It's Complicated

by Julia Kent

  He reached for a Costco-sized jar of antacids. “Don’t do this to me, Josie.”

  “I’m not doing it, Gian. The data is doing it.” Walk away and keep your mouth shut. Point made, Josie. This might be the first of many difficult conversations that could lead to improvement for Ed and some other patients, so she needed to take it slow. Be diplomatic. Careful. Constrained.

  Maybe she needed to buy her own jar of antacids bigger than her head. She might need it to make it through this maze.

  Following that inner voice, she stepped away, holding her breath. She’d pass out, though, before he’d make any changes.

  Easy part over, she went back to her desk and worried a koosh ball to death with her left hand, sucking down her fourth coffee of the day. Was it worth calling Laura? Three sets of messages and texts had gone unanswered. This was getting ridiculous. She was ready to hop in the car and drive out to Mike’s cabin, if for no other reason than to make sure her best friend was still alive and not being devoured by her cats.

  Then again, Laura had Dylan, Mike, and the baby. If Josie needed to worry about anyone dying alone and becoming cat food, it was herself. Even Crackhead would come out of hiding for a piece of Josie’s thigh.

  Ever the optimist (not really), she grabbed her phone and punched Laura’s number.

  Miracle of miracles, her friend answered. “Hello?”

  “It’s aliiiiiiiiiiiiiive!”

  The baby screamed right into the phone.

  “I didn’t need that kind of proof!” Josie said, her ear ringing. She held the phone a few inches from her head. “Laura? You there?”

  “Yeah. Colic. Jillian’s been a horrible mess for days.” A pang of guilt shot through Josie. Whoops. That explained the silence.

  “I’m just glad to reach you,” Josie admitted. “I’m sorry you’re having a tough time with the baby.”

  Burp! A belch worthy of a trucker came through the phone. “Oh, thank God,” Laura exclaimed.

  “Was that you or the baby?”

  “Ha ha. Now she’s happy and on my shoulder. Whew.”

  “You measure your life in burps?”

  “Yes. And milk letdown and naps and puke-covered shoulders and what color comes out of me today as the bleeding fades.” Three weeks post-birth and she still bled? Josie made a pained face but said nothing.

  “Nothing but glamor for you and your two billionaires.”

  Laura snorted. “I see nothing’s changed with you, Josie. Or has it? How’s Dr. Perfect?”

  “Doctor who?”

  “No. That’s a television series.”

  Silence.

  “Oh no,” Laura groaned. “What have you done now?”

  “I—”

  “He was perfect for you!”

  “Well…”

  “You slept with him and then blew him off, didn’t you? You always do this, Josie. Why?”

  “I didn’t call for a lecture.”

  “Too bad.”

  A rainbow-haired troll stared at Josie from across her crowded desk, its demented grin making it look like it was sneering at her stupidity with Alex even more. “You weren’t exactly around to talk to about it, Laura.”

  “Don’t use me as an excuse!” Laura huffed. Geez, when did Laura get so tough?

  “Okay. Fine. I pulled away. He wanted me to meet his mother.”

  “Oh.” Laura’s anger drained fast, the syllable more contrite. That was more like it. “I see.”

  And this was why she missed Laura so much. Because Laura got it. Instantly. She didn’t have to explain herself in depth, or fumble for the right words, or try to go down some analytical path to get to a conclusion. Shorthand between best friends was such a damn relief.

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s his mom like?”

  “She’s a clinical psychologist.”

  A sputtering sound came through the phone, like a spit take. Then laughter. “Oh, Josie, you’ve got to admit that’s some awesome karma.”

  “I know, right? Can you imagine the moms meeting? Marlene could show her how to get a guy to buy her a top-shelf martini without having to give him a blowjob, and Alex’s mom could use the DSM-V and a necklace of garlic to keep my mom at bay.”

  A sigh came through the phone. “But you know that’s not a good enough reason to throw away what could be the best relationship of your life.”

  Yes, it is, she thought. “Yes, it is,” she blurted out.

