Our Options Have Changed: On Hold Series Book #1

by Julia Kent

  “Of course. Just not this one, Nick.” I’m a pro. Holly’s freshened up in under two minutes, and I hand her back to him, triumphant.

  “How about we take her for a walk in her stroller?” Nick suggests, using a sing-songy voice, the low timbre of his voice soothing. “If she falls asleep, we can find an outdoor table somewhere for dinner.”

  “Food that isn’t microwaved? Dinner that isn’t delivered in a white cardboard carton? What is this planet you live on?”

  “Planet Empty Nest,” he whispers as, on his own, he finds the stroller and uses Jedi Mind Tricks to get Holly on her back and snuggled up in the little pod, blankets tucked neatly around her.

  Ouch. Not sure what to say to that.

  I pop the pacifier in her mouth, then look up at him and say what I’m really thinking.

  “You are a god,” I say, completely sincerely, in awe at his prowess.

  With babies.

  “I hear that a lot.” He shoots me a grin as he reaches for me, warm hands on my waist, the hug delightful even if my face is smashed against Holly’s burp cloth. “Mostly in bed.”

  Nick

  The joke is awful. Terrible. I’m not on my game, but I have to say something to cover for the “Planet Empty Nest” comment. The look on Chloe’s face feels like a slap.

  But I’m not taking it back.

  A kiss is a perfect way to delay the chance that I’ll say something stupid again, so I go for it. She melts into me, her body different, looser and more casual, even as I feel the effects of stress and sleep deprivation in the way she holds herself. Chloe tastes good. Great.

  And then the baby starts to cry.

  Chloe breaks away instantly, practically leaping away from me as if I’d burned her, eyes wild. Her reflexes are primed for newborn care, attention swiftly focused on the baby as she fusses over her in the stroller, muttering aloud about whether to pick her up or not.

  “Let’s get her outside in the fresh air,” I say, taking the decision away from her. She looks at me with those big brown eyes, circles under them, the slight slant at the corners somehow deeper, the charm intensified by her vulnerability. With a grateful air, she follows as I steer the stroller out her front door, picking it up and walking down the handful of stairs to the sidewalk.

  I turn around to find her gaping at me.

  “What?” I ask.

  “You did that so effortlessly. I have to turn the stroller around and coax it down, one step at a time, careful to make sure poor Holly doesn’t bunch up at the end like a neatly-folded suit in a carryon.”

  Holly’s wiggling under the blanket, trying to decide whether she’s upset or not.

  “Let’s move,” I say quietly. Funny how all this baby stuff kicks in after years of not doing it, like riding a bicycle.

  Or making love.

  Within a minute, the baby has settled down, and Chloe’s squinting in the sun. She looks like a hermit who has lived in a cave for a year and is finally seeing daylight.

  We pass by my car. I look at Chloe, then at the box on my backseat. Holly begins to snurgle and Chloe’s distracted, hovering. I seize the chance and pull the box out of the back seat, tucking it in the carriage bottom.

  “What’s that?”

  I bite back a grin. “You’ll see.” Might as well get this over with. The damn thing is like a bad penny. I assume she’ll throw it away once I give it to her. As we walk, Chloe pushing the stroller now, I begin to have second thoughts.

  “Thank you,” she says with a sigh, her shoulders releasing, one hand massaging her own neck. “I’ve been taking her out for walks, but then she cries and I can’t calm her down. You ever start crying with your baby?”

  “Can’t say I ever did.”

  “It’s pretty embarrassing. Especially when you cry louder than the infant.”

  I rest the palm of my hand on her back. She lets out a little sound, so faint I almost don’t catch it. The sweetness in it, the unbearable contentment, makes me want to elicit that sound from her every day.

  We walk like this, happy and free, Chloe nattering with great pleasure about Holly’s daily habits, her birthmarks, the way she pulls her fists into her sleeves and how she already sticks her tongue out in imitation. I watch Chloe, who is the same woman I met a month ago, yet she’s different.

  She isn’t pregnant. Didn’t give birth.

  But she glows.

