Chapter 11: The Apartment Next Door
The last of the tiramisu had been scraped from the plates, and the candles on the table had burned down to soft pools of wax. Astrid leaned back in her chair, one hand resting on the high curve of her belly, the other wrapped around a glass of sparkling water. Across from her, Dina had pushed her plate away and was tracing the rim of her own glass, her dark hair loose around her shoulders. Leo sat beside her, his broad frame somehow folded into the delicate dining chair without complaint, and Shane was at the head of the table, his glasses perched on his nose as he poured the last of the decaf coffee into four cups.
The conversation had drifted through a dozen topics, from the final weeks of their pregnancies to Leo and Shane swapping stories about their work, to Dina recounting the disaster of a catering order that had gone wrong that morning. It was easy, Astrid thought, easier than she had imagined it could be. Leo had been quiet at first, but he had warmed through the evening, his hand finding Dina's knee under the table whenever she laughed.
"I should get this place on the market," Leo said, gesturing vaguely at the apartment around him. "The deli's doing well, but the building needs someone who has the time to manage it properly. I've been letting things slide."
Dina made a small sound of protest. "You haven't been letting anything slide. You've been keeping the books, doing the repairs, and running half the kitchen."
"We're both tired," Leo said, but there was a warmth in it, a softness that Astrid suspected had been missing for months. His eyes flicked over to Astrid and Shane. "I saw a for-rent sign on the ground floor of your building. Three units, right?"
Shane nodded. "The one on the end has been empty for a while. The landlord's been trying to find someone who isn't going to wreck the place."
Leo set his coffee cup down. He glanced at Dina, and something passed between them, some silent communication that made Astrid's heart squeeze. "I was thinking," Leo said slowly, "and I know this sounds crazy, so hear me out. We've been talking about moving closer to you two. And there is an apartment available in your building. The one next door to you, isn't it?"
Astrid felt her pulse quicken. She looked at Shane, whose expression was carefully neutral, but his dark eyes had sharpened with interest.
"You want to live next door to us?" she asked, hearing the lightness in her own voice.
Leo shrugged, a gesture that was almost apologetic. "Dina and I have been doing the commute thing for years. And tonight was the first time in months I've seen her truly relaxed." He turned to his wife, his hand finding hers on the table. "She lights up around Astrid. And you two have been good for her. Good for us, I think."
Dina was staring at her husband, her eyes glistening. "Leo, we talked about this, but I didn't think you meant it. The for-rent sign, you noticed that weeks ago."
"I've been noticing a lot of things I should have noticed sooner," Leo said quietly. He looked at Astrid and Shane. "The building's got two units on your floor, right? And the landlord's desperate. We could make it work."
Astrid's hands went to her belly as the baby shifted, a familiar flutter against her palm. The idea was dizzying, thrilling in a way she hadn't expected. Dina next door. Coffee in the mornings, dinners shared, their children growing up in matching rooms with a shared wall. She caught Dina's gaze and saw the same electric hope mirrored there.
Shane leaned forward, his forearms resting on the table. "The layout's identical to ours. Same square footage, same floor plan. Two bedrooms, one and a half baths."
"You've thought about this," Leo said, a grin spreading across his face.
"I may have looked at the floor plan online," Shane admitted, and Astrid laughed, the sound bright and unexpected.
"You never told me that."
Shane shrugged. "It was a fantasy. I didn't think it would ever be real."
The conversation became a rapid exchange, filled with logistics and excitement. They talked about timelines, about the lease and what it would take to break Leo and Dina's current one. They discussed whether the deli could survive the move, whether Leo could find new suppliers in the neighborhood. Astrid went to the kitchen to fetch a notepad, and they sketched out rough numbers on the back of an envelope, their heads bent together over the scratched-out calculations.
"Shared wall," Shane mused, setting his pen down. He was staring at the wall that separated their unit from the one next door, a wall that in this apartment was only the sliver of drywall and framing that separated them from their downstairs neighbor. But in his mind's eye, Astrid saw, he was picturing a different arrangement. "There's a common wall between the two units. Structural engineers would need to assess it, but it's not load-bearing, I don't think. Could be knocked out."
The table went quiet. Leo blinked, mid-sip of his coffee. Dina's hand stilled on the table. Astrid felt her breath catch, the weight of the possibility settling over the room like a warm blanket.
"Knock down the wall," Leo repeated slowly.
Shane looked at him, and there was something almost conspiratorial in his expression. "Why live next door when you could live through the door? One big space. You take the master suite on your side, we take ours. Shared kitchen, shared living area, but separate bedrooms. Privacy when we need it, togetherness when we want it."
"Shane," Astrid said, her voice soft with wonder. Her daughter kicked hard against her ribs, as if responding to the idea in her own way.
Leo set his coffee down and looked at Dina. Her eyes were wide, and a slow smile was spreading across her face. "He's serious," Dina said.
"I'm always serious," Shane said, and there was a low, warm current in his voice.
Leo was quiet for a long moment. Then he shook his head, a low whistle escaping him. "You don't do things by halves, do you."
"Never saw the point."
