Every single second that Emma spent transitioning or whatever it was, my heart was in my throat. She groaned like a moribund cow—a comparison I would never, ever share with her—and writhed in the bed like she was filming the cold turkey detox scene from Trainspotting. I made a mental resolution that no one in our family was allowed to go to the hospital for any reason for the next several years, because I couldn’t take this annually.
Michael was seated beside the bed, holding her hand and stroking her arm, until she pulled it away with a moan.
“Should we be distracting her?” I asked the nurse.
In a soft voice, she responded, “Probably not. This is a stage where most women like to concentrate, to keep the pain from getting away from them.”
To keep it from getting away from them? What the fuck did that mean? There Emma was, groaning, half-conscious, her stomach heaving and jerking with every contraction. This was supposed to be normal? And when the nurse “checked” her, it seemed like it would be a pretty big distraction; having some stranger’s fingers prodding my cervix would have sure distracted me.
Even though this was what Emma wanted more than anything in the world, I wished she wasn’t doing it. There should be some way that babies could emerge painlessly from the womb, a zipper or something where they could just take the kid out.
It was really getting to Michael, too. He looked absolutely miserable, about two seconds away from tears.
“Hey,” I whispered to him. “Why don’t you go use the bathroom or whatever, stretch your legs.”
He winced as he rose; his legs must have fallen asleep. “Yeah, probably a good idea. I’ll update Mr. Elwood and call my parents.”
I leaned back in my chair and put my feet up. I hadn’t intended to doze, but Emma’s panicked shout jolted me awake before I’d even realized I’d fallen asleep.
“I need to push!”
“Don’t do that!” I shot back before my eyes fully focused. I was on my feet between heartbeats. “I have no skills at baby catching. Do not push. I’m going to go get a nurse.”
I’d planned on going calmly into the hallway and finding someone. It didn’t work out that way. My adrenaline pumped through my veins like I was trying to lift a car off an accident victim, and I shouted, “Somebody get in here, she’s ready to push, and I don’t know how to get a baby out!”
“Sophie! Lower your voice!” someone barked down the corridor.
I blinked, certain I was hallucinating. But it really was Valerie, striding down the hallway with her coat flapping like a super hero’s cape behind her. Throwing my arms out, I ran at her. We collided in a hug that was really one-sided, but I didn’t care. I was so relieved to see her.
“Perhaps you could let me go to my daughter?” She sidestepped me and breezed on toward the room. I leaned against the wall and sighed in relief. One of the nurses gave me a strange look as she passed. They probably didn’t care for people shouting for help in their ward.
I hurried out to the waiting room, where Michael was getting himself more coffee, and Neil was asleep with his head tilted back at what looked like a very uncomfortable angle.
“Guys?” I immediately had both of their attention, though Neil looked at me through bleary, unfocused eyes. “She’s ready to go.”
Michael threw his cup, coffee and all, in the trash and took off at a run.
“Shouldn’t you go with him?” Neil asked, his eyes flicking to the door.
“No, Valerie is here, thank god.” I dropped into the chair beside his.
For the first time all night, he looked something other than worried. A smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. “Well. That was an odd assortment of words, coming from you.”
I gave him a tired shove and slumped down to rest my head on his shoulder. The uncomfortable wooden arms of our parallel chairs dug into my side. I was too exhausted to readjust my position.
“Sophie?” Neil wiggled his arm, and I blinked. A puddle of drool stained the sleeve of his shirt, and I stared at it, wiping my lip on the back of my hand as I sat up. Had I done that?
Michael stood in the half-opened doorway, beaming, and I snapped instantly awake.
“What the fuck, how long was I out?” I muttered, noticing a second too late that while I’d been unconscious, another family, all of whom looked vaguely disapproving, had come in to share the space.
“About forty-five minutes.” Neil got up and offered me his hand. Once I was on my feet, he tugged me impatiently through the door. The giddy smile on his face was contagious, because I was giggling like an idiot as we approached Emma’s room.
“Five pounds, eight ounces,” Michael told us as he pushed the door open. “Seventeen inches. And bigger feet than we were expecting.”