  “How does it feel?” I ask her as we halt at a stoplight, waiting our turn.

  “What? Being a mother?”

  “How does it feel to have gone through so much work to get here—and now you’re here?”

  She blinks, taking in a deep breath, nodding, her mind clearly churning to find the right answer. I like this about her. She doesn’t react.

  Chloe processes.

  “Inevitable.” She says just one word, then smiles. Her eyes say she’s tired, but her mouth says she’s thrilled.

  “That’s one hell of an answer to unpack.”

  “Is it? Why?”

  The light changes. We begin to enter the crosswalk as an older woman walks in tandem with us, peeking in the stroller.

  She beams.

  “Congratulations, you two! How old is your baby?”

  I damn near freeze in the middle of the crosswalk.

  “She’s almost two weeks old,” Chloe answers, smooth as silk. Looking right at me, she smiles, raising one shoulder just enough to say, Go with it.

  My throat tightens. My pulse races. I put one foot in front of the other and my hand that rests on Chloe’s shoulder feels like it’s a thousand pounds.

  “Beautiful! Is she your first?”

  Chloe’s eyes widen. The ruse has gone too far.

  “No,” I say truthfully. “She’s not.” I don’t mention that she’s not mine at all.

  “Enjoy! They grow up so fast!” The woman pivots to make a left turn. “Mine are in college now. I’d trade the freedom for a day of their babyhood in a heartbeat.”

  I can’t feel my feet. I can’t hear traffic. A roar of blood pounds my ears. I’m walking only because of primal programming that warns my rat brain to get out of the way of the big metal predators in the road.

  Chloe laughs softly, the sound full of questions.

  “That was cute.”

  That was something.

  Just as we reach the curb, Holly starts to scream, a high-pitched, frantic newborn cry that requires an instantaneous response. Chloe’s arms are under her in seconds, lifting the baby up, the red-faced scream continuing, unabated.

  It’s like having fingernails raked down an exposed nerve.

  The sound triggers a kind of parenting PTSD in me, taking me back twenty years. My body becomes my twenty-two-year-old self, my eyes overly alert and senses on edge.

  “What’s wrong, honeybee?” Chloe coos. “It’s okay.” She makes some shhh shhh shhh sounds to soothe the baby while I stand there, dumbly, blinking in the sunlight.

  “Is Elo – um, Holly okay?” Damn. Almost called her by my daughter’s name.

  “I don’t know! She doesn’t scream like this.”

  And then Holly lets out a frat-boy belch that my brother would approve of.

  Spit up pours out of her like a volcano.

  Chloe goes into awkward new-parent mode, trying to avoid being a target, while comforting one pissed-off infant.

  Breaking out of my trance, I hand her the first thing I find in the carriage bottom.

  “Here.”

  She begins mopping up Holly, then stops. “Joe?”

  Shit. She’s forgotten my name.

  “No. Nick.”

  Her laugh comes out as a gaspy-wheezy sound, like she’s having an asthma attack. “No, I mean – how did Joe’s old Coldplay t-shirt get into my daughter’s stroller? I thought I got rid of this.” She wrinkles her nose. “It smells like his old cologne.”

  I look in the carriage bottom. The top of the shoebox where I stored the auction items bounced off, the contents of the box spi
lling out. I happened to grab what turns out to be her ex-lover’s t-shirt.

  “Um.” My brilliant response rings through the air.

  Chloe’s eyebrows go up.

  “Nick?”

  “If you’re going to mop up baby puke, a Coldplay t-shirt is a great candidate.”

  She doesn’t laugh. Damn.

  This is going downhill fast. A glimmer of light on water catches my eye.

  “Let’s walk to the bridge,” I say, my hand on her back as she puts Holly down. The baby’s front is wet, but she settles in quietly, bubble thoroughly evacuated.

  The look on Chloe’s face makes it clear a long explanation is in order.

  One more block and we’re at the Charles River, coxswains calling out orders and encouragement to their crew teams, kayakers frolicking in the water. The early fall weather draws people out of their tiny boxes in the city, giving Cambridge an air of vitality. Students fill the streets, going for runs, wearing backpacks, and cluttering the side roads.

