Pretty soon, she really did fall back asleep, but she was awakened when Jameson started crying. She and Nick didn’t have time to be embarrassed at their inadvertent intimacy.
“You want to do the diaper or the milk?” she asked, forcing herself to come back awake. He stretched as he stood, which caused his T-shirt to bare an expanse of toned abs. She mentally filed that image away to enjoy later.
“I’ll take the milk,” he said. “Diaper’s all yours.” Yawning, he headed for the kitchen and she scooped up the fussing baby and changed his diaper. She returned him to the bassinet so she could use the bathroom herself and re-do her ponytail.
Nick had the feeding underway when she returned.
“Look at you, giving that bottle like an expert. You look like an experienced dad,” she said.
“I don’t feel like one. Good God, how do some people do this with several kids? Don’t they drop dead of exhaustion after the first one?”
“Honestly, I’m not sure. I guess people get used to it. Having to mess with making bottles makes it harder. But, after the newborn stage, you usually get more sleep. The first few weeks are a killer for sure, though.”
“I guess I’m up for the day now. Matthew is going to come running in here any second now, wanting breakfast. He’s getting cold cereal today, I’ll tell you that right now.”
“So, I guess I’ll leave when Patty and Brad get home.”
“Want a bowl of corn flakes or something?”
“I’m not inclined to be picky right now,” Julie said. He pointed to where everything was kept and she set the table for three. Sure enough, Matthew came running out, attempting to launch himself into his uncle’s arms. Nick handed the baby to Julie so she could finish giving him his bottle while he dealt with getting Matthew changed and dressed.
Jameson had no intention of lying quietly in his bassinet now. He was wide awake and looking around. Matthew jumped out of his chair and gave him a big hug.
“You love your brother, don’t you?” Julie asked, just trying to include him in the conversation.
“Yep,” he said.
“He’s a man of few words,” Julie said to Nick, smiling.
“He’s shy. He’ll open up when he gets to know you better.”
Julie smiled at that. Ordinarily, she probably wouldn’t meet Matthew again, unless Patty had another baby or she simply ran into the family out in public. Did Nick mean that he meant for them to spend more time together? He’d suggested they go dancing, but maybe that was just a momentary thought. He’d stroked her hair, but he might have been doing that unconsciously in his sleep. Still, she had to admit she was seeing him in a different light now, in spite of having had such a terrible first impression.
She hadn’t touched her bowl of cereal, because Jameson seemed to want to be held and jiggled. Matthew was a poky eater and much of his serving was still untouched. Nick had finished his.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I should take him so you can eat,” he said, reaching out his arms. She handed the baby over, and he followed her example with the baby-jiggling. Julie suddenly felt shy about eating in front of him. It was something she thought most plus-size girls struggled with; if you ate too much, or too quickly, people might judge you for it. It was the same reason she never went for seconds at a buffet. A thin girl could do that, but a heavier girl risked drawing disapproving stares.
He wasn’t paying any attention, however, so she ate her cereal at what she hoped was an unremarkable pace and then carried his bowl and her own to the sink and rinsed them. Matthew was still working on his.
“I’m guessing Patty will be released after morning rounds, but it can take a while for them to get all the paperwork done, so it’s anybody’s guess what time she’ll actually be able to leave. I can stay until she gets here, though.” It was Saturday, so there were no classes.
“I feel super guilty, but I also feel super grateful,” he said.
“Well, if for some reason she’s in there a little longer, I could swing by and pick up whatever milk she’s pumped and bring it back here,” she said. “We have two more bags of milk, though, and he just ate, so she’s probably going to be home long before that becomes necessary.”
At this, Matthew began looking around and asking for his mommy. Julie realized there were probably many mornings he had breakfast with his dad or uncle, and he hadn’t immediately realized his mom wasn’t in the house. Now that he did know, he was unhappy. His bottom lip stuck out and big tears began rolling down his cheeks.
“Mommy will be home in a little while,” Nick said.
