by Julia Kent
“Yes, it is.”
“That’s California roll. Sashimi…now that’s sushi.”,” Dylan said.
“Actually,” Mike interjected, “neither is.”
It sounded like an old argument, and presumably it was.
“I can finally eat sashimi again, can’t I?” Laura answered, just remembering. “Hmmmm…” She bit her lower lip and stared with great longing at Mike’s raw salmon.
“You wanna trade?” he offered, reluctantly.
She gave him a closed-mouth smile. “No, go ahead, it’s fine, but next time, get me some.”
The three parents dug into their meal with gusto.
Josie seemed to have forgotten that anyone else was in the room, so intent was she on studying and absorbing the baby’s features. She was a natural. Alex found his mind wandering to a future, and caught a glimpse of the woman he could love holding their child. He’d always thought of it…fatherhood…one day, but now he had a face to attach to the imagined reality.
“You want one?” Dylan asked.
Shaking himself out of his reverie, Alex looked up to find Dylan holding out a tray of California roll. “Oh, oh…no. No. Thanks. I’m…I’m good.” As if on cue, his stomach rumbled.
Dylan cocked his head and said, “Hey man, we’ve got plenty.”
“You’re hungry?” Josie said, snapping out of her own little world. “You want to get dinner?”
I want to get that tick check you promised, he thought. “Dinner would be great, but first, give me a chance to hold her.”
“Oh, come on, I just got her,” Josie protested.
“And you’ll get to hold her…for”—he paused and looked around the room—“forever. Or at least until she she’s too wiggly and won’t let anyone hold her anymore. Then you’ll get to play with her—running around the playground, or digging for worms, or doing whatever it is that kids do when they reach the point where they don’t want to be held. This is my shot, though. Let me have a turn?”
“I’m twenty-nine and I’d like to still be held,” Laura piped up.
“Ooooooooh,” said Mike, coming over and giving her a big hug. Dylan piled on, too, keeping his hands extended out so that his fish-covered fingers didn’t touch her.
“That’s not what I meant,” Laura said, but tears filled her eyes. “I wish my mom could be here,” she said quietly. She swallowed hard, and the tears spilled over, running down her bright red cheeks.
“Your mom would have loved her,” Josie said, handing the baby off to Alex, and then walking over to the bed to touch Laura’s leg in assurance.
Alex hadn’t meant to hit so many nerves, but apparently he’d said the wrong thing. “So, I think we should be going.” The soft heft of the baby wrapped in the flannel blanket made a part of him go soft and paternal, time slowing down as he acknowledged the wonder of this little girl’s new life. She smelled like freshness and perfection, and as he traced her cheek with one finger he found the sweetness almost too much. Almost. If he let himself, he could sit down with new babies and rock them to sleep all day. Sadly, that wasn’t his job.
Besides, he had some unfinished business with Josie.“Let's give the Daddies a turn with their daughter,” Alex said, guessing correctly that refocusing would help Laura pull herself together.
Plus, he wanted to get Josie out of here. To do what, he wasn’t sure. He’d love to do more of what they had just done down by the river, but he thought he should hold off. Having this start out so hot, so fast, risked burning it out just as quickly.
His concern was that Josie would mistake his desire for her as only sexual. But he’d meant what he’d said to her that first moment in the on call room, as they had furiously undressed—this really wasn’t just about sex. She was giving him hints that she felt that, too. Everything from guessing he drank macchiatos, and real ones, no less, to telling him more about herself, letting down that sarcastic, jaunty way that she shielded herself from the world. It was a message. For her this wasn’t all about the sex. Clearly she had no problem with the sex part, but there was more to it. He hoped this was the beginning of something far greater than anything he’d ever had with a woman. Making love to her again so soon, as much as he wanted to, might set the wrong tone.
As he watched her chat with Laura, and lean in for a hug, then a kiss on the cheek, he saw a warmth to her that she only showed to people she was close to. Even Dylan got a hug from her, and that surprised him. It pleased him, too. When she stood on extreme tiptoes to give Giant Mike an embrace as well, he smiled involuntarily.
