It's Complicated (14 page)

“About holding your baby,” Alex answered.

“I wasn’t nervous about holding the baby.” Josie broke away from him. “That is ridiculous. I’ve held hundreds of babies working in clinicals.”

He shook his head as they reached Laura. “Not the same—it’s never the same when you hold one that means so much to you.”

Tears filled Laura’s eyes. “That’s how I feel too—like I’ve just been handed this tiny thing and its very breath relies on me.”

“That’s because it does,” said Mike, who joined the conversation in the hallway. “And on me,” he added.

“And me,” said a voice from behind as a giant giraffe head poked through the door.

A loud, lusty cry came from the bassinet in the room and Laura took off in a near-sprint, stopping after two steps and then gingerly finishing the trek to Jillian. Mike yawned, covering his mouth and apologizing in muffled tones through the sound. At 8:30 in the morning the yawn would have seemed out of place to anyone who didn’t know just how sleep-deprived they all were.

“We’re going to go home and get some real sleep as soon as the baby settles down,” Mike said. “Laura can manage for a few hours, plus they’ll take Jillian—” He stopped short as the name came out of him, brow furrowed in a pensive expression.

“It’ll take some getting used to, won’t it?” Dylan commented. His face mirrored Mike’s.

“It’s okay, though.” Laura’s voice was strong and focused. “Her name suits her.”

Dylan took the crying baby from Laura and began singing softly, a song Josie didn’t know. The baby quieted immediately and seemed to focus her cloudy, bluish-brown eyes right on him. Mugging for her, he made cooing sounds, keeping Jillian transfixed. Josie hoped her dad had been like that with her when she was a little bundle of new flesh and love like Jillian. The unexpected thought made it suddenly hard to breathe, and she wanted to crawl out of her own skin.

“I think I’ll go soon, too,” Josie said, giving Dylan a short salute. “You guys are carrying on totally fine.”
Nothing’s fine
, she thought, edging toward the door.

Dylan handed the baby off to Laura and turned to the stuffed animal he’d brought, animating the eight-foot giraffe. “Hear that? It’s fine, Daddy Mike.” The giraffe was the only thing in the room taller than Mike, forcing him to look up to it. Standing on tiptoes, Mike gave it a big smooch on the mouth.

“Daddy Mike? That’s what you’re calling each other? Daddy Mike and Daddy Dylan?”

“What else are we supposed to call ourselves?”

“How about Billionaire One and Billionaire Two?” Josie smirked. Laura gave her a warning look, but clearly was amused. Alex stared at all four faces, bemused.

“There’s an inside joke here that I’m not getting.”

“There are a
lot
of inside jokes here that you’re not getting, dude,” Dylan replied.

“Yeah,” Josie said, looking hard at Dylan. “It’s—”

Laura, Dylan, and Mike, from behind, all shouted, “Complicated!”

Frowning, Alex looked around the room again, then zeroed in on Josie. “Since they’re so complicated, how about you and I go do something
simple
?”

“That’s awfully forward of you,” she said, pulling her shoulders back, pretending to be coy.

“I meant let’s go for a walk. That simple enough for you?”

“Oh.” She couldn’t think of anything else to say. Getting out of the hospital would go a long way toward helping her to figure out how the hell she could get back to some semblance of stable. “Okay.” She and Alex waved and left the new family to settle the baby and say their own goodbyes.

Chapter Six

As they rode the elevators down to the main entrance, Josie’s mind flipped through three thousand one hundred and twenty-two scenarios, most of them involving being fucked against the side of the elevator wall.

Damn
Grey’s Anatomy
for putting these ideas in her head. Ever since that show had come on, every hospital had a running joke about doctors and nurses having sex in elevators—and here they were, completely alone, riding down four flights. The half-smirk on his face as they stared straight ahead made her wonder what Alex was thinking right now.

The nearest coffee shop was a good five blocks away, and Alex turned toward it, which told Josie that this was going to be no simple, short stroll around the hospital grounds, but more like a…date.

