by Julia Kent
Dylan reached out to shake his hand once again. “That’s my man.”
Changing topics, Alex stared at the baby pointedly and reached toward Josie. “May I?”
Josie caught his eyes. He looked just as good this morning as he did yesterday. Clean shaven now, the same spicy but dark scent she’d noticed yesterday coming off of him again. His face was open and he really did just want to hold the baby—she knew that.
She also knew that he wanted a lot of other things, including her.
Hands outstretched, she saw in his face the expression of a man meant to have children one day, a man capable of the deep love Laura, Mike, and Dylan had for the baby in Josie’s arms.
The tiny, helpless baby whose entire existence rested in Josie’s arms. Arms that could drop her. Or– not that she ever would—harm her. There was an element of unreality to it. How newborns were so utterly dependent on the kindness of larger human beings for their simple survival. Paralysis set in as the idea infused her, making her muscles freeze, her mind lock up, her body seize, and something in her eyes made Alex come to a complete dead halt.
“Josie?” he said. His arms were outstretched in a different way now, a bit more alarmed, the muscles taut, his knees bent slightly as if bracing himself to act swiftly. “Your face is pale the way it was yesterday at the birth. Hand the baby back to Laura,” he said quietly, a soothing tone that cut through her ever-increasing panic.
Instinct kicked in and Laura responded immediately to Alex’s words, lowering her voice as Mike and Dylan slowly stepped closer to the bed. Nodding, Josie kept her eyes on Alex and, without breaking the gaze, turned her body to rotate the baby toward Laura, who took her. The relief of not having those not-quite-eight pounds in her arms, of not being the only person in the world who could control Jillian’s destiny, made Josie sag with a sigh.
“Excuse me,” she said quietly. “I’ll be right back.”
Patting Laura’s knee, she made her way out of the room without another word, deeply humiliated and embarrassed for reasons she didn’t understand.
Out in the hallway, the shakes came, violent tremors in her fingers, her wrists, and her arms. She tried to walk it off, her eyes surveying the layout, looking for the water fountain that she knew should be wedged between two bathrooms. There it was. Homing in on it, she walked robotically toward it, her body stiff with purpose and sorrow and embarrassment.
The cool splash of water against her lips was a balm, an antidote to whatever had filled her veins just moments ago, coursing through and taking her away from the moment, scaring her. Chilling her.
As she drank greedily from the fountain, her mind turned into a splintered fog. What was it about this baby that was making her lose her mind? It wasn’t just jealousy. That played a small part, certainly—not jealousy of the baby itself, but of the shift in her friendship with Laura. Something more must be at play, though, to trigger this kind of response in her.
A deep, thin thread of resentment and resignation shot through her. The answer was there; it was buried, though, so deeply that she had no desire to dig that shit up again. It’ll come when it comes, a voice said in her mind, that damn voice that came out when she least expected it and definitely least wanted it.
Her own childhood smacked up against what was supposed to be a joyful day for her best friend. Her best friends, three best friends. She needed to start including Mike and Dylan in that circle. They welcomed her—albeit with limits—and it was time that she welcomed them, too.
“Josie?” The voice behind her felt like an embrace, though he stood far enough away from her to be an acquaintance, giving her some privacy and space. She wanted to turn around, throw her arms around him, and have his hand press against her back, the other buried in her hair as he soothed the confusion out of her. Arousal should have come next, from that image, but it didn’t. A deeper, more intense desire to talk to him, to confide in someone what was going on inside her, came bursting forth instead. Social acceptability trumped all as she swallowed her emotions, everything that pressed at the base of her throat in a giant lump. She pretended she didn’t hear him, taking an extra gulp of water to help her swallow ever so much.
“Josie?” he said a little louder, not backing off. Firmness in his words nearly made her jump. Alex wasn’t going to let this go.
Good. Don’t back off, she thought. Keep trying. You’re going to need the persistence.