  “How, exactly, did you come to possess my ex’s t-shirt?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  She points to the now-sleeping Holly, one corner of her mouth twisting up with mirth. “I’ve got about twenty minutes.”

  “Not sure that’s long enough.”

  “That’s what she said.” Chloe speaks through the side of her mouth, tone husky and with great affect. But she’s tightly-wound and twitchy.

  I groan.

  “Spill.”

  Bending down, I re-collect Joe’s auction items, placing them carefully in the box, the strap-on centered on top of the rest of the items. I stand up holding a closed parcel.

  “Here.” I thrust it at her.

  She opens it, nearly choking as she sees what’s on top.

  Then she looks at me and says dryly, “Most guys wait until the third date to suggest the strap-on.”

  My butthole clenches involuntarily.

  “Oh, god,” she groans. “This is, um… I know this particular strap-on.”

  “Intimately, I’d imagine.”

  She looks up sharply, real anger in her face, and it’s clear I’ve crossed a line.

  Damn, she’s hot when she’s pissed.

  “This is Joe’s stuff! These are all the items he used to leave at my place while we… when we were...” A speculative horror fills her face. “Why are you gifting me a sex toy Joe bought after seeing Deadpool?” She fishes around the box, horror filling her features. “And no, I did not use it on him! He begged me, but...”

  I start to laugh.

  “—we never even got to March for International Women’s Day!”

  I stop laughing.

  Chloe grips the stroller and slowly begins to back away from me, a protective air around her. “What is this, Nick? Did you do something to Joe?”

  “Do something?”

  “You had him in a headlock that day at the office. Maybe you’ve… hurt him?”

  “Hurt him? Hurt him how?”

  “How else would you have these very personal items of his?”

  “I bought them. Paid $1,077.51 in an auction.”

  “Auction? You spent what? You’re not making any sense.”

  “Ever heard of a site called Never Liked It Anyway?”

  Her hand flies to her mouth. The strap-on drops out of her other hand and plunks softly on the bonnet of Holly’s carriage, rolling slightly to settle into a groove. It looks like a space-age dog toy.

  That would be one hell of a game of fetch.

  “He didn’t! Joe did not sell my… our… what?” Her face fills with genuine horror and shock.

  “You didn’t know?” I’m blown away. “Chloe, the auction was all over social media. One of those three-day phenomenons shared all over Facebook, Tumblr, Snapchat, Twitter – you name it. No one in modern America could have missed it.”

  “Henry and Jemma said something about a porn star with a name like mine having an ex sell their sex toys online. It was right in the middle of Li giving birth and disappearing, so I put it out of my head and – oh, my god, Nick, how many people know about this?” She points at the strap-on.

  “A few million?” I guess.

  “I’m ruined.”

  “Not really. Between buying Joe’s auction items and shutting down his account, and having Charlie get a hacker to—”

  “Charlie knows about this?”

  “Sure.”

  “Who else? And how did you find out about it?”

  “Elodie.”

  “Your daughter found out my ex was selling our shared strap-on and sought you out to tell you?”

  Progressive parenting at its finest.

  “It didn’t quite go that way.” Although she’s damn close.

  Chloe begins to pant slightly, the sound a little too close to hyperventilation for comfort. Holly sucks on her pacifier like it’s an Olympic sport. I feel like I made a terrible mistake, but I can’t take it back.

  I glance at the strap-on.

  Definitely can’t take that back.

  Seizing the item by the dildo end, Chloe pulls her arm back with impressive form. She must have played softball from a young age, because the pitch has perfect arc and aim, flying rubber tip over belt as she releases the strap-on into the throw.

  I resist the urge to hum the theme to Wonder Woman.

  As the strap-on makes its third mid-air revolution, the bow of a racing shell filled with eight rowers shoots from under the bridge.

  Chloe’s throw is perfect.

  The strap-on beans the coxswain right in the head.

  Then plunks into the water, like a very porny orca at a Sea World aquatics show.

