Josh’s eyes widen, and he grips the wheel tighter. “Umm . . .”
“Oh, yeah, if that happens, I will die. I’m just warning you. You’ll be a single father of two babies because I will have died, Joshua.”
“I’ll be sure to make sure no one ever lets you know.”
“That would be wonderful,” I say. “But, fun fact, there are fucking mirrors everywhere so the mother can see the joys of her vag being ripped open as a giant baby exits. Just imagine what I’ll deal with because I’ll get to see it twice. Like instant replay only it won’t be a highlight.”
He bursts out laughing. “Or it’ll be beautiful because it’s our children.”
“Or that . . .” I say, feeling a bit contrite about him having to point that out.
Josh takes my hand. It seemed like such a natural gesture, as if holding my hand as he drives, laughing about our babies coming into the world is somehow—right.
God, I need to see a shrink or have Ronyelle slap me upside the head.
He pulls our entwined hands into the center, resting them on the console. “Today, let’s just forget about the horror stories that you’ve heard and have some fun.”
I nod, not trusting my voice, as he parks the car outside the baby store.
“Deals, you good with that?”
My head turns, looking at his beautiful face, wondering why the hell my stupid heart doesn’t listen to my very smart head.
“Sure. We’ll have fun shopping for the twins.” I smile and force myself to put all my worries away. This is the fun stuff.
We exit the car and head inside. After filling out the registry paperwork, they hand us one scanner gun and tell us to be practical.
Josh places his hand on the small of my back, leading me into the bottles and pacifier section.
When we got here, he was the practical, steadfast, and money conscious guy I’d known most of my life. And then . . . then Mary handed him this electronic that is almost like the gun from Duck Hunt, and the sensible Joshua Parkerson disappeared. Now, I have the lunatic who is on a power trip.
“Josh, we do not need that,” I say as he scans some breast pump thing.
“What if we do? It’s four hundred bucks, and I think my mother should buy it as part of her penance.”
I blink. “You think your mother, who is now impoverished thanks to you and your siblings forcing your dad to come up with millions of dollars to buy out their shares of his company, is going to get us an expensive gift?” I ask, really wondering what universe he’s living in.
“Okay, maybe not her, but someone. Oliver!” he yells and scans something behind him. “Oliver has no kids and money. He can buy us this overpriced thing you may need.”
“Yes,” I say with exasperation. “Ollie is totally the breast-pump-buying guy. Let’s be real, he’s going to get some stupid thing you’re scanning that doesn’t have a purpose. Gimme the gun. You’re cut off.”
He pulls it away as though he’s three. “No. You should have gotten your own. Mary gave it to me.”
“And you’re messing up the process.”
“Don’t rain on my parade, Delia. I’m helping.”
I shake my head quickly, taking it from him. “No, you’re not. You’re registering us for stupid things. We need two car seats, two cribs, two of these swing things.” I scan them before I forget. “And you’ve gone scanner gun crazy.”
He snorts. “You’re just jealous that I’m better at scanning than you.”
“Yes.” I drag the word out, making sure the sarcasm is thick. “That’s exactly it. It has nothing to do with my wanting us to register for stuff we might actually need.”
“Semantics.” Josh moves around me pulling the gun back out of my hand and heads to the car seats. “There. Car seats.” He scans one without really looking. “You can thank me now.”
“Those aren’t the ones we need.” I sigh. “That’s a booster seat, which is what Amelia sits in. We need different ones.”
He scratches his head. “It’s a car seat.”
I roll my eyes and point to the infant one. “Yes, but this is the one for babies and it snaps in and out and . . .” I groan. “Just . . . stop scanning.”
“But Mary at the front said it was very important for the father to be involved in this,” he says with a smirk.
Oh, that smirk totally turns me on. Damn him and his smirky mouth.
“It’s going to take me hours to clean up this list.”
“What do you mean?”
I raise my brow with my own grin now. “It means that when we get home, I’ll log on and erase all your stupid scans.”
“You wouldn’t,” he says, his voice low and playful.
“Oh, I would.”
He moves toward me quickly, wrapping me in his arms, and I giggle, trying to escape. “If you do, I’ll come back here once a week and scan more.”
“You wouldn’t,” I repeat his words.
“Oh, darling, I think we both know I would.”
His gaze drops to my lips.
He’s going to kiss me. He wants to, and I want him to so much. I am desperate for him and how his lips feel on mine.
“Are you both doing okay?” Mary, the not-so-helpful woman from the registry department, asks.
Josh flashes her a smile. “We’re great.”
“Oh, good, because it can be a bit overwhelming.”
He nods. “Especially with twins.”
“Oh, how wonderful. How far along are you?”
“We’re still early on, but we wanted to get a jump on things,” Josh explains. “Twins need a lot of stuff.”
“Yes, they definitely do. Your wife didn’t mention twins earlier or I would’ve given you a different items sheet. She just said you guys needed to register.”
If a person could choke on air, Josh would be doing it. “We’re not . . .”