  “When are you going to separate yourself from your mom?”

  Slap. “WHAT?”

  “You are not your mother.” Laura said the words slowly, with a resigned tone. “She treated you horribly after the accident. She lives with brain damage and has no real conscience. You were her scapegoat for years. That doesn’t mean you get to hide behind all that and use it to keep yourself from real love, Josie.”

  “I’m not!”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “But…no…it’s that Alex just—” Fuck. Laura was right.

  “Do you like him?”

  “Yes.”

  “The sex is good?”

  Josie made an unintelligible sound of groaning delight.

  “Is he kind and respectful?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does he make you laugh?” Josie could hear the smile in Laura’s voice as the trap began to work. She was caught.

  Sigh. “Yes.”

  “Has he pursued you even as you try to blow him off?”

  “How did you know?”

  “I didn’t. But now I like him even more.”

  “His grandfather is one of my Alzheimer’s trial patients.”

  “No way! So did he know you when he saw you at the hospital at the birth?” Josie felt like someone had hit her between the eyes with a cannonball. Wait—what? Had Alex known who she was before?

  “I never asked him that question,” she answered slowly. A dawning insight opened up before her. Alex had brought Ed to his appointment and had known damn well who Josie was—must have known, in fact—the day she brought Laura to the hospital for Jillian’s birth.

  What did that mean?

  “Maybe your hooking up wasn’t a simple coincidence.”

  “I highly doubt he triggered your labor from afar, Laura,” Josie replied dryly.

  Laura laughed. “No, not that. Just…maybe you two clicked because Alex already knew who you were and was interested.”

  This was why she missed Laura so much. Putting all this together was beyond her ability these days. An extra perspective—no, Laura’s perspective—gave her a better grasp of the messy pieces of her emotional chaos.

  “I’m meeting him for coffee in the morning, so I’ll ask him then.”

  “You’re giving him a break?”

  “I’m letting him buy me a latte.”

  Laura snorted. “You let me buy you lattes and you don’t sleep with me.”

  “You have more than enough bed partners, Laura.”

  “Tell me about it. You try fitting four people in a bed.”

  “Four? You have a new guy?”

  The two laughed, Josie relaxing for the first time in weeks. It felt so good to talk and reconnect. And then—

  Waaaa! “Baby’s up. Gotta go,” Laura said over the wailing. “Let’s talk soon!”

  “Okay. I’ll—”

  Click.

  She worried the troll doll’s hair into Pippi Longstocking braids. So Alex may have remembered her from Ed’s appointments.

  Hmmmm. Coffee tomorrow morning was suddenly more interesting.

  Chapter Twelve

  With a headache the size of a doctor’s ego, Alex’s day couldn’t have started off any worse. He’d come in to work at 5 a.m. to meet quickly with a small group of administrators and one lawyer. Funny how none of his fellow physicians were in the room. Medicine by litigation was a harsh reality these days. Every action had to be thought of in terms of a potential lawsuit.

  By 6:15 the meeting was over and his headache had dissipated
somewhat. So far, the baby in the case was doing fine, though still in the NICU. Being peppered with questions designed solely to test his professionalism and judgment hadn’t been pleasant. He had run through the details of the birth in his own mind a thousand times over the past few days, questioning and playing Monday-morning quarterback. It was a judgment call.

  The lawyers had made sour faces when he’d said as much.

  More meetings would come.

  More headaches, too.

  “You look nice today,” said a pinched voice. Alex was waiting for the elevator to take him downstairs, to catch a train and meet Josie at seven. The voice belonged to Lisa, who clutched a chart to her bosom and smiled.

  “Thanks,” he said, distracted. The vise grip on his eye sockets didn’t help. He fidgeted with his tie, finally sliding it off. Wearing these stiff clothes—a starched oxford, dress slacks, grown-up shoes, and the tie–didn’t help his headache. Anything other than casual clothes and scrubs made him feel like a phony.

  “How’s the case going?” she asked, moving closer, speaking in a conspirator’s whisper. “I heard someone higher up has a bug up their ass about you.”