  “Hey!” The coxswain looks around wildly, focusing on us. We’re the only two people by the bridge.

  And then Chloe kisses me, her mouth tight and fierce against mine, lips bruised as she bangs into me, teeth aching until one hand settles on my shirt, pressing into my ribs, and she softens, the kiss taking new form.

  “What’s that for?” I mumble against her mouth, wanting more of it, my hands mimicking hers, one palm on the stroller handle, one on Chloe’s ass.

  “For being so deeply depraved.”

  “That deserves a kiss?”

  “Here’s the problem,” she whispers. “You don’t look like a weirdo.”

  “That’s a problem?”

  “You look like one of those guys who has his shit together. A grownup. A real one. The kind I find intimidating.”

  “Intimidating.”

  “Yeah. The kind of guy who would never flash a nipple to a conference room because of a bustier malfunction.”

  “That will never happen,” I agree, looking down at my chest.

  “The kind of guy who doesn’t make mistakes. Who is guided by certainty.”

  “I look like that guy?”

  “You are that guy.”

  In her eyes, I am.

  “Chloe,” I say, kissing her ear. “I’m Nick. I’m a father and a man and a director and a guy. I’m imperfect and uncertain sometimes. I make mistakes and I can be gross and I yell and get upset.”

  “You? Gross? Charlie, sure. But not you.”

  “Spend enough time with me and you’ll see.”

  She answers that with a kiss.

  “I knew you were nuanced, though. Suspected it all along, when you wouldn’t smile.”

  “Wouldn’t smile?”

  “The day we met. I figured anyone who has that kind facial control has some deep layers.”

  “I do.”

  “And a warped side.” Chloe takes all the other items out of the box and dumps them, one by one, into the river.

  She finds her lipstick vibrator last and holds it up, speechless.

  “You kept this!”

  “Your special O ‘lipstick.” I lean in to her ear and whisper “Bzz bzz.”

  Laughing, she considers me. “Didn’t fool you from the start, did I?” She starts to drop it in the water, reconsiders, and tucks it in
her bra.

  I raise my eyebrows.

  With a shrug, she says, “The Charles can have Joe’s strap-on.” She looks back at the water, the sex toy long gone, being nibbled by fishes in its watery grave.

  “Never liked it anyway,” she sighs, one hand on the stroller’s handle, the other threading fingers through my own.

  Chloe

  I can’t believe he’s still here.

  If that sounds snarky, it isn’t. I sincerely cannot believe he’s still here. With me. With us. What man would put up with my mother, a cancelled dinner date, a screaming infant, spit-up, his predecessor’s strap-on, possible arrest for assault on an innocent rower, my throwing trash in the Charles River, a long walk on a chilly late afternoon, and a woman who paid absolutely zero attention to him until her child was fed, bathed, and asleep? Not to mention the garbage needed to go out, and as Charlotte announced, there are three loads of unfolded laundry in the living room.

  No one else would put up with it, that’s who. Joe would have been out the door two minutes after Charlotte left.

  At least my hair is clean. And my underwear (thank god I did all that laundry this morning).

  Holly’s deep, even breathing tells me she has finally fallen asleep. I rise from the rocking chair very slowly and move across the darkened room, where I carefully peel her from my chest and lower her into her crib. Wait to see if she stays asleep. Check the baby monitor. Check the thermostat. Tiptoe out. Exhale.

  At least, I hope he’s still here?

  Heading down the hall, I begin to smell something delicious and realize I am starving. I pass the living room and do a sort of walking double take, backing up a few steps to look.

  The room is now lit by candles and the flicker of the fireplace. The cocktail table is set with plates, napkins, and chopsticks in paper sleeves. Champagne glasses are sparkling in the candlelight. There are two large brown paper bags on the floor next to the table. Sinatra is crooning “Just in Time.” There is no laundry in sight.

  Nick comes walking in with an open Champagne bottle.

  “I figured you like Thai food since I saw the delivery menu in the kitchen drawer,” he says. “I had to guess at what to order, though.” He chuckles. “I waited at the door because I was afraid the doorbell would ring at exactly the wrong time.”