She opened her eyes, swallowed hard, and turned around, not even bothering to pretend.
“Alex,” she said haltingly. “I just…I don’t even know what that was.” Tears pooled along the lower rims of her eyes and she breathed slowly through her nose, cursing her outfit, her eye makeup, her not-so-comfortable shoes, all the preening of womanhood she normally shunned. Here she was, crying in front of a guy who shouldn’t matter, at a moment in her life that should. Celebrating Jillian’s birth should be joyous! She was letting everyone down, including Dr. Perfect.
“I do.” The look in his eyes was one of evaluation and empathy and something else—a camaraderie that wasn’t supposed to be there. He felt it, too—she could tell—and in the space between what they were saying, what they were gesturing, how they were looking at each other, there was a whole other language that somehow they were both fluent in, yet couldn’t speak.
“You do?” she asked. “Then tell me, because I have no idea.”
“You look like every new mom that realizes the responsibility they’ve just taken on.”
“I’m not the new mom,” she scoffed. Her face fell, though, and she could feel a cold heat rising from the small of her back, climbing up her ribcage like a newborn rooting for a breast. He was right. How could he be right? How could he know what she had been feeling just moments ago, what had made her flee the room to compose herself?
“You may not be the mother here, but you have a deep connection to Laura and…” He shrugged, one hand on his hip, the gesture casual. There was none of the stiltedness of new attraction to him. He seemed unable to be formal, affected, to try too hard to be funny or sarcastic or sophisticated. He was only genuine, telling her how she felt—and damn if he wasn’t dead on. “Every new mom goes through it, and that sickly feeling when you realize that you are God to that infant is your humanity coming out.”
“Then I have an awful lot of humanity,” she whispered.
Saying that was an accident. The words had been in her mind, but poured out of her mouth only as a reflection of the exhaustion of the past couple of days.
“You do,” he said, stepping forward, bridging the gap between them. One more step and her breath halted. Finally, four feet from her, he paused, waiting three beats. He took another step and then reached out, touching a lock of hair that had fallen in front of her face, brushing it aside.
“I can see that,” he said. “Your deep humanity. I think that’s why this seems so…” He pressed his lips together in a smile and shook his head slowly.
“Impossible?” she offered.
“Serendipitous,” he ventured.
“You win.” She gave him a half-smile. “I like your word better.”
His hands started to stroke her shoulder and she could feel the sickly sense inside her drain out, as if his fingertips just flicked it away.
“I think…” Alex said, taking one more step closer until he was hovering over her. Her body absorbed his heat, and she was aware of every pore of skin on his neck, every bit of stubble that had grown in the past couple hours. Her fingers itched to touch, but held back, for reasons she began to hate.
“I think,” he repeated, “that your answer may be more accurate.”
“I can admit when I’m wrong.” Where the hell did that come from?
He broke the space between them, bending down and planting a soft kiss on her cheekbone. He whispered in her ear, “I enjoy an impossible challenge..”
“Josie?” Laura’s voice caught her off guard. At the end of the hall, silhouetted by the light behind her, her bes
t friend stood in the threshold of her postpartum room, the gown diaphanous, wearing those little paper slippers that no one liked. “What happened?” Laura called. “Are you sick?”
“She’s fine,” Alex answered for her, his arm sliding around her shoulders, the comfort both overriding the sexual tension from the day past and tapping into it in a very different way. He guided her back toward Laura’s room. “A big case of nerves.”
“Nerves?” said Laura. “Josie? About what?” Long blonde hair poured over Laura’s shoulders, covering one bare breast, the nipple tucked inside a flap of cloth. Modest Laura, who wouldn’t go to the dining halls in college in her pajamas or without freshly done hair, was standing in a hospital hallway with her boob hanging out. Josie laughed inside at the incongruity.
“About holding your baby,” Alex answered.
“I wasn’t nervous about holding the baby.” Josie broke away from him. “That is ridiculous. I’ve held hundreds of babies working in clinicals.”