Astrid looked between the four of them, at Leo's surprised grin, Dina's glowing hope, Shane's steady certainty. Her hand rested on the swell of her belly, and she could feel the tiny movements of her daughter, responding to the charged air of the room.
The silence stretched, filled not with doubt but with the sheer enormity of the possibility.
Leo broke the silence first. He let out a breath that was almost a laugh, shaking his head slowly. "You know, I came here tonight expecting to feel like the odd one out. The husband who fucked up and is trying to make it right. And instead you're offering me a wall to knock down."
"You didn't fuck up," Dina said, her hand finding his. "We both lost our way for a while. That's different."
"There's no scorekeeping at this table," Astrid said firmly. She shifted in her chair, her belly making its presence known as the baby rolled against her bladder. "That's the first rule of this... whatever this is becoming."
"Whatever this is becoming," Shane repeated, a smile tugging at his lips. "That's a hell of a name for it."
Leo looked at the wall again, the one Shane had gestured toward, as if he could see through it to the empty apartment beyond. "The deli could move. There's a storefront two blocks from here that's been empty for months. I checked it out last week when I was in the neighborhood."
Dina's head swiveled toward him. "You looked at a storefront?"
"I told you, I've been noticing things." Leo's voice was quiet but steady. "I saw the for-rent sign on your building, I saw the empty storefront down the street, and I started thinking about what a life looks like when you build it around the people you love instead of the commute that gets you to them."
Astrid felt something loosen in her chest, a tension she hadn't even realized she'd been carrying. She looked at Dina, at the way her dark hair fell across her face, at the round swell of her belly that mirrored Astrid's own. Their babies would be born weeks apart. They would share a wall. They would share everything.
"The babies," Astrid said, and her voice cracked slightly. She cleared her throat. "God, I'm going to cry and I hate that."
"Join the club," Dina said, and she was already crying, silent tears tracking down her cheeks. "I've been crying at commercials for a month."
Shane reached across the table and took Astrid's hand. His palm was warm and rough, calloused from years of gripping a hockey stick. "We raise them together," he said. "All of them. Our daughter, your baby, however many more come after. They grow up with four parents instead of two. They never have to wonder who's going to show up for the school play."
"They'll have two mothers who understand what they're going through," Dina added, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. "And two fathers who are terrified of their daughters dating."
Leo laughed, a surprised sound that seemed to catch even him off guard. "I hadn't even thought about that yet. She's not even born and I'm already dreading it."
"You've got eighteen years to prepare," Shane said. "I've got a feeling we're all going to need every one of them."
The coffee had gone cold in their cups. The candles had guttered out entirely. But no one moved to clear the table. They sat there in the soft twilight, four people drawn together by hunger and loneliness and the strange alchemy of need, and they let themselves imagine it.
"I'm on the road a lot during the season," Shane said, and his voice had a weight to it that made the others quiet. He wasn't looking at Astrid when he spoke, but at Leo. "Forty-one home games, forty-one away. Sometimes I'm gone for two weeks at a stretch. And Astrid's been incredible about it, she always has been, but..."
"But you worry," Leo said. It wasn't a question.
"I worry," Shane confirmed. "She's going to be home with a newborn and I'm going to be in Winnipeg or Tampa or wherever the hell they send us. Her parents are in Houston, mine are in Ottawa. She's alone."
"I'm not alone," Astrid started, but Shane squeezed her hand.
"You're not alone because you're incredibly strong and capable and you've built a life that works. But that doesn't mean I don't lie awake in hotel rooms thinking about it." He looked at Leo again, and there was something raw in his dark eyes. "Having you next door, having another man in the building who knows what it's like to be up at three in the morning with a screaming infant... I can't tell you what that would mean to me."
Leo held his gaze. The two men were so different, Shane all lean muscle and athletic grace, Leo broad and work-worn from years of hoisting crates and kneading dough. But something passed between them in that moment, some understanding that didn't need words.
"I'd be there," Leo said simply. "For her, for the kids, for whatever you need. That's what this is, isn't it? We're building a family."
"The weirdest, most unconventional family in the history of families," Dina said, but she was smiling through her tears.
"The best kind," Astrid said. She pushed her chair back and stood, her hand going to the small of her back as she stretched. "I need to pee for the fifth time tonight, and then I need to see that for-rent sign for myself. Is that crazy? At this hour?"
"I'll go with you," Dina said, already rising. "We can be pregnant women staring at a building together in the dark. Very romantic."
"Somehow that sounds exactly right."
"Wait." Leo's voice cut through the room, and Astrid paused halfway to the bathroom, her hand still pressed to her lower back. "Before you two go staring at buildings in the dark, there's something I want to say."
Dina looked at him, her brow furrowing. "What is it?"
Leo stood, the chair scraping against the floor. He moved around the table to stand beside his wife, and Astrid watched the way his hand found the small of Dina's back, a gesture of ownership that was also, somehow, one of reverence. He took a breath, and Astrid saw something shift in his face, a vulnerability that reminded her of the way Shane looked when he talked about his fears of fatherhood.
"I've been thinking about the nursery," Leo said. "Ever since Dina told me about you two, about this whole thing, I've been lying awake at night trying to figure out how to make it work. Not just the logistics of living next door, but the real stuff. The stuff that matters."