  “What?” He’d carefully shielded himself from office politics like this. The gleam in her eye was precisely why. Some people viewed this kind of social volleying as a game. Alex didn’t play games.

  Other than the games that involved chasing Josie in her panties…

  “Rumor has it you were distracted. Didn’t read the strip properly.” Of course he had! The contractions were—oh, he’d gone over this in the endless loop in his mind.

  “Rumor is wrong,” he spat just as the doors opened. She followed him on, pushing a button for the second floor.

  “It must suck to have your professional judgment questioned.”

  “You think?” Keeping the acid tone out of his voice just wasn’t happening. Her eyes widened; he could see her expression, a silver blur, in the brushed stainless steel doors.

  “Maybe you’re just…busy.” His toes nearly curled inside his shoes with the implications dripping from that word.

  He snorted. “Which residents here aren’t busy?”

  “You have a new kind of busy in your life, Alex.”

  “Lisa, spit it out. I don’t have time or energy for this kind of passive-aggressive bullshit.” Angry and frustrated, he let himself vent, turning her into an easy target. She didn’t make it hard, but it wasn’t fair to her. As soon as the words were out of his mouth he regretted them.

  And yet it was the truth.

  “You were…busy that night in the on-call room, Alex. One of the other shift nurses saw you in there with that Josie woman.”

  Lisa had him there. The birth had happened later that shift, shortly after Laura’s baby had come.

  “If three different attendings, two lawyers, and eight thousand hospital administrators can pore over those files and say I did everything correctly, Lisa, I’m not too worried about the titters of one shift nurse who claimed to see me taking a break in an on-call room,” he snapped back, regret gone—poof!—replaced by outrage.

  A wily smile graced her lips as the doors opened and she walked out. He jabbed the “Close” button and nearly punched the wall as the elevator made its way to ground level.

  What the hell was wrong with him? Disappointment and humiliation poured over him like an acid bath. Years of striving to be the laid-back, low-key doctor who loved births and enjoyed supporting new lives as they emerged into the world could come to a painful reconsideration if this didn’t go well.

  And most of all, a baby lay in the NICU. Balancing a low-intervention approach and a mother's need for as positive a birth experience as possible with a healthy outcome for mother and baby was hard. Incredibly hard. His approach had to be grounded in science – evidence-based research – and the average person would be surprised to learn how achingly difficult that could be in a hospital setting where fear of lawsuits dictated too many medical decisions. Fortunately, there should be no long-term complications, but the breathing problems were serious enough to warrant further observation. Could he track the specific issues back to some choice he’d made during the birth? No. And neither could the lawyers.

  But that didn’t absolve him from the racking feeling of guilt and doubt that plagued him.

  Comments from Lisa, casting aspersions on his attention level that night, didn’t help.

  Speaking of distractions, as he headed for the subway he realized he needed to discard as much of this as possible from his mind, purging the negativity. Seeing Josie for morning coffee meant getting a fresh start at something that should have gone very right, but somehow got derailed.

  He didn’t need to question his judgment in yet another arena of his life. What he needed was to get back to living. Not worrying or second-guessing. As the escalator took him down into the dark cave of the T line, Alex’s grit and determination shored up. Josie could blow him off, but she’d have to do it to his face, and with a full awareness of what he felt for her.

  Anything less would leave him looping endlessly through his own actions.

  And he’d had plenty of that today. No more.

  Tap tap tap. Josie’s foot bounced against the thick table leg like a jackhammer on Ritalin. Although she’d already had a two-shot espresso and now nursed a latte, it wasn’t the caffeine that fueled her nervous movement. What a strange situation. Being pursued. Men didn’t do that with her. They didn’t keep trying. Once she decided to weed them out of her life they complied, a mutual agreement that it was over coinciding beautifully with the fact that it was over. Whatever purpose they’d served was over and she just moved on with her life. Done. The end. Fin.