I finish so the words are mine, and I can save myself some smidgen of pride. “We aren’t married. He has commitment issues and decided that knocking me up was an easier choice than dating me.”
Her eyes widen. “Oh, I see. I didn’t . . . I see, it’s not that you have to be married. You both just looked so happy, and I assumed.”
“It’s fine,” I assure her. “Josh and I were supposed to just be a fun night, and it kind of spiraled out of control. And now, here we are.”
“Delia,” he says with a warning.
I turn to him, batting my eyelashes. “What? I’m not lying to her.”
He smiles at Mary but talks through his teeth. “She doesn’t need all that information.”
I shrug.
“I should be going.” Mary slowly backs away. “I hear . . . someone . . . calling me.”
“You do? I don’t hear anyone,” I say, wondering what she heard.
She nods and smiles. “Yes, I do, it’s probably God or something.”
I hold in my laugh, and as soon as she’s gone, which is really quite fast, Josh and I burst into laughter.
“That was mean,” Josh admonishes after his fit of laughter passes.
“Oh, whatever. It was all true, and it’ll teach her not to assume that just because someone is knocked up it also means she’s married,” I say flippantly, even though I feel anything but.
My heart hurts because, while I joke about it, it’s all I want.
And doing things like this. The laughing, playful, fun things where we hold hands and almost kiss as we pick out things for our babies . . . makes me crave more.
“All right,” he says, flipping his scanner in the air and catching it. “Let’s get to work and get registered.”
I let out a breath and force a smile. “Okay, since we don’t know the sex of the babies, we can’t do crib stuff.”
“Why not? We can do gender neutral.”
I scrunch my face. “I have a design idea, Joshua, and if we have two girls then it’s easy and we do all pinks and yellows. If we have boys, we’d do blues and greens.”
“I thought
yellow and green were the neutral colors.”
“Yes, but I want them in a certain pattern. And I will probably change my mind a hundred times.”
“I see,” he says, but it sounds like he really doesn’t see.
“Whatever, it doesn’t matter. Until we have the ultrasound again in a few weeks, it’s not . . .” Josh, being the child he is, starts to scan a bedding that is yellow and green with bears. “I don’t want bears.”
He takes my hands in his, pulling me down the aisle a little. “What about this one?”
I shake my head and smile. “Josh, we have to wait.”
“Why?”
“Because it doesn’t make sense to decorate until we know.”
He scans it anyway, and I groan.
“Listen, at your place, you can decorate how you want, but at my house, I want bears and these weird things.”
My lips part, and it feels as though I’ve been punched. “What?” I ask, barely a whisper.
“When the twins are with me, they’ll need bedding, right?”
Yeah, they will. Because we’re not together, and they’ll stay at his house sometimes because I wouldn’t keep them from him and just said earlier how he should be looking for a place.
“Right.”
He squeezes my hand. “Good. Then maybe we should register for four of everything.”
“Four.”
“That way, we both have a set for each kid. I’d rather we both be prepared.”
I swallow back the tears. “Yeah. Okay.”
“Delia?” I look up at him, forcing my emotions to stay down. “Are you okay?”
“Just . . . the nausea is back.”
His hand moves to the small of my back, and he leads me toward the rocking chairs. “Here, sit.”
Don’t leave, Josh. Don’t go. Just love me and stay.
He presses his lips to my forehead. “You okay?”
No.
“Yes.”
“I’ll finish scanning a few things I saw while you rest. I’ll be right back. I want to get that stroller for both of us.”
I bite my tongue and nod, the tears pooling in my eyes.
Two sets of everything . . . including two homes because Josh won’t ever stay.
Chapter 23
Joshua
The last three weeks have been calm. Delia is working, I’m working on the house, and once a week, Mrs. Garner and Mrs. Villafane bring over some kind of baked good to thank me for keeping the neighborhood safe. Of course, I haven’t done a damn thing, but I won’t turn away their cake since it makes Delia smile.
Today, I’m hoping she’ll smile because I finally finished the floors.
I hear her car pull up, and I’m at the door before she gets there. “Hey.”
“Hey,” she says with a weary smile as her hands move to rub her belly. It hasn’t been until this last week that it seemed as if she were actually pregnant. I know she was before, but now she has the bump, and I swear, the woman is glowing. “What’s up?” Delia asks as she comes to a stop in front of me.
I shake my head before taking her hand. “I have a surprise for you.”
“Is it cake?”
“No.”
Delia’s lips turn down. “I like cake.”
“I think you’ll like this too.”
I walk her inside and to the living room. The furniture, which had been shifted to the dining room, is back to where she had it. Except now, the floors are shiny, all new, and perfect.
“Wow!” she says, looking around. “It’s gorgeous, Josh. Thank you!”
“You’re welcome.”
“No, really. Thank you. This is amazing, and you got it done—free, too.”
She’s smiling as if I just won the world for her. She looks so happy, and it’s what I wish I did for her daily.