Date? The word seemed too formal, as if she were ascribing something to this interaction that gave it more meaning than it really had. He walked slowly, and she was grateful; his long legs could have taken strides that made her walk as quickly as an officious little child. He didn’t seem bothered by having to walk slower. That relaxed, casual nature made him comfortable with whatever situation he found himself in. His outfit was pleasant and the way that his pants hung on his hips and cupped his ass was much more appealing to look at than even the flowering dogwoods that lined many of the homes they walked past.

There was an ease to this that threatened to overwhelm her—the exact opposite of what it ought to have done. When you meet someone and you find yourself transported into a place of calm serenity, aren’t you supposed to feel calm and serene? Wasn’t that how this worked? Why would his neutral, casual nature make her so anxious? The sky seemed a little too blue, the sun a little too sharp, and the cars driving past all seemed to be making pings and knocks and
vrooms
, creating a tapestry of sound that further overwhelmed her senses.

From all appearances, Alex shared none of the melodrama she was experiencing in every cell of her body. Damn him. His face was open, tipped slightly up, as if soaking in the rays. A beautiful May day like this in the Boston area was not unheard of, but it was certainly rare. She was happy to be outside with a light breeze blowing through her hair, strolling with someone who represented a new beginning. Allowing herself that one concession of hope allowed her shoulders to lower, her body willed to relax by her mind.

They walked pleasantly without any tension between them, despite the tension within her, for about half a block, when he turned to her and smiled down, asking, “Do you know this area?”

“Only from picking up shifts here. I know we’re headed toward the strip, the center of town, where we’ll find restaurants and coffee shops.”

He nodded. “Yeah, I was thinking about going to the little one.”

“Anyplace but Jeddy’s,” she said, and he laughed.

“You’ve been there?” he asked.

“Who hasn’t been there?” she responded quickly.

He shrugged. “That’s true. Heck, even my grandpa’s been there.”

“Really? That doesn’t surprise me. I think that place has been around since before your grandfather’s father.”

“Well, I don’t think he went there, ’cause he was in Armenia. Lived there his whole life.”

“Oh, so you’re one of the many Watertown Armenians.”

“My name should have given it away,” he answered.

“Anything that ends with -ian, right?” She laughed. “I come from Ohio, so this is all something that I had to learn when I moved here. Mendham isn’t exactly unusual.”

“No, I’d imagine it’s not. English?”

She nodded. “I guess so, I don’t know. Nobody from my family came from anywhere as far as I’m concerned. We don’t exactly have in-depth genealogists running around in my branch of the family tree.”

He paused and frowned—a look of curiosity, not of upset. “What do you mean?”

“I’m the first one…to get away,” she said. “I was about to say I was the first one to go to college, but that’s not true, my father had a master’s degree. But even he never left central Ohio. My whole family is from there, and is still there. My mom’s back home, and I go back every year, but mostly to visit my niece. Well, she’s not really my niece—we’re cousins—but she’s so much younger that I…” Why was she talking about this? She could feel her mouth moving, the words coming out. She was functional and cognitively grounded, in that the sentences had proper syntax, the words made sense, and yet they poured out of her mouth like something in a cartoon bubble, that went on, and on, and on. From sheer nervousness, her brain just kept forming words, and her mouth kept spitting them out. Cutting herself off, though, seemed impossible, until finally, she just abruptly stopped.

“Oh, look,” she said, pointing, “there’s the coffee shop.” It was lame, but it got her to stop spewing nonsensical shit out of her mouth.

“What’s your favorite drink?” he asked. “Wait”—he interrupted her before she could even answer—“let me guess.”

She stopped, planted her hands on her hips. “Go ahead, give it a try.”

“You’re a…latte kind of person.”

She cocked her head, looked down, thinking about that for a moment. He was right. Should she tell him he was right, or should she make him sweat it out?

“C’mon, I’m right, aren’t I?”

She looked up, flinched a little, surprised by the confidence in his voice. He really thought he knew her, and damn if he wasn’t right. “You’re right. Lattes. Boring. Occasionally, I’ll have a triple if I need the extra caffeine, but…”

“Espresso doesn’t have as much caffeine as you’d think,” they said in unison.