“I want Mommy now!” The dam broke, and the easy, complacent child was gone, replaced by one who was inconsolable. Nick shrugged and handed Jameson to Julie so he could concentrate on Matthew, who was crying in earnest.
Nick carried him into his room and Julie could hear that he was trying unsuccessfully to take his attention off his mother being gone by waving tempting toys in his face. She knew that approach was doomed, so she stepped through the open bedroom door.
“Matthew, do you have crayons?”
Nick looked at her like she was crazy. What family with small children doesn’t? He pointed to a shelf filled with art supplies, and Julie shifted the baby’s position so she could carry a box of crayons to the kitchen table.
“You know what I want to do? I want to make a pretty card for your mommy to see when she comes home in a little while. Can you help me?”
Matthew wasn’t completely taken in by this ruse, but he agreed to help make the card, and soon enough he’d taken over the job for himself.
He was scribbling solid blue onto a piece of paper, and Julie and Nick kept admiring it and telling him how much his Mommy would like it. It did the trick, eventually, with him making a whole pile of art for his mom to see.
Nick’s phone buzzed and a look crossed his face like that of a man who just won a million dollars.
“Oh, they’re on their way home!” Julie didn’t know who was more relieved — Nick or Matthew.
“I’ll just quickly spruce up the kitchen a bit,” she said. “I don’t want her to feel like there’s a single thing she needs to do today but nurse the baby and cuddle Matthew.”
“Thanks,” Nick said. He looked suitably grateful but didn’t even try to talk her out of it.
“And order a pizza or something tonight,” she said. “Make it easy on her.”
“Don’t worry. We aren’t going to let her do sh— anything for a few days,” he said, sheepishly. “I have the hardest time remembering not to say certain words in front of him,” he added. “When I first moved in here, I dropped a box and said you-know-what. The next day, this guy here dropped a toy truck and yelled the same word. Patty was not pleased.”
Julie laughed. “Same. But I’m well trained by now so I curse like a schoolmarm. Goodness, gracious! Heavens! Shucks!”
“Shocking language,” Nick said.
“Ah, shove it up your … nose,” she joked, then immediately realized her mistake.
“Shove it up your nose!” Matthew said with obvious delight. “Shove it up your nose!”
“Sorry,” Julie said. “I hope he stops saying that before his mom gets home.
“Shove it up your nose!” was Matthew’s response to that. Julie and Nick looked at each other, trying to hold back their laughter. Nick pursed his lips to hide his smile, and she turned her head away from Matthew to hide her amusement
“If he knows we think it’s funny, he’s never going to stop,” she whispered to Nick.
“Shove it up your nose!” Matthew kept yelling. Now he was running around the table, shouting it as loudly as he could.
And that was when Brad and Patty opened the door, just in time to witness their toddler son delightedly running at top speed and repeatedly shouting his favorite new phrase. At least Patty was coming home to a content baby, Julie reasoned.
The sight of his mom was what finally convinced Matthew to give it a rest. He launched himself into Patty�
�s arms, and she hugged him while asking how Jameson was doing.
“Surprisingly good,” Nick said, bringing Jameson to her. “But we owe Julie another big thank-you. I honestly don’t know how I would have managed without her help.”
“It was nothing,” Julie said. Then she turned to Patty. “I’m just glad you’re OK.”
“Thanks,” she said. “Don’t worry, I learned my lesson. The ER nurse scolded me!”
“She scolded me, too,” Brad said, “for letting her lift heavy boxes. I was about to cry at one point, seriously. But then she felt bad and brought me some horrible coffee.”
Julie felt a suspicion she knew who the ER nurse had been. “Was she really pretty, 30s, with blonde hair and green eyes?”
“Yep, that was her,” Patty said.
“That’s Lori. She’s a great nurse. She and I did an emergency birth together once at a party, and she was close to pursuing a master’s in midwifery, but ultimately switched to emergency medicine. She’s a very good nurse. You were scolded by the best.”