The last time I’d seen Emma, she’d been sweaty and miserable. Now, she was practically a nightlight in the dim room. Despite the dark circles under her eyes, she looked absolutely wired with happiness. Valerie stood beside the bed with a wrapped bundle in her arms, cooing and grinning from ear to ear.
“Oh my god!” I squealed, rushing at Emma. “You had a baby!”
She put her arms out, and I hugged her hard. Neil was already weepy with happiness, even before he saw the baby. The baby that he hoisted from Valerie’s arms without so much as a “please”.
“Oh. Oh, oh.” Tears shone in his eyes as he tucked his grandkid into the crook of his arm with the skill of someone far more comfortable with babies than I was. “Look at you. Oh, you’re getting a pony.”
“Dad,” Emma scolded.
“She’s absolutely perfect,” Valerie enthused, squeezing Emma’s shoulder.
Never taking his eyes from the baby, Neil said, “Well, she gets that from me, obviously.”
I crept around the foot of the bed to take a better peek at the little, hat-covered head barely showing from above the blanket. Neil turned to me, but his rapturous gaze was firmly locked on the baby.
On Olivia.
This baby was not winning any beauty pageants. Her eyes, two grotesque lumps swollen shut beneath lids, were bruised purple. Her face was red and a rash of pinprick white pimples covered her nose and cheeks. Her teensy face was scrunched up in anger; she looked like a little gnome. One skinny arm had slipped from the confines of her wrapping, and the skin was mottled with red. She was the ugliest thing I’d ever seen.
And I loved her. At first sight, I loved her. She—or he, only time would tell—was a person. A whole little person who hadn’t been there just an hour ago. A combination of two people I considered my family, and a new member of my family, as well.
“Do you want to hold her, Sophie?” Michael asked gently. Of everyone in the room, I think he was the only person who understood my distrust of myself when it came to babies. I’d seen him trying to awkwardly balance Neil’s niece at his wedding.
“Oh, I don’t know if I should.” I stepped back, afraid that even the suggestion of me holding her would cause her to come crashing to the floor.
“Of course you should,” Emma said, gesturing to the chair. “You can sit down, and we can put her in your arms like you were the proud big sister.”
“Har har.” I rolled up my sleeves and took the chair, feeling exactly like the unsure child sibling Emma had described. Neil leaned down and helped me get Olivia just right in my arms before stepping back.
“She weighs less than a gallon of milk,” I marveled. “She reminds me of when I got my new laptop and I almost threw it taking it out of the box, because it was so much lighter than I expected.”
“Please don’t do that with my child,” Emma remarked dryly.
I glanced up at Neil and grinned. “Look, this pretty much proves I love your kid, okay? Because I wouldn’t hold a baby that came out of just anybody.”
“We forgot to tell you,” Michael said, clearing his throat. “We changed her name a bit. Instead of Olivia Jane, we’ve decided on Olivia Rose. For your mother, Mr. Elwood.”
A flicker of bittersweet pain
crossed Neil’s face, but he held himself together. “She would have been so proud.”
“Quietly proud,” Emma said with a small laugh. “I suppose we’ll have to come up with some ridiculous nickname for her, like she had for all of us.”
“Wait, what was your ridiculous nickname?” I asked. Neil had been his mother’s little bird. There was also a hedgehog, and a cabbage, though it was hard to keep straight who was who.
“Pudding,” Emma responded with a roll of her eyes.
“Because she was such a fat baby,” Valerie explained.
I looked down at gross little troll-faced Olivia. Her mouth worked in a frown—there was so much of her mother in her, already—before she yawned and wriggled in her swaddling blanket. She was so small I was afraid I was holding onto too much blanket and not enough baby.
I gave a little “aw” and stroked her cheek with one finger. For someone having what I hoped would be the worst acne outbreak of her life, her skin was remarkably soft. “Well, if we’re going by weight, I’d say she’d have to be Pot Roast. Because they weigh about the same.”
“Pot Roast it is,” Michael exclaimed with a laugh that was silenced by his wife’s death glare.