“Hold on,” Mike said, peering at the top of her head. Fishing in her hair, Mike untangled a leaf and held it up to look.
“You’re sprouting these days?” the man asked her, and Alex suppressed a laugh.
“No comment,” she said, avoiding everyone’s eyes.
“Alex?”
“I defer to Josie.”
“Just repeat that phrase a thousand times for the rest of your life and you’ll do fine with her,” Dylan added.
Josie laughed and moved toward the doorway; Alex took her cue, handing the baby off to Laura. He reached over and rubbed Jillian’s soft little head, and then looked Laura in the eyes. “Congratulations, again. You did it.”
She smiled and closed her eyes, swallowing hard. “Thank you. I did, didn’t I? My midwife called me a birth warrior.”
He did a slow inhale and smiled, his cheeks hurting from so much grinning. “I think that’s pretty apt.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
Laura’s eyes darted over to Josie, who was speaking animatedly with Dylan about knocking it off with his giraffe.
“Oh,” Alex said. He looked away, a bit flustered. “That.”
“Yeah”—Laura pointed her finger covertly at Josie—“that. Take care of that,” she said, winking.
He nodded and turned away, not sure what to say. As he walked to the doorway, Josie reached out, tentatively, for his hand. The public gesture, two feet away from Dylan, made him swell with hope. It made other things swell as well, and now that tight feeling plagued him. Already? Yes, he was ready again, already, and as they walked out the door and said their final goodbyes, he wondered what would happen next in the elevator.
Chapter Seven
Josie pressed the elevator button and reached back for Alex’s hand. Out of the corner of her eye she saw that blonde nurse again, who was glaring daggers at both of them. “What’s up with that woman?” Josie asked.
He froze and looked out of the corner of his eye, not moving his face.
Now Josie wondered what was up with him, because that was just not a typical Alex move. How would you know a typical Alex move, Josie? she thought. It wasn’t as if she knew enough about him to be able to make a judgment call like that. And yet, in the day or so that she had known him, she felt she knew him well enough to begin to make some general assumptions.
“That is Lisa,” he said, a tone of regret and resignation coming out in a raspy voice, a hushed attempt at privacy. “I’ll tell you more in the elevator.”
The blonde woman charted furiously, her hand jerking across the page, as her eyes flitted between Josie and Alex and whatever medical document she was working on. A red flush crept over the pale skin on her neck, and into her jawline and cheeks.
A creepy feeling spread through Josie’s gut. Whatever this was about, it didn’t feel good. She didn’t like holding Alex’s hand and not feeling good. It was so contradictory that it triggered a sense of panic in her. Not a full-blown panic attack, more a sense that she was nearing a precipice, and might have to struggle not to fall. Whatever that woman meant in Alex’s life, it didn’t seem like it was something she should pry into. Yet the laser-like stare that was focused on Josie felt like it might cleanly cauterize the back of her head.
She decided to just head this one off right here. “Do I know you?” she asked in an even tone, turning to face her. The blonde ignored her and flipped the char
t closed with a flick of the wrist, storming off.
A huge sigh of relief escaped from Alex, his chest lowering and his hand loosening around hers. The elevator dinged and the doors opened. No sexy ride right now; whatever that woman represented, it wasn’t good juju.
As they stepped aboard and Alex pressed the lobby button, Josie said, “Okay. Spill.”
He squared his shoulders and shook his head. “We went on one date. One. Coffee. She has this…thing about me.”
“Coffee?” She punched him lightly on the bicep just as the elevator stopped at the next floor.
The doors opened and people poured in; he dropped his voice to answer, “Not the same coffee you and I had, my dear.” The murmur in her ear sent a warm tingle between her shoulder blades as he straightened up, clasping his hands behind his back, pretending he hadn’t just sent her into a topsy-turvy state.
Again.
By the time they left the crowd and reached the street outside the hospital, she was a bit more settled, and they resumed their conversation.
“She doesn’t take the hint. I’ve never seen her behave like that, though.” He frowned, then reached for Josie’s hand, running his index finger down the lines on her palm. “Then again, I’ve never been seen at work with someone I’m…you know.”