  Not Alex. Damn him! Ignoring him had been one of the hardest intentional acts of her life. The texts begged for a reply. His voicemails, with the warm, soothing tones of his voice, made her nearly cry—and nearly start dialing. An act of constant restraint kept her from responding, knowing she was being foolish. Her conversation with Laura yesterday confirmed that.

  She was a fool.

  Her heart stopped as she caught sight of him a few steps from the front door. Like those scenes in movies where everything suddenly shifts into slow motion, Josie eyed him from head to toe. The button-down oxford business shirt, crisp blue. The black dress pants, probably from a suit. Wingtips that would fit in at any financial institution on State Street. Freshly cut hair and a clean-shaven face. A slightly worried look creasing his brow. Intense brown eyes that seemed impossibly deep.

  His arm reached forward to open the door, the curve of his bicep tight against the cloth of his shirt. If the scene had a soundtrack it would be lurid and sensual, sultry and tantalizing.

  What the fuck was wrong with her?

  Why wasn’t she with him?

  Laura was right.

  Laura was sooooooooooooooooo right.

  Every fiber of her being, nipple to clit to brain, strained for him. Their eyes locked. The expected friendly smile and wave didn’t appear. Instead, his eyes narrowed, and he stopped a few steps inside the small coffee shop, hands planted on his hips. The shirt was unbuttoned at the top, a smattering of chest hair poking out. She licked her lips; he was smoking hot in dress clothes, such a departure from his casual look. He could be a CEO or a quant or a tech director. Or, he could be none of those and strip out of the striking outfit and be naked with her in her bed.

  Or on the baseball field.

  Heat poured into her core and she shifted, painfully aware of how sensitive she was, how her body ached for him.

  And then his eyes stayed riveted to hers as he smiled, a grin so ferocious and predatory she felt the oxygen in the room disappear.

  Oh, fuck me now, she nearly begged.

  “Josie,” he said simply.

  “Alex,” she rasped.

  “You got coffee already,” he said, clearly disappointed.

  She shrugged. Words were gone. She could grunt in Morse code if forced.

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nbsp; Holding up one finger in a gesture designed to buy him a few moments, he entered the line. This gave her a great view of his ass for precious few seconds. Something about men in business dress had always made her pause and take notice. Maybe it was because so few men in her life had worn anything other than t-shirts and flannels. Perhaps it was the medical world, where scrubs and lab coats were de rigueur.

  Or, perhaps, she was just really enamored of a grown-up, hot as fuck Alex standing there, just being.

  Being hot.

  What was Morse code for “I’ll get the rope while you draw up the contract”?

  Drink in hand, he took a seat next to her. Heat emanated from every inch of his body, his posture different today. More powerful. Tense.

  Angry?

  Not at her, though. She could feel it. There was relief and happiness and attraction. But something she couldn’t put her finger on lingered beneath the surface. Animalistic and fierce, it seemed to have consumed Alex, though he did a good job of hiding it. A subtle shift, but she picked up on it. Finely honed skills in reading people, cultivated from years with an emotionally erratic mother, meant that she constantly scanned the emotional state of the person she was most invested in.

  And that was Alex right now.

  Whether he still liked it or not.

  Having expected irritation or annoyance directed at her for blowing him off, this was a different animal (pun intended) altogether. His eyes were a bit wild and he carried himself with a more aggressive stance, eating the room as if it were his. The laid-back, grounded man she’d met at Laura’s birth was still there, but with an edge.

  She liked the edge.

  “Thanks for meeting me,” he said, toasting her with a white coffee cup. Laughing, she joined him. Both sipped in silence and she found herself grateful for his persistence. Mornings were the worst lately, the loneliness more acute. Her own stupid—what? Pride? Fear?—had made her clam up and stop responding to him. Alex coming to the research trial with Ed was brilliant. And yet….

  “You knew who I was when we first met at Laura’s birth, didn’t you?” she asked, bold and open.

  His shocked look told her he wasn’t expecting that. “Yes,” he said simply. “I’d been taking Grandpa to his appointments for a few months and had…” His voice trailed off. Curling one fist, he leaned in, then relaxed his hand. “Had noticed you.”