?” Ryan grins back because, he may be shorter, but he can still cut his brother down to size when he feels like it.

“Shut up,” he says, but he’s kind of laughing. “So, that’s your girlfriend?”

“Yeah, you want to meet her?”

“Do I have a choice?” He wonders if there’s something in the water here that just breeds sarcasm in this family.

But by the end of dinner Daniel’s actually laughing at a story Kelly is telling him about a high school boyfriend and he’s all but taking notes on the tips she’s giving him for successfully asking a girl out to prom.

His mother mouths the words “I like her” to him from across the table and he tightens his lips, not really sure whether that’s to keep himself from frowning or from smiling.

He guesses he shouldn’t have been so nervous about bringing her over, since she seems to have won them over fairly easily, but he can’t decide if that’s because she’s her, or because he never brings girls home and maybe they were a little worried that he was gay.

“I think I might want to become a stay at home mom. But, maybe not because that might get totally boring. If we get a nanny I'll just have to make sure that she's not cute or anything because not even Jude Law could resist a cute nanny."

“Don’t be stupid, Ryan.”

“I’m not being stupid. How is that stupid?”

“You said you don’t know how to change a diaper.”

“Yeah? Well, I don’t.”

“That’s stupid.”

“How come you can call me stupid, but if I say that you start crying?”

“Just come help me.”

“Why can’t you do it?”

“Because… because I don’t know how, okay??” she admits.

“Oh really?” Ryan laughs. “Then why are you giving me shit about it?”

“Just help. Michael is totally going to revoke your position as godfather of this baby if you can’t even change a diaper.”

“I didn’t even want to have the position of godfather, so why is that a bad thing?”

“Ry-an,” she pleads and he gives up, taking the diaper from her.

“Do we have any duct tape?” he grins at her. She smacks him on the arm, but she’s laughing.

It takes him a full fifteen minutes, but he manages to successfully apply the diaper and he presents the kid proudly to Kelly, who’s clapping and kissing him like he’s just proved his fathering capabilities.

“God, this is so going to be us in a couple of years,” she sighs, cooing at the little boy in her arms.

Kelly always does know how to kind of ruin the moment.