“You’ll have to tell me that story sometime,” Patty said. “But I promised I’d go straight to bed and I don’t want Lori to find out I didn’t. Anyway, sounds like you and Nick made a good team last night, huh?”
Julie felt herself blush, something she couldn’t control. It came with the territory for most redheads. But Nick answered.
“We did. I learned a lot about taking care of babies and toddlers from her.” This didn’t reduce Julie’s blushing at all, but she smiled.
She felt more at ease when she kept busy, so she offered to help Patty get her pumped milk in the freezer and then she politely made her goodbyes and headed home. With any luck, she’d be able to get a nap.
Chapter 6
A nap was going to be out of the question, she immediately realized when she got home. The kids were all restless for no apparent reason, which wasn’t that unusual a circumstance. Jolene’s beautiful eyes were red rimmed, with smudges of dark circles beneath them. Julie ordered her to bed for a nap and took the children for a walk. Getting Georgie into the stroller was an ordeal he fought with every fiber of his being, but the rest of the crew walked happily along. Her goal was to tire them out, but the walk tired her out, too — and she was already quite worn out. But the sun was warm and bright and she felt her mood lift.
She saw the next door neighbor, Lila, jogging off in the distance. Lila was divorced and in her early 40s and could be seen jogging every morning and nearly every afternoon. She generally wore a sports bra and small, tight exercise shorts and looked like she’d stepped out of an exercise video. Her high ponytail bounced with every step. So did her large breasts. How such a thin, muscular woman had such large breasts was a favorite matter of speculation for Julie and Jolene. They assumed she had implants. “Which is fine,” Jolene had said. “But it might have looked more natural if she’d chosen a slightly smaller cup size.”
The woman’s abs were sculpted into perfection. Lila didn’t work outside the home and had no children. Working out seemed to be her favorite pastime. Julie always felt like a big lump compared to her.
Lila was catching up to them fast. As she reached Julie and her crew, she jogged in place for a few steps and called out what she must have thought was encouragement. “That’s it, Julie! A little more exercise and you’ll lose that tummy in no time!” She patted her own rock-hard abs and smiled sweetly, then jogged on. Julie felt her sunny mood darken.
After a thorough tour of the neighborhood, she shepherded the somewhat subdued kids into the house and put together a simple lunch of soup and sandwiches.
Jolene joined them toward the end of the meal, looking somewhat refreshed.
“Thanks,” she said. “I really needed a nap.”
“No problem. You look revived now,” Julie said.
“It’s you who needs a nap now, I think,” Jolene said. “Did Mr. Shampoo Commercial put all the baby care on you?”
“Actually, no. Nick was a fast learner and I could see that he really loves his nephews. He just didn’t know what to do at first, and he couldn’t very well call his sister.”
“How is his sister?”
“She’s fine. It was more of a scare than anything, but still, excessive postpartum bleeding is nothing to mess with. She’d been lifting heavy boxes. I told her that even if you feel great, that doesn’t mean your body has finished healing. I’d say she learned her lesson.”
“I notice he’s Nick, now, not Mr. Shampoo Commercial. It sounds like you have a better opinion of him now. You bonded over bottles and diapers?”
“Kind of, actually. He even suggested we might go dancing. This was after we were dancing the babies around the room together to get them to sleep.” She didn’t mention what song they were singing; Jolene would not have been amused by that, she knew.
Jolene raised an eyebrow. “Dancing? I thought you agreed you were done with men?”
“It’s just dancing. And I don’t even know if he’ll call me, anyway.”
But just then her phone buzzed, and she knew without looking at it who it was probably from. Sure enough, it was Nick. Did she want to go dancing tonight? There was an ‘80s night at a Springfield bar. She hadn’t been to any bar but The Clipper in ages. Come to think of it, she hadn’t been to The Clipper for a while, either.
“That was him, right?” Jolene asked.
“It was, but I’m far too tired to go out tonight,” she said. “I was exhausted before I went to Patty’s. No way I could manage a night out tonight.”
