by Cara Malone
Mercedes made it to dinner by a quarter after six. Everyone else was already digging into their meals and there was a carton of General Tso’s chicken waiting for Mercedes on the dining room table of Chloe and Ivy’s cozy loft apartment.
Lily welcomed her with a hug and then warned all her friends to let Mercedes sit down and eat in peace, but before long, Chloe was peppering her with questions about everything from her work to her life in Seattle to the details of their relationship.
She was bubbly and a little overbearing but sweet. Ivy, her girlfriend, was aloof but not unfriendly, and very witty. After she finished eating, Mercedes went to the kitchen to dispose of her trash and Ivy cornered her there to ask questions about her research and her published papers until Chloe finally came and dragged them both back to the group.
Krys, the ER doctor, was a Tasmanian devil of activity and she had made Mercedes’ head spin when she encountered her in the emergency department. Even now that they were all having a quiet dinner together, she was constantly in motion, and her fiancée, Darcy, seemed to be the rock that anchored her to the earth, grabbing her and making her sit still.
There was Megan – a pathology resident – and Alex, her paramedic wife. The two of them were preoccupied with talk of house hunting, and they’d snared the only single person in the entire group, Sarah, into looking over properties with them on a tablet Megan had brought along.
“I really like that one,” Sarah was saying. “The colonial is so classy.”
She was cute, a chubby-cheeked girl who didn’t seem to have the confidence to extract herself from the conversation, although it didn’t look like Megan and Alex were tormenting her, exactly.
The conversation changed constantly throughout the night. It was a little overwhelming – keeping track of seven new people as well as Lily – but they always made sure Mercedes felt included and by the end of the night, she’d even started to think of them as friends. Temporary ones, just like her temporary relationship with Lily, but that didn’t make it any less real.
“Did you tell them about the money yet?” Mercedes asked when she finally caught a moment alone with Lily on the couch.
“No,” Lily said. “I don’t want to monopolize the evening.”
“Are you kidding?” Mercedes asked. “I’ve never met so many people with so many different things going on – wedding planning, buying houses, you’re having a baby, two of them are vying for chief resident. You deserve a moment in the spotlight.” Before Lily had a chance to object, Mercedes stood, pulling her to her feet. “Can I have everyone’s attention?”
“Oh my god, you’re getting married!” Chloe joked, clapping enthusiastically.
“Good lord, Chloe!” Lily chastised and Mercedes snorted.
“Not quite,” she said. “But Lily does have some really great news.”
Everyone turned to her expectantly and she told them all about the grant, getting more enthusiastic as she went on. By the end, when she made it to the dollar amount – five… MILLION… dollars! – she was practically squealing and all her friends were jumping up to hug and congratulate her.
Mercedes laughed and stepped aside to give them room, and Lily locked eyes with her. There was desire in them and it instantly sent a quiver of warmth through Mercedes’ body. Well, that was an unexpected side effect of celebrating.
“You must be on cloud nine right now!” Ivy said to Lily, and without moving her eyes from Mercedes, Lily answered.
“You have no idea.”
It was about two hours later by the time Lily and Mercedes finally politely excused themselves from the party, and Mercedes suggested they go back to her apartment to continue the celebration in their own way. She drove ahead and Lily followed in her own car – it turned out that Ivy and Chloe’s apartment was only about ten blocks away from Mercedes’ place, and that was a minor miracle because Mercedes didn’t want to wait more than a few minutes to get Lily alone and undressed.
They stumbled into her apartment, their limbs entwined and their bodies seeking each other. The place was furnished but undecorated since she’d never bothered to dress up a place she didn’t spend much time in, and they both paused dutifully at the door to kick off their shoes and line them up neatly in Mercedes’ shoe tray.
Then, formalities aside, she circled Lily in her arms and led her over to the large, overstuffed couch. She lay Lily down, climbing on top of her carefully and kissing her lips, her neck, her collarbones…
Lily reached for the floor lamp behind her, but she couldn’t quite reach.
“Mercedes,” she said. “Can you get that?”
“The lamp?”
“Mm hmm,” Lily said, giving up on reaching it and instead putting her hands on Mercedes’ chest. “Please.”
Mercedes kissed her neck again, then her lips, then she hovered over Lily and looked into her eyes. “We’ve been making love for almost two months now.”
“Making love, is it?” Lily teased.
Mercedes growled and kissed her hard, saying, “Fucking, then.”
“What’s your point?” Lily asked, her hand straying down Mercedes’ stomach and then between her legs.
“Do you trust me?” she asked, pulling back so Lily couldn’t reach her. She was already plenty turned on and she didn’t want to be this distracted for a serious conversation.
“Yes,” Lily said. “I’ve never said pineapple, have I?”
“No,” Mercedes said. She ran one finger from Lily’s lips down over her neck and between her breasts, watching as Lily’s skin stood up in goosebumps at her touch. Lily wanted more, and so did Mercedes. “Do you think we could try it with the lights on? If you change your mind we can always turn them off again, but you are so fucking beautiful – I want to see you.”
Lily looked away, and Mercedes turned her chin back to face her.
