A Wall Between

Chapter 42

When Cooper woke up the next morning, Sasha was still asleep, so he left the room quietly, went to the bathroom, and went downstairs. Mason was sitting at the kitchen table with his laptop open and Bianca sitting across from him. Coope leant down to look at the screen. Mason was creating a sim, and it looked quite a bit like Bianca.

"Good morning, Cooper," Bianca said. "Did you sleep well?"

"Better than I thought I would," Cooper said as he sat down at the table. "Maybe having Sasha there helped me settle down, if not because of his calming presence, then because it forced me to not wriggle around like I normally do, because I'd be keeping him awake. How did you sleep?"

"Never well these days," Bianca said with a beaming and only slightly forced smile. "I know having a newborn probably won't be any better for my sleep, but at least Logan will be able to take a turn at dealing with things. You can't really share the burden when it comes to pregnancy."

"I'll make Logan get pregnant to an alien in The Sims," Mason said, his eyes still firmly on his laptop screen. "It won't help you one bit, but you know. Equality."

Bianca laughed. "I look forward to seeing his alien baby."

"Me too," Mason said. "Let's do positivity. What else are you looking forward to today?"

"Oh, hm," Bianca said. "Being married, I guess. Weddings are more stress than joy in my mind, but I really do want to be married to Logan. I want him to be my husband."

"And then we'll be your brothers, too."

"Yeah! Aw, I really am looking forward to that."

"Cooper, what about you?"

"Hm?" Cooper asked, caught off guard even though he'd been listening to the conversation.

"Positivity. What are you looking forward to?"

"Oh!" Cooper said. "Uhh... hm. The brother thing, yes. And, uh... the beautiful... reception? Actually, I'm not sure what part of the wedding the reception even is..."

"It's like the afterparty of the wedding," Mason said. "The bit with the food and cake."

"Ohh," Cooper said. "Well, sure, that. Or the ceremony?"

Mason shook his head. "I'm going to have to dock points for you being a liar. Positivity doesn't work if you lie, Cooper. It has to be real."

"Okay, um... I'm looking forward to seeing Sasha in his tux again?"

Mason grinned. "There you go!"

"How about you, Mason?" Bianca asked. "What are you looking forward to today?"

"First of all, making these sims and making them have a baby," Mason said. "That's my number one goal for the day. My second goal is to eat some wedding snacks, and I'm looking forward to that. Third, I'm hoping that my family-induced PTSD will really get my heartrate up because my smartwatch seems to assume any spike in my pulse means I'm doing exercise and it calculates my calories burnt accordingly. I don't care if it's fraudulent. All I care about is what the watch says at the end of the day."

"That's... definitely a positive spin to put on that."

"Yeah, I'm very good at positive thinking."

A chime rang through the house. Bianca started to push herself up, but before she could get to her feet, Logan called out, "I'll get it!" from somewhere else in the house.

Bianca sat back down. "It'll be the decorators or something. They'll need to get this place all set up before the wedding starts."

Cooper scavenged some leftover pizza from the fridge for breakfast, and ten minutes later Abra and Ellie made their way down to join them. Ten minutes after that, a hand tapped Cooper's shoulder. Sasha. He'd slipped into the room without Cooper even noticing.