Okay, so maybe I wouldn’t call Olivia Pot Roast in front of her parents.
* * * *
In just a few hours, our life had changed so much. I couldn’t believe how instantly I’d fallen in love with Olivia. It was transference; I loved Emma and I was happy for her, so obviously, I had to fall in love with the thing making her happy. But the little baby hands and the little baby fingers…
“You should stay in the city today,” I suggested as we pulled away from the hospital. “We can come back on my lunch break.”
Neil glanced over at me, and the perma-smile that had been etched in his face all evening grew even wider. “I thought you didn’t like babies.”
“I don’t like babies,” I insisted. “I like Emma’s baby. She’s so sweet, and she smells amazing—”
“Sophie,” Neil cut me off, his brows drawing together. “You wouldn’t… This isn’t making you want a baby, is it?
“Ugh, no! Especially not after I just sat with a laboring woman all night.” I shook my head. “Look, I love Olivia already. But I also love that we’re going to go home and sleep in our silent apartment. Because what Emma and Michael are about to go through? No, thank you.”
“Oh, thank god,” Neil said with a relieved laugh. “I had this nightmare idea that you’d want a baby, and we’d have to use Rudy’s sperm. Which he has offered to do, I’m not just being presumptuous.”
“Wouldn’t that child be the perfect monster? So much snark and fashion sense. She could run New York.” I closed my eyes and tipped my head back with a smile. “No. If we were doing that, we’d pick someone we didn’t know. It would be too weird otherwise.”
“But it wouldn’t matter, because…” Neil prompted me.
“It wouldn’t matter because it’ll never happen. I like to sleep too much.”
“It’s all for the best, anyway. I think I’ll like being a grandfather even more than I liked being a father.” He interrupted himself with a loud yawn. “When you’re a grandfather, you get to indulge all those tyrannical toddler whims and send them home with sugar sludge running through their veins.”
“Wow.” I reached over and squeezed his knee. “You’re a grandfather now.”
He glanced over at me as we pulled up to a red light. “I suppose I am. Do I look grandfatherly? Should I start hitching my trousers up now?”
Ah, there was that mid-life crisis once again rearing its ridiculous head. I shook my head slowly and tasted my bottom lip with the tip of my tongue. “No. You look really sexy.”
I didn’t tell him that he looked so good to me because of how much he cared about his—no, our—family. And the flirting was just a tease. We were both way too tired to do anything tonight. But, when he turned away, I caught a flash of his smug half-smile.
“Come on, Grandma,” he teased. “Let’s go home.”
Damn. I’d kind of forgotten about that whole “grandma” thing.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Having learned our lesson about wedding week hangovers after Holli and I spent our wild girls’ weekend in Vegas prior to her big day, she, Deja, and I planned my bachelorette weekend for two weeks ahead of the wedding.
I’d left Neil at the apartment with a long goodbye kiss and a promise that he wouldn’t have to fly a lawyer in to bail us out. He wouldn’t miss us much; he’d visited Olivia at the hospital almost daily, and when she came home, he’d be making a real nuisance of himself around Emma and Michael.
My car met the limo I’d sent for Holli and Deja on the tarmac at JFK. As soon as the wheels stopped turning, Holli was out of the car and racing toward me as Tony opened my door.
“Are you ready for some illicit substances in the desert?” she squealed.
I waved my hands. “No! No shouting about illicit substances at an airport, for Christ’s sake.”
The last thing I wanted to do was call Neil and tell him, “Surprise, your jet was ripped apart on the runway by the feds, and now, we have to buy commercial tickets for our honeymoon.”
“Whatever, whatever.” She hugged me hard, jumping up and down. “The four of us are going to have such a great time this weekend!”
Mental record scratch. “Um, four?”
“I have kind of a…surprise?” The way Holli’s voice went up at the end did not inspire confidence.
A person who was not Deja got out of the car. An adorable blonde head atop a short, curvy body hopped up and threw her arms out. “Sophie!”