“Next, I think we work on the nursery.”
Delia turns quickly, losing her balance, and I catch her. Her hands are against my chest, and I can’t fucking breathe. For weeks, I’ve fought against the urge to hold her, touch her, kiss her all-too-perfect lips.
I almost lost that battle when we went shopping, and had we not been interrupted, I might have. When that woman said Delia was my wife, it was as though I got woken up from the dream.
Since then, I’ve been keeping my distance. I make sure that I don’t touch her or hold her hand like I did that day. None of that because we’re just friends who are going to co-parent.
But now, my hand is splayed against her spine, and she shivers in my arms while I wait for her to push me away. Instead, her pupils dilate, and when her tongue slides along her lips, I know.
She wants this.
I want this.
But . . .
Before I can think too much, she comes closer and she kisses me.
My hand moves up her back, holding her to me, losing myself in her. She tilts her head to the left, and I slide my tongue against hers. I drink in the slow moan that comes from her throat, and savor the taste of mint.
Delia and I clutch each other, holding on as the last few months of restraint crumble around us.
Holding on to her hip, my grip tightens, afraid she’ll pull away. I want this. I want her. I need everything and yet know I won’t give it to her.
As if she can feel me distancing myself, she turns her head to the side, both of us gasping for air.
“No.” The single word comes out like a bullet from the gun. “No. No.”
I lift my gaze to hers. “I know.”
“I think you living here is a mistake, Josh.”
“Why? I said I was going to be here to help you. I fucked up just now. I realize that, but if we’re going to be technical, you kissed me,” I say with a laugh, hoping to ease the tension.
Her lips purse.
“Okay, then technically, I didn’t ask or really want you to move in here. You did it for my safety, and we can all see that’s no longer an issue.”
“Maybe that was why in the beginning, but it’s changed. We’re friends, and . . . I want to be here for you and the babies.”
“Right,” she says before wiping her tears. “Okay, well, friend, here’s why I can’t handle this. Because it’s too hard to stop myself from wanting to kiss you. I keep wishing that you’ll fall madly in love with me. For you to see that, all this time, it’s been you for me. That’s never going to happen, is it?”
“Delia, I’m . . . I don’t want to hurt you.”
I want to make her happy. I want to give her all the things she’s asking for, but what about what I want? What about the fact that I didn’t want kids or a family or to live with someone else? I didn’t ask for this, but I’m doing the best I can to give us both what we need.
“You are hurting me! You’re hurting me, and I don’t get it. You danced with me, stare at me, you hold my hand, and I think: here it is. He’s finally going to let me in. And then you don’t.”
“I have always been honest about where this goes. Not once have I said differently.”
The one damn thing I have prided myself on is that. I’ve tried not to lie to her about the desire for more. I want it. I want it so fucking bad that I ache for it, but I don’t tell her.
She takes a step back. “No, you haven’t said it, but I feel it, Josh. So why won’t you even try?”
“Because I know the ending of this.”
“But that’s where you’re wrong. You don’t know the ending. I appreciate that you want to be here for the babies. They are going to need you, and I know that you’re going to be an amazing father, but I am losing my mind with you here. I get these glimpses of hope and then it’s gone. Why do you do these things that make me feel like there’s a chance for something when there isn’t? Please, just tell me what has you so sure that we can’t work. Is it me? Do you not want to be with me? If that’s the case, then why are you in my home? Just find your place so we can just co-parent.”
“It’s not that simple. It’s not that I want to be away from you.”
I have been halfway in love with Delia Andrews for a long time, but saying it aloud would leave her open to hope. Giving her that would be the cruelest thing I could do to her because I’ve seen what that does to women I love.
I fail them.
I lose them.
I hurt them.
I shake my head. “You are too good for me.”
“That’s not the truth. I’m not perfect. I’m not too good. What I am is here.” She steps closer, placing her hand on my heart. “Right here. In front of you with my heart in my hand, asking you to take it or at least tell me why you won’t meet me halfway and try. Help me understand why you’re so against all of this.”
I shift away, feeling the ache of the past that I’ve buried gaining strength. I should tell her so she can see that she’s wasting her love on me, but there’s a selfish part of me that craves her love.
“Because I can’t protect you! I can’t assure you that I won’t be what hurts you!”
Delia’s eyes widen. “What are you talking about? I don’t need you to protect me. I just need you to love me. To be here. To want me and not . . . not do this!”
“Do what?”
She pushes her arms to the side. “This! How do you do it? Because, God, I really want to be able to just shut the emotions off. I want to just go on like I did before, not knowing how good it feels to be with you. How do I close my heart off from you? Each time I look at you, I remember, wish, and want more. I want it to be easy for me too.”
I close my eyes and see someone else’s face. A woman I loved. A woman I lost because I was so selfish. “You think this is easy? You think I want to be like this?”
“No, I think you’re too scared to be anything else, but I see you, Josh. I see the way you look at me. I see you reach for me and then deny yourself.”
A Moment for Us Page 14