He shook his head as they reached Laura. “Not the same—it’s never the same when you hold one that means so much to you.”
Tears filled Laura’s eyes. “That’s how I feel too—like I’ve just been handed this tiny thing and its very breath relies on me.”
“That’s because it does,” said Mike, who joined the conversation in the hallway. “And on me,” he added.
“And me,” said a voice from behind as a giant giraffe head poked through the door.
A loud, lusty cry came from the bassinet in the room and Laura took off in a near-sprint, stopping after two steps and then gingerly finishing the trek to Jillian. Mike yawned, covering his mouth and apologizing in muffled tones through the sound. At 8:30 in the morning the yawn would have seemed out of place to anyone who didn’t know just how sleep-deprived they all were.
“We’re going to go home and get some real sleep as soon as the baby settles down,” Mike said. “Laura can manage for a few hours, plus they’ll take Jillian—” He stopped short as the name came out of him, brow furrowed in a pensive expression.
“It’ll take some getting used to, won’t it?” Dylan commented. His face mirrored Mike’s.
“It’s okay, though.” Laura’s voice was strong and focused. “Her name suits her.”
Dylan took the crying baby from Laura and began singing softly, a song Josie didn’t know. The baby quieted immediately and seemed to focus her cloudy, bluish-brown eyes right on him. Mugging for her, he made cooing sounds, keeping Jillian transfixed. Josie hoped her dad had been like that with her when she was a little bundle of new flesh and love like Jillian. The unexpected thought made it suddenly hard to breathe, and she wanted to crawl out of her own skin.
“I think I’ll go soon, too,” Josie said, giving Dylan a short salute. “You guys are carrying on totally fine.” Nothing’s fine, she thought, edging toward the door.
Dylan handed the baby off to Laura and turned to the stuffed animal he’d brought, animating the eight-foot giraffe. “Hear that? It’s fine, Daddy Mike.” The giraffe was the only thing in the room taller than Mike, forcing him to look up to it. Standing on tiptoes, Mike gave it a big smooch on the mouth.
“Daddy Mike? That’s what you’re calling each other? Daddy Mike and Daddy Dylan?”
“What else are we supposed to call ourselves?”
“How about Billionaire One and Billionaire Two?” Josie smirked. Laura gave her a warning look, but clearly was amused. Alex stared at all four faces, bemused.
“There’s an inside joke here that I’m not getting.”
“There are a lot of inside jokes here that you’re not getting, dude,” Dylan replied.
“Yeah,” Josie said, looking hard at Dylan. “It’s—”
Laura, Dylan, and Mike, from behind, all shouted, “Complicated!”
Frowning, Alex looked around the room again, then zeroed in on Josie. “Since they’re so complicated, how about you and I go do something simple?”
“That’s awfully forward of you,” she said, pulling her shoulders back, pretending to be coy.
“I meant let’s go for a walk. That simple enough for you?”
“Oh.” She couldn’t think of anything else to say. Getting out of the hospital would go a long way toward helping her to figure out how the hell she could get back to some semblance of stable. “Okay.” She and Alex waved and left the new family to settle the baby and say their own goodbyes.
Chapter Six
As they rode the elevators down to the main entrance, Josie’s mind flipped through three thousand one hundred and twenty-two scenarios, most of them involving being fucked against the side of the elevator wall.
Damn Grey’s Anatomy for putting these ideas in her head. Ever since that show had come on, every hospital had a running joke about doctors and nurses having sex in elevators—and here they were, completely alone, riding down four flights. The half-smirk on his face as they stared straight ahead made her wonder what Alex was thinking right now.
The nearest coffee shop was a good five blocks away, and Alex turned toward it, which told Josie that this was going to be no simple, short stroll around the hospital grounds, but more like a…date.