“Oh, come on. Between studying, births and helping with this crew, you never see any friends. You’re only young once.”
“I already had the college student experience the first time around. I don’t have the energy for it now.”
“Nonsense. I tell you what — if you go out dancing with Mr. Shampoo Commercial, I will take the kids to church with me tomorrow alone. You can sleep in, guaranteed, unless somebody goes into labor.”
“I don’t have anyone due just now, so barring emergencies, I’m safe. OK, you’ve convinced me. I’ll just load up on some coffee before I leave,” she said.
She texted Nick and he said he’d pick her up. That surprised her. Most guys would have suggested meeting her there, she knew. Maybe he was old-fashioned.
She knew if she let herself fall asleep, she’d never wake up in time to get ready. Better to stay awake and alert. So she decided to catch up on some studying instead, settling down with her laptop and a cup of strong coffee. By the time she needed to get ready, she felt positively wired and more than ready to dance. She sorted through her tiny closet, trying to figure out what looked the most retro. She pulled up an ‘80s station on a streaming app to get into the mood and danced around to some of the good ones.
The problem was she didn’t exactly have a great wardrobe. She hadn’t bought anything new in some time. These days, she dressed for ease and comfort, not for style. She did an online search for ‘80s images and decided she’d cut the neckline out of an oversized older T-shirt she didn’t mind sacrificing, and pair it with her beloved yoga pants. She found a vintage Madonna hairdo she thought she could approximate with the help of something from Lizzie’s vast hair bow collection and half a can of hairspray, and set to work getting ready.
“What happened to your shirt?” Lizzie asked, when she saw her.
“This is how people wore their shirts in the olden days,” she teased.
“Oh,” she said, completely buying it. “So now that you are getting old, are you going to start cutting off all your clothes like the olden days?
“Yeah, probably,” she said.
“Mom said a boy is picking you up.”
“His name is Nick. We’re going dancing.”
“Don’t marry him, OK?” the little girl cautioned.
“Not planning to,” Julie said, worrying that Lizzie had picked up some anti-marriage vibes from either her mother or herself. She vowed to be more careful about being overheard.
“You look great,” Jolene said. She was wearing a dark green dressing gown and her hair was loose around her shoulders. Julie thought that even in chill-out mode, her sister looked exceptional, but her beauty hadn’t made a difference in her marriage. Ken didn’t seem to appreciate his wife’s looks or her sweet personality, she thought with a pang. She kissed her sister on the cheek.
“Thanks,” she said. “I hope this loose shirt wasn’t a mistake. I’m worried I look more pregnant than you do.”
“Stop it. You need to have more confidence in yourself. I wouldn’t have said you look great if I didn’t mean it. I wouldn’t lie. You looked like warmed over death when you got home. You look revived now.”
“A whole pot of dark roast coffee will do that,” she joked. And then the doorbell rang.
Eddie answered it before she had a chance, and all the children ran up to Nick, who looked somewhat overwhelmed and was dressed the same way he had been the first two times she’d seen him: Ordinary-looking jeans, ordinary-looking T-shirt, extraordinary-looking hair. Nothing to go with the ‘80s theme. He looked so boyish that she almost felt she might be robbing the cradle.
“You look like a red-haired Madonna,” he said. “Nice.”
“Thanks. This is the welcoming committee,” Julie said. “Eddie, Lizzie, Tori and Georgie.”
“Hey, all named for royalty,” Nick said. Julie was impressed. Most people never noticed that, unless the children’s full names were used.
“Mine is, too,” Julie said. “My grandmother was named for Queen Juliana, one of the Dutch queens. And I was named for her.”
“On the other hand, I was not named for the last czar of Russia, in case you were wondering.”
“I wasn’t, but good to know,” Julie said. This had to be the weirdest beginning-of-date conversation ever, she thought.
Perfect Fit (Small-Town Secrets-Fairview Series Book 4) Page 5