This time she flinched, but in a completely different way. “You
know
that?” she asked.

“
You
know that?” he countered.

They both laughed.

“How about me? Guess my drink,” he said, waving at his chest, as they slowly made their way into the threshold of the coffee shop.

“I know you like coffee with milk from our…interaction,” she said slowly, “the other night.”

“Interaction?” He smiled. “Is that the word you use for it? I have plenty of better words.”

“I’ll bet you do.”

The barista looked at them expectantly. Josie could feel eyes on her, sense them and then see them out of the corner of her eye. It was as if everyone else in the room were from a different planet. As all his attention was on her, completely focused, waiting for something that she knew she was capable of giving, but hadn’t known that until this moment.

“Macchiato,” she snapped.

He pulled his head back, a bit perplexed. “What?”

“Macchiato. You’re a macchiato guy. Not that Starbucks crap, either.”

The barista flashed a giant grin at her. This was an independent coffee house, built into what had probably once been a barber’s shop. The long, narrow space was shabby chic, with painted chalkboard walls and a handwritten menu colorfully chalked up daily. The biggest investment in this space was in the espresso machine, which looked like something out of the Steampunk Exhibition at the Charles River Museum of Industry.

“You’re right,” he said quietly. “How’d you know?”

“You’re
that
kind of guy,” she said, leaning back against the counter, needing the support to say what she was about to say. “You can sense, and taste, and feel the subtleties of life. You don’t need to cover up anything with a bunch of milk and a ton of sweetener to make something bitter go down. You savor what you seek, and you know something special when you find it.” The end of her sentence came out husky and dark, like a gasp. The pit of her stomach tightened as she acknowledged the reality of her words; speaking the truth about herself wasn’t something she did well. Actually, it wasn’t something she did at
all
. This felt like sitting in a confessional, with Alex the priest on the other side of the screen. Except,
thank you, Jesus
, Alex was no priest. The deeper truth of who she was burbled to the surface, as if he conjured it or pulled it out of her with a magnetic force that only he possessed.

“Macchiato, huh?” he said with a lopsided grin. “You’re right.” He shook his head slowly, looked at the barista. “A latte and a macchiato, please.” The barista just jutted his chin up in acknowledgment and got to work on the giant, shiny espresso machine. “I do like to taste life exactly as it is,” he said, gesturing to Josie to take a table. There weren’t many, most of the spots taken by people using the coffee shop as a pseudo-office, but there were two, and he grabbed the most private.

She sat down, grateful to give her shaking legs a rest. Talking about herself, talking about anyone, in such true terms wasn’t something she was used to. But she’d done it, she’d actually told him something deep about her soul and about how she saw him, and he was still here. But holy shit, now she had to continue talking and so did he.

This wasn’t like in the movies, or in a book, where the scene ends on this dramatic, intense moment and then switches over to three days later, with the main female character engaging in chatty banter with her best friend, confessing what had happened. Josie couldn’t skip to a charming reflection that perfectly encapsulated all of the heroine’s foibles and her journey toward accepting that love conquers all.

Oh, no.

Instead, she found herself fumbling to know what to do with her hands, her hips, her knees and feet, and the millions of brain cells flying fast and furious inside her skull, trying to compose a sense of self by making it up as she went along, second by second in Alex’s presence. She still had to sit here, and talk to him, and get to know him, and do
what
next? Pretend she hadn’t said such revealing, visceral observations about him?

He leaned forward on the tabletop and invaded her space as much as she could handle. Deep breaths helped center her as she willed herself not to pull back. It would have been too easy to lean casually into the chair’s back and pretend that it was her sarcastic facade that made her so casual, so blasé. She had that, she possessed it—or rather, it possessed her. It was the comfortable and the known, but…at some point in the past two days, the comfortable and the known had become claustrophobic and stifling.

Alex was a breath of fresh air, and the Josie that she was just starting to get a peek of when she was around him needed more oxygen—not more containment.