It's Complicated (13 page)

“Geez, you don’t ask much from your best friend, do you?”

Laura nudged her. “C’mon. Do it for me?”

Josie bit her lower lip, grabbed the form, and just picked the first guy who came into her mind—other than Dr. Alex. Scribbling quickly, she folded the form and handed it to Laura, who put it in an envelope.

“Done,” Laura said, a huge sigh escaping from her.

Not quite
, thought Josie.

The grateful, tired smile that greeted her words was all Josie needed. Well, maybe not all. “May I?” she asked, reaching for the baby.

Laura smiled and leaned forward to hand Jillian to her. As she shifted, though, she winced, flinching with a wretched look on her face. The calm but tired look was replaced with a tight, pained expression, then a deep breath. Two deep breaths. Three. Ouch. Josie imagined that her nether regions must look like hamburger right now—really nasty hamburger—and knew that the ice packs and the Lidocaine spray were probably the only thing keeping Laura sane. That and baby Jillian.

On the fourth exhale, Laura’s shoulders slowly relaxed, her breathing went back to normal, and her back unfurled a bit, allowing her to sit back, looser and in less pain. She tried again, keeping her back against her pillows, stretching her arms out with the baby instead, and Josie hurried to make up the distance.

Josie very carefully, tentatively, took the baby, gingerly wrapping herself around so that her whole tiny body was supported with the length of Josie’s arms and both of Josie’s hands. She felt so lightweight, like a kickball, one of those big ones at Toys“R”Us that you grab and expect to be heavier than they are. Not even eight pounds, little Jillian was a heavy soul, one born into an incredibly unique situation with a family structure that made Josie see it in a different light for the first time.

Josie’d first been derisive, and then accepting, of Laura, Mike, and Dylan’s triad. But now, holding the baby, new thoughts emerged. How would society view the child of two men and one woman? Getting people to understand that some kids had two mommies and some kids had two daddies was hard enough. How was little Jillian supposed to walk into preschool and announce that she had two daddies
and
a mommy? This kid was going to have to be tough, to know herself deeply, to stand up to the taunts, to neutralize ignorance. Jillian was up to the task—but was Josie?

A deep, steely protectiveness poured into Josie as the baby snurgled and then sighed, nestling against Josie’s arm. Josie smiled and kissed her little head, breathing the baby smell deeply and smiling harder at its sweetness. All worries for the future could wait. Huffing this newborn reminded her that life was good, and this was already shaping up to be a fabulous day. Seeing Alex had sent her body into overdrive, senses alight and primed for something. Would he really be interested in her today, or was yesterday just some sort of fluke? Dressed in casual clothes, he seemed to be here not as part of a shift, but for a personal reason.

Was
she
the personal reason? The kiss in the elevator, the near-sex in the on-call room, his steady support as she nearly fainted—did it really add up to more? Maybe she hadn’t misread a damn thing. Maybe he was as attracted to her as she was to him and made a special trip on his day off not to check in on Jillian and Laura, but to check
her
out.

“Is that Dr. Alex’s voice I heard out in the hallway?” Laura asked. As they both looked, the giant stuffed head of a giraffe walked into the room as if it were animated and stalking all newborn babies on the wing. After the head, the neck entered the room, then the body, and finally Dylan, as if the giraffe were in control, pulling him in. His grinning face was stretched from ear to ear with a level of excitement and love that was contagious.

Josie matched his grin and looked down at Jillian and said, “That’s one of your crazy dads. He’s the craziest one.” As Mike came in, she went on. “The
other
daddy is calm and peaceful and placid on the outside, but he’s kind of weird, too. You’ll just have to deal with it. Your mama is unconventional, but in a different way, so…Jillian, the deck is really stacked against you. Good thing you have your Aunt Josie to keep you normal.”

Jillian’s three parents all snorted in unison, and Alex walked into the room just in time to overhear Dylan tease back, “If teabagging the set of balls from Jeddy’s in front of an audience is normal, then—”

“
Shh
,” Laura said, noticing Alex. “Hi, Doctor…I forgot your last name,” she said, reaching for a glass of water and chugging it, a sheepish look on her face.

“Alex. Alex Derjian,” he said, reintroducing himself, shaking Laura’s hand. “You had quite a bit on your plate last night, Laura. It’s no wonder you don’t remember my name.”

“Thanks,” she replied, tipping her head at the baby, who now rested in Josie’s arms, her little pink cheeks slack with sleep.

“Teabagging?” He cocked one eyebrow and looked at Josie. “It sounds like I interrupted a very interesting conversation.”

Shooting daggers at Dylan, who just smirked, she said, “Not as interesting as Dylan’s butt—”

“Hey!” Dylan snapped. “Man Code says we don’t talk about that.”

“Man Code says you don’t show somebody your brown starfish, either,” she retorted.

Alex and Mike managed to stay neutral, their faces impassive, but from the flare of their nostrils she could tell they were trying not to laugh.

“Show what?” Alex finally said.

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 friend
s
, 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 best 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.