“Penny!” My exclamation was more shock than pleasant surprise. “What a nice…um, what…”
She took over before I had a chance to finish. “Holli invited me. I hope you don’t mind. I told her about what happened with Brad.” Her full lower lip wobbled. “Brad… He…”
“Oh, honey, no,” Holli said dramatically, flinging her arms around Penny’s shoulders. “Come on, sweetie, let’s get on Sophie’s jet and drink all her expensive champagne.”
Deja had gotten out of the car, and she shook her head as she came to my side. “Prepare yourself. I think eighty percent of Penny’s body is in tears.”
“So, she and Brad are no more?” I got a sympathy twinge in my chest. It sucked to get dumped. “Do you know what happened?”
Deja shook her head. “I did not pry for the details. That seems to cause rivers of snot, and I so don’t want to deal with that. But Holli felt sorry for her, and now, she’s here.”
“Look, I like Penny as much as everyone, but isn’t she a little…wholesome for Vegas?” I’d been joyously anticipating some one-on-two time with my favorite couple on the planet. Besides, Penny worked for me. I’d never been off-the-clock friends with one of my bosses.
Okay, I had. But that was different.
“I think it’ll be fine,” Deja assured me. “Think of all the ways we can corrupt her.”
We joined Holli and Penny on the plane, and each of us sank into the stuffed leather seats on either side of the narrow aisle.
“Oh my gosh, these are like recliners,” Penny said, already buckling her seatbelt. “Why don’t they have these on every plane?”
“Because you’d only be able to get twelve people on every flight.” I gestured to the rear of the plane. “You don’t have to get strapped in yet. Let me show you around.”
It was kind of fun showing Penny the jet. She was as wide-eyed and impressed as I had been the first time Neil had flown me anywhere. Being rich was a lot of fun, but sharing your nice stuff was probably the best part. There was no sense having wealth if you couldn’t use it to show your friends a good time.
“This,” I said, patting one of the seats on either side of a small table, “converts into a bed for overnight flights.”
“And for joining the Mile High club,” Holli snorted.
I wasn’t sure how comfortable I was maki
ng jokes about my sex life in front of an employee, even if she wasn’t coming along in that capacity. “Or for sleep,” I reiterated sternly.
Gosh, it was going to be fun, fun, fun trying to not spill details of my sex life while out on my bachelorette weekend.
I showed Penny the bathroom, which immediately made all of us need to go. While Penny was taking her turn, I gestured violently to Holli to follow me to the front of the plane.
“What the hell, dude?” I whispered, flinging my arms out.
“I know, I know, I’m sorry.” She sighed heavily, her brows drawn together above sympathetic eyes. “But, when I went to pick Deja up yesterday, there was Penny, crying. I just felt so bad for her. The ex-boyfriend sounds like a dick and a half, but she’s destroyed. She needs some fun, Sophie.”
“How am I supposed to have fun? It’s not like I can go crazy in front of an employee. I’ve got to maintain some sense of professionalism.” I realized how selfish I sounded, but this was my last hurrah as a single girl. Sure, I wasn’t going to do anything I wouldn’t do when I was married, anyway, but that wasn’t the point of a bachelorette party. The point was to go wild and celebrate moving from one phase of life into a new one. Penny hadn’t been a part of the life I was bidding an official goodbye to, so she felt out of place to me.
Holli looked appropriately chastened. “You’re right. Professionalism. It’s not like you’re getting married to someone who used to be your boss or anything.”
Okay, that’s fair. I stamped my foot. “You know damn well I can’t establish appropriate boundaries with people. It’s not like I can kick her off the plane now. I just wish you would have consulted me before you invited her.”
“You would have said yes, anyway,” Holli pointed out. That was the bad thing about best friends. They know you too well. “But it’s going to be fine. We’re going to have such an epic time, you won’t even notice.”
“Epic, huh?” I grinned at the memory of our last trip. Just me and Holli, running up and down the strip, gambling, drinking, dancing with ridiculous dude bros at clubs that reeked of Axe body spray… Okay, maybe that would be fun to do with someone who was as adorably naive as Penny.
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