“No. I don’t know.” She wasn’t going to give him an easy out. What did he think this was? If she was just an easy fuck to him, he had to say it. She wasn’t going to. “Someone you’re what? What’s ‘you know’?” People rushed by all around them, but took no notice of their conversation. Speaking into cell phones, conversing into the thin air of Bluetooth, as if part of the Borg, heads bent over phones, texting—everyone’s minds were on their little pieces of plastic and glass, not their surroundings. No reason not to press this conversational point right now.
He reached for her hips and pulled them to him, tight arms stronger than she remembered. As she looked up, his face blocked out the sun, the ends of his brown hair curling slightly from the slight humidity, his face relaxed and sly. “Do I have to define ‘you know’?”
“Yes.” The word hung between them like a dare.
A double dog dare.
Which he took. “Someone I’m dating.” The back of his hand against her cheekbone, light and feathery, made the lump in her throat dissolve. Shielding her eyes with one hand, she looked up, feeling taller and bigger than ever.
“We’re dating?”
“We are.”
“Can we have more…you know.”
“Now it’s your turn to define ‘you know,’ Josie.” His voice held a laugh. Damn it. He knew exactly what she was asking, her heart beating as fast as he’d been thrusting into her an hour ago.
On tiptoes, she licked his neck and said quietly, “Danger sex.”
“Is that what you call it?” One eyebrow cocked, his nostrils flared, jaw tightened, eyes narrowed. It wasn’t an angry expression. This was the look of a man intrigued to find there was vocabulary for something he’d thought nameless.
“What do you call it?” Turning the tables back on him was a relief. Unbearably revealing, the conversation made her hot and ready as much as it made her want to crawl into a hole. Hmmm. Maybe they could have danger sex in a hole in the street. How heavy were manhole covers?
“I don’t have a word for it.”
“Liar.” Crossing her arms, she went down to flat feet. “’Fess up.”
“Air fucking.” Alex barked the phrase out as if it would somehow be better if he said it quickly.
“Air fucking? Is that like air guitar?” She pretended to strum an electric one, like Garth and Wayne from Wayne’s World, until he grabbed her wrists, a pained expression on his face.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
Closing his eyes, he sighed, hands still gripping her. “Don’t make fun of something I never imagined a woman would actually want.” A puff of air flew out of his mouth as if the secret, now out, needed to escape from him even faster.
She softened, feeling horrible now, “Oh, no. No, Alex, I wasn’t making fun of you.” She winced, looking down. “I’m mildly embarrassed, and because I have the social skills of a tree sloth on acid, I just make jokes. Bad ones.”
A fierceness came over him and his eyes looked into her soul as if they were reading it. “You understand, though, don’t you? You liked it. You wanted it. It fed something in you. That’s how it is for me. Except I never imagined I’d find someone else who…”
“Yes.” The intensity was almost too much to bear, and Josie felt something crack inside her, a tiny tendril of a new green shoot seeking sunlight.
“Good.”
“Come over to my place for dinner,” she ventured.
“Dinner?”
“Dinner and a movie.”
“What’s the movie?”
“It’s called My Bed.”
“I like that movie.”
“You’ve seen it?”
“No. But I caught a great preview of it today.”
“Maybe we could turn it into a drive-in viewing. You know, under the stars?” Something in him had cracked, too—the way he shifted and held his body was more intimate. She stretched up and kissed his lips lightly.
He blinked hard, then jumped a bit. Reaching into his pocket, he checked his phone. “A patient.”
“It’s your day off!” she protested.
“VBAC. She really wants to make this happen, and I promised I’d come in…” He raked his hair with one hand. “Damn it.”
“I get it.” Exhaustion she’d been ignoring asserted itself at the opportunity, reminding her that she really needed some rest, and a shower, and to eat something. And she wanted to spend five hours on the phone with Laura, squeeing about Dr. Perfect. Dr. Air Fucking Perfect, now.
“What are you doing Tuesday?”
“I’m off.”