“I know what burn scars look like, honey,” she said. Then she smirked and added, “And I already know what your thighs feel like clamped around my head.” Lily blushed – it was cute that Mercedes was still capable of making her blush after everything the two of them had done in the last few months. “I promise there’s nothing about your body that could make me want you any less – in fact, I’m pretty sure when you finally let me see all of you, I won’t be able to leave you.”
It sounded corny even to her, but the fact was that idea of going back to her old life and never seeing Lily again actually scared Mercedes. She set out to have a little fun with a hot doctor who could distract her from the horrors of cleaning out her mother’s house, and sneakily, her heart had been falling for Lily over the past five months – and falling hard.
“I know you mean well,” Lily said. She sat up, pushing Mercedes off her and putting a hand on her stomach. The baby was kicking often now and whenever Mercedes was around, Lily always grabbed her hand to share the moment. “It’s just that history has taught me to expect otherwise. You say it won’t change anything, but it will. It always has.”
“Come here,” Mercedes said, wrapping her arms around Lily and pulling her into a protective hug. “I don’t know who’s hurt you in the past, but I promise, that’s not me.”
“Did I tell you that I got bullied a lot after my accident?” Lily asked. Mercedes shook her head, holding her a little tighter as Lily explained. “I did. The kids at school called me a freak, and even my best friend turned against me. It got so bad I had to change schools.”
“I’m sorry,” Mercedes said, kissing the top of Lily’s head. “Kids can be assholes.”
“I met my first girlfriend at the new school,” Lily said. “So I thought it wouldn’t be all bad. We dated for over a year before I let her see my scarring – her family had a pool and I refused to swim in it so adamantly that she thought I had a water phobia. When I finally decided to put on a bathing suit and get in the pool, she took one look at my leg and refused to get in, like I was contagious or something.”
“That was just one awful girl,” Mercedes said, squeezin
g Lily tight. “Who clearly didn’t deserve you.”
“And every other woman I’ve tried to be with since then,” Lily said, shaking her head. “They all leave sooner or later. I don’t want you to see my leg because I just want one relationship that ends for a reason other than that. I want you to go back to Seattle thinking that I’m just as sexy as you do right now.”
Mercedes took Lily’s head in her hands, tilting her face up to meet her gaze as she said firmly, “There’s nothing that could change how I feel about you.”
Whoa. A powerful surge of emotion washed over her as the words came out of her mouth. They went a lot deeper than their surface meaning and it was overwhelming, leaving Mercedes feeling a little lightheaded.
She reached over her head and switched off the floor lamp, then said in the dark, “I think you’re beautiful no matter what, but it’s up to you to decide when you’re ready, okay?”
“Thank you,” Lily said.
Then Mercedes lay her down on the sofa again, going to her knees in front of her and inhaling deeply the heady pheromones that were beginning to turn her world upside down. I love you, she thought, but she didn’t say it because that wouldn’t help anyone – she was leaving in less than a month.
In the meantime, she’d make sure that Lily felt it, even if she couldn’t say it.
We’re not fucking, she thought as she peeled Lily’s panties carefully down her legs. We’re making love.
14
Lily
Lily scheduled her birthing classes for December, and on the morning of the first one, Mercedes walked around Lily’s house asking her what she needed to bring.
“A blanket? A big cushion to sit on? Some water?”
“I think they provide everything,” Lily said. “But some water would be nice.” She watched Mercedes go into the kitchen and get Lily’s water bottle from the cupboard – she’d been spending the night a lot and she knew where everything was by now. While Mercedes filled it from the filtered pitcher in the refrigerator, Lily called, “Are you sure you want to waste a Saturday morning doing this when you could be helping your mom? You’re not even going to be here when the baby comes.”
“I’ll go over to my mom’s house in the afternoon,” Mercedes explained, then she came into the living room and tucked the water bottle into Lily’s bag. “I wanted to talk to you about that – about not being here. I was thinking about extending my sabbatical by a couple of months.”
“Really?” Lily asked, knitting her brows.
“Yeah,” Mercedes said. She sat down next to her and put her hand tenderly on Lily’s stomach, saying, “I know you’ve got your own obstetrician, but you’ve got me feeling sort of invested in the outcome.”
Lily laughed. “Spoiler alert – I have it on good authority it’s going to be a baby, not a puppy or a bunny.”
Mercedes smiled and said, “You know what I mean. And anyway, I’m still not sure my mother is ready to start working with Dr. Silva on her own. There’s only so much that Jewel can take on and I’d like to feel confident that when I leave, my mother’s going to keep going to her appointments without my sister having to drag her to them.”
“How long are you going to stay?” Lily asked.
She didn’t want to be hopeful – Mercedes wasn’t talking about forever, just a few more months. But it would be nice to have her in the delivery room after all they’d been through… or maybe it would be harder to let her go after they shared the birth of her child.
“Well, I didn’t want to be presumptuous,” Mercedes said, “but I thought I might stay another three months, at least until you give birth and then you’ll be far too preoccupied with the baby to want anything to do with me.”
Lily smiled. “That would be nice.”