Date? The word seemed too formal, as if she were ascribing something to this interaction that gave it more meaning than it really had. He walked slowly, and she was grateful; his long legs could have taken strides that made her walk as quickly as an officious little child. He didn’t seem bothered by having to walk slower. That relaxed, casual nature made him comfortable with whatever situation he found himself in. His outfit was pleasant and the way that his pants hung on his hips and cupped his ass was much more appealing to look at than even the flowering dogwoods that lined many of the homes they walked past.
There was an ease to this that threatened to overwhelm her—the exact opposite of what it ought to have done. When you meet someone and you find yourself transported into a place of calm serenity, aren’t you supposed to feel calm and serene? Wasn’t that how this worked? Why would his neutral, casual nature make her so anxious? The sky seemed a little too blue, the sun a little too sharp, and the cars driving past all seemed to be making pings and knocks and vrooms, creating a tapestry of sound that further overwhelmed her senses.
From all appearances, Alex shared none of the melodrama she was experiencing in every cell of her body. Damn him. His face was open, tipped slightly up, as if soaking in the rays. A beautiful May day like this in the Boston area was not unheard of, but it was certainly rare. She was happy to be outside with a light breeze blowing through her hair, strolling with someone who represented a new beginning. Allowing herself that one concession of hope allowed her shoulders to lower, her body willed to relax by her mind.
They walked pleasantly without any tension between them, despite the tension within her, for about half a block, when he turned to her and smiled down, asking, “Do you know this area?”
“Only from picking up shifts here. I know we’re headed toward the strip, the center of town, where we’ll find restaurants and coffee shops.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I was thinking about going to the little one.”
“Anyplace but Jeddy’s,” she said, and he laughed.
“You’ve been there?” he asked.
“Who hasn’t been there?” she responded quickly.
He shrugged. “That’s true. Heck, even my grandpa’s been there.”
“Really? That doesn’t surprise me. I think that place has been around since before your grandfather’s father.”
“Well, I don’t think he went there, ’cause he was in Armenia. Lived there his whole life.”
“Oh, so you’re one of the many Watertown Armenians.”
“My name should have given it away,” he answered.
“Anything that ends with -ian, right?” She laughed. “I come from Ohio, so this is all something that I had to learn when I moved here. Mendham isn’t exactly unusual.”
“No, I’d imagine it’s not. English?”
He paused and frowned—a look of curiosity, not of upset. “What do you mean?”
“I’m the first one…to get away,” she said. “I was about to say I was the first one to go to college, but that’s not true, my father had a master’s degree. But even he never left central Ohio. My whole family is from there, and is still there. My mom’s back home, and I go back every year, but mostly to visit my niece. Well, she’s not really my niece—we’re cousins—but she’s so much younger that I…” Why was she talking about this? She could feel her mouth moving, the words coming out. She was functional and cognitively grounded, in that the sentences had proper syntax, the words made sense, and yet they poured out of her mouth like something in a cartoon bubble, that went on, and on, and on. From sheer nervousness, her brain just kept forming words, and her mouth kept spitting them out. Cutting herself off, though, seemed impossible, until finally, she just abruptly stopped.
“Oh, look,” she said, pointing, “there’s the coffee shop.” It was lame, but it got her to stop spewing nonsensical shit out of her mouth.
“What’s your favorite drink?” he asked. “Wait”—he interrupted her before she could even answer—“let me guess.”
She stopped, planted her hands on her hips. “Go ahead, give it a try.”
“You’re a…latte kind of person.”
She cocked her head, looked down, thinking about that for a moment. He was right. Should she tell him he was right, or should she make him sweat it out?
“C’mon, I’m right, aren’t I?”
She looked up, flinched a little, surprised by the confidence in his voice. He really thought he knew her, and damn if he wasn’t right. “You’re right. Lattes. Boring. Occasionally, I’ll have a triple if I need the extra caffeine, but…”
“Espresso doesn’t have as much caffeine as you’d think,” they said in unison.