Shane leaned forward, his elbows resting on the table. "What kind of stuff?"
"The kind where our kids grow up knowing each other before they can even talk." Leo's voice was rough, and he cleared his throat. "Dina and I, we don't have family nearby. Her mother's in Sweden, my sister's in Ohio. It's just us. And when I think about the baby coming, about being up at three in the morning with no one to call, no one who understands..."
Astrid felt her chest tighten. She knew that loneliness. She'd felt it in the dark hours of this pregnancy, before she'd walked into Dina's deli and found something she hadn't known she was looking for.
"So I was thinking," Leo continued, "what if we don't just knock down the wall between our living spaces? What if we knock down the wall between the two bedrooms on the shared side? Turn them into one big nursery."
The silence that followed was absolute. Astrid could hear her own heartbeat, the rush of blood in her ears. She looked at Shane, whose dark eyes had gone wide behind his glasses.
"A shared nursery," Shane said slowly, as if tasting the words.
"Two cribs against opposite walls. A changing table in the middle, maybe. Rocking chairs that face each other so you two can sit up at night together while you nurse." Leo's voice gained confidence as he spoke, painting the picture. "The kids wake up at the same time, they cry at the same time, they might as well learn to sleep in the same room. They'll have each other from day one."
Dina had pressed both hands to her belly, her eyes brimming. "Leo..."
"I know it's a lot," he said quickly, looking between Astrid and Shane. "I know I'm just the husband who showed up late to this party. But I've been thinking about it, and I keep coming back to the same image. Two cribs, side by side. Our kids reaching for each other through the bars of their cribs when they wake up in the middle of the night. Never having to cry alone."
Astrid's vision blurred. She blinked hard, feeling the baby kick against her ribs, a sharp insistent movement that made her gasp softly. "Shane," she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
Shane stood, his chair scraping back, and crossed to her in three long strides. His arms wrapped around her from behind, his palms coming to rest on the high curve of her belly where their daughter was moving. "I'm here," he murmured against her hair.
"I want that," Astrid said, and the words came out thick with emotion. "God, I didn't know I wanted it until you said it, but I want that so badly."
Shane's arms tightened around her. He looked at Leo over the top of her head, and something passed between them, a silent acknowledgment. "You're not the husband who showed up late," Shane said. "You're the husband who showed up. That's what matters."
Leo let out a shaky breath. He looked down at Dina, whose hand had found his, their fingers lacing together over the swell of her belly. "So we're really doing this? We're going to knock down walls and share a nursery and raise our kids together?"
"We're really doing this," Dina said, and there was a fierce certainty in her voice. "If the landlord will let us, if the structural engineer says it's safe, if we can make the money work. All the practical stuff, we figure out together. But yes. We're doing this."
Astrid pulled away from Shane just enough to look at him. His face was open, vulnerable, and she saw the same wonder there that she felt in her own chest. "You started this," she said softly. "You were the one who said we could knock down the wall."
"I was just testing the waters," Shane said, but there was a smile tugging at his lips. "I didn't think anyone would actually want to swim."
"Four pregnant people in one building," Leo said, shaking his head with a low laugh. "Actually, three pregnant people and one hockey player who's going to be outnumbered five to one."
"Two pregnant women, two husbands," Shane corrected. "And the ratio's going to stay that way until one of you knocks Dina up again."
"Don't even joke about that," Dina said, but she was laughing. "I haven't even pushed this one out yet. Let me recover before you start planning the next litter."
The laughter broke something open in the room. Astrid felt it, the release of tension she hadn't realized she'd been holding. She looked around at the four of them, at Leo's arm around Dina's shoulders, at Shane's hand still resting on her belly, and she thought: this is it. This is how it's supposed to feel.
"I still need to pee," she said, and the others laughed again.
When she came back from the bathroom, the table had been cleared, and the four of them were gathered at the window that looked out over the street. Below them, the for-rent sign was visible in the glow of the streetlamp, a ghostly rectangle of cardboard and plastic.
"Look at it," Dina said softly. "That's going to be yours. Ours. All of us."
Leo pressed a kiss to the top of her head. "We should go look at it. Actually knock on the door, see if we can peek through the windows."
"At nine o'clock at night?" Shane asked, but he was already grabbing his jacket.
"Pregnant women have urgent needs," Astrid said, reaching for her own coat. "And right now, I need to see our future."
They walked down together, the four of them, two pregnant women and two men who had somehow found each other in the strangest of circumstances. The night air was cool and crisp, and Astrid could smell the faint salt of the ocean that was never more than a few blocks away. When they reached the empty unit, Leo pulled out his phone and lit the screen, pressing it against the glass of the front window.
Inside, she could see the bare bones of an apartment, hardwood floors and white walls, a kitchen with fixtures that had seen better days. It was empty and cold and full of possibility.
"That's where we'll put the cribs," Leo said, pointing to a spot at the far end of the space, visible through the window. "Right there. Where the morning sun comes in."
Dina leaned against him, her head on his shoulder. "I can see it," she said. "I can see everything."