“Then come…over.”
He was five steps toward the front doors to the hospital when he ran back, grabbed her, and held her, a nice, comfortable kiss planted on her lips.
“I’ll come. And so will you.”
Chapter Eight
In the handful of days since Jillian’s birth, the only place that seemed to give Josie comfort was Jeddy’s. And she resented it. The coffee was terrible, the companionship was awful. But the service was really great and, as much as Madge could be a sourpuss, at least she was Josie’s sourpuss. So now, every morning around 6 a.m., she got a coffee and some kind of reasonable pastry breakfast and settled in a booth, wishing for the life that had unraveled over the past few days as Laura had moved on.
Now, if Josie had said those words to Laura, “You’ve moved on,” she would have heard a torrent of all the reasons why that wasn’t true. Followed, probably, by lots of tears and an extra order of coconut shrimp or a hot fudge sundae. The protests, though, would come from Laura’s understanding, deep down, that Josie was right. Laura had moved on, finding the true love—true loves?—that eluded Josie.
Sex had always been no problem for her, at least. Even before her recent encounters with Alex. Men found her appealing enough to proposition…but not worthy enough to stay. The few relationships she’d had that had lasted longer than one condom had been fraught with jealousy and anger and accusations of condescension on both parts, typically ending in a “fuck you” phone call. And then a regretful booty call a few days later. And then—silence.
When Laura had first met Dylan and Mike and had learned about the threesome life that they embraced, Josie had told, for the first time ever, about her own threesome experience. It hadn’t been intentional by any stretch, and it hadn’t even been good. It had, however, triggered a sense of curiosity in her. By pushing her own moral boundaries, she’d discovered that she was still herself the next day, she still interacted with other human beings the same way. She hadn’t grown horns or weeping sores in the palms of her hands; there was no trauma, no self-destructiveness to it.
It had just been an o
ption. She had taken advantage of the opportunity, lived the experience and woken up the next day alive, fine, and normal. Needing to pee, and eat, and shower, and wash her clothes, like any other day. With the minor additional need to decide what it had meant to violate a social norm and sleep with two men at once. Back then, in college, it had been a coup of sorts, some kind of quiet, dark mark as if she had joined an amoral club that no one knew existed and whose members all kept their mouths shut. If they were female.
A rumor had spread about what Josie had done with those two guys, but it had fizzled fast. She was this boyish, petite thing who had a motormouth; most people dismissed her as un-fuckable. So the coup really was hers; her internal scorekeeper knew that un-fuckable Josie had managed to find two guys to sleep with her at the same time. Even the most attractive woman at their small college couldn’t stake that claim. Not out in public, anyway. Being open about it would have brought her ruin. One hell of a Catch-22, right?
Two guys, though, right now…that wasn’t what she wanted. What she wanted was one man, twice over…or to double her over. Alex filled her visual memory: the lines of his pecs, the narrow taper of his waist, the intensity in his eyes in the on-call room. How he had watched her with such steady power, her body on fire just from his look. Picking at the remnants of her croissant, Josie let herself revel in that memory for a few moments before sheepishly admitting a tinge of guilt. Laura had been just a few doors down, as desperate to push something out of her vagina as Josie had been eager to get something in hers.
Thinking of what he’d done to her by the river was also problematic. It was enough to make her come right here, on the nasty vinyl booth seat, willing an orgasm from the memory of his hands on her, his cock hammering her ass into the stone wall, and all that came with coming outdoors.
She snapped back to reality when Madge zipped over, dumped a refill into her coffee mug, and moved on.
She was such a chickenshit, worried every second of every day since she saw him that this wasn’t real, struggling to accept the idea that he would want her. Instead, she’d tried to convince herself that resigning herself to the reality that it would never work would be much less painful than trying to build something, only to have it fall apart. A part of her knew that that was a big load of shit, and if Laura were more available right now, she would be sitting at this table right now, snarfing down a platter of fried green tomatoes, telling her so. “That’s bullshit,” she would say, her finger pointed in Josie’s face, happy to be on the giving end of angsty love life advice.