“I have to run it all by my bosses at Seattle Reserve, of course,” Mercedes was quick to add. “But I don’t think my work here is done yet.”
“I don’t, either,” Lily said. The doorbell rang and she said, “Now come on, help me off the couch.”
Mercedes took both of Lily’s hands and pulled her to her feet. Lily’s mother was waiting on the front porch, and like every other time she’d seen Lily in the past six months, she had something for the baby with her.
“Mom,” Lily said as she accepted a hug and a bottle-cleaning kit, “I’m not going to need a baby shower at this rate – this kid will be set all the way through high school if you don’t stop buying stuff.”
“You most certainly will need a baby shower. Don’t deny me the opportunity to pamper my only daughter and her first child,” her mother said. “And, I have to point out, I still don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl.”
“I want to be surprised,” Lily said, rubbing her belly as she passed the bottle-cleaning kit off to Mercedes to find room for it in the kitchen. “Plus, I don’t want an entire baby room filled with blue or pink stuff that will determine the kid’s interests before he or she is even old enough to talk.”
“Well, bottle brushes are unisex,” her mother said. “Are we ready for birthing class?”
“Yep,” Lily said as Mercedes joined her again at the door, Lily’s bag looped over her shoulder.
“It’s good to see you again, Mercedes,” her mom said, giving Mercedes a hug, too. Lily had brought Mercedes over to meet her family for the first time shortly after their Phoenix trip and her parents had taken an instant liking to Mercedes. That was good because Lily wanted her at the birthing class, but she also needed her mom there because until today, the possibility of Mercedes being present in the delivery room hadn’t even been on the table.
Lily didn’t want to get too hopeful that it would actually happen. She’d set out to start a family on her own and she knew she was strong enough to do it – but she also knew the way Mercedes looked at her, the way she could set Lily on fire with nothing more than a smile, she had the potential to make their inevitable separation very difficult.
“Let’s go,” Lily said. “I don’t want to be late.”
The birthing class was at Lakeside. Lily’s mother drove and when they got there early thanks to Lily’s insistence, she asked to see the space where the Graft 3D machine would go.
“You want to see that?” Lily asked, amused. “It’s just an empty room right now with an old mural.”
Her mother was an event planner, her work firmly on the creative side of things rather than the scientific, but she never missed an opportunity to take an interest in Lily’s job and she insisted on seeing the room.
“I think it’s sweet,” Mercedes said. “I’m not sure my mother would take much of an interest in the technical aspects of my job because it’s all jargon to her.”
Lily smiled – it was sweet – and led the two of them to the pediatric ward to show her mother the empty room where her hard-won lab would go. The beds had been removed after she’d convinced Dr. Ross to give the space to her, and as she pointed out where the Graft 3D machine would be set up, as well as some workspace for the doctors, Lily brightened.
“You know,” she said, putting her hands on her hips and looking at the faded mural. “I would love to keep the spirit of that painting. Do you think Tyler and Theo would come down to the hospital and help me paint something new over it?”
“I bet they would love that,” her mom said.
“And Mikey and Faith?” Lily asked, turning to Mercedes. “I’d love to have their help, too.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Mercedes said. “They’re a lot younger than Tyler and Theo. Their artistic abilities won’t be at the same level.”
“This is a pediatric ward,” Lily pointed out. “And this room is just for the doctors, anyway – mostly for me, if I’m being honest. It doesn’t have to be a Renoir – they can just have fun, and if it turns out more like a Pollock, I’ll love it just the same.”
“Sounds good to me,” Mercedes said. “You can ask them next time we all go out to dinner.”
“Come on, honey,” Lily’s mom said. “The class is start
ing in about ten minutes – we better get you a spot before the room fills up. Thanks for showing me this. I’m so proud of you.”
She gave Lily a quick hug, then led the way out of the room. Mercedes lingered behind for just a second to say, “I am, too.”
Then Lily followed them both, feeling a strange mixture of embarrassment at being doted on and a fullness of heart – she couldn’t ask for much more out of life.
The room where the birthing class was being held was a mid-sized conference room, only there was very little furniture. There were about two dozen chairs arranged in a circle around the room, and quite a few couples already seated and ready for the class to begin. Lily wasn’t the only one with multiple birthing partners, and she felt lucky when she noticed a younger girl – probably in her twenties – who was there alone.
Lily might not have the permanent partner and soulmate that she’d always wanted, but at least she had more than enough family and friends to support her in everything she did.
“Hello, everyone,” the instructor said a minute or two after she’d gotten settled with Mercedes and her mother. The woman closed the door to the classroom and walked to the front, saying, “My name is Tabitha Sheldon and I’ve been helping mothers through the birthing process for twenty-five years, so you’re in good hands. Who here is having their first child?”
A lot of hands went up – the majority in the room – and Tabitha began the class, starting with some basic anatomical instruction and moving on to a discussion of epidurals versus natural childbirth. When Tabitha asked everyone to stack their chairs and sit on thickly padded yoga mats on the floor for some breathing exercises, Lily looked again at the young mother who was there all by herself.
Mercedes caught the direction of her gaze and said, “Do you think she’d like some support?”