by Sarah Adams
“That’s okay,” Lucy says, taking on a dreamy look while angling her face up to him. She taps her index finger to her lips, and Cooper takes the overt hint by bending down and kissing her on the mouth.
Aaand gross. Two seconds in and Cooper is already kissing Lucy way deeper than any brother should ever have to witness his sister getting kissed. I gouge out my eyes real quick and then turn away, too scared to look back until I’m sure they are done exchanging saliva. I thought getting married would help them both cool off in the PDA department. Nope. It’s been over a month and it seems to only be getting worse.
After what feels like 100 years, I hear the disgusting sound of lips de-suctioning from each other. I’m honestly kind of annoyed at them. Before Cooper met my sister, life was good. I didn’t feel like anything was missing. I worked hard, and occasionally I played hard. I dated around a sufficient amount, but nothing ever got serious, and everything felt comfortable that way. And then…Lucy came along and stole my best friend. But that’s not why I’m mad. I’m upset because now I see them together—a family—and I want what they have. I want to love someone like Cooper loves Lucy, and I want someone to love me like Lucy loves Cooper. The uncomfortable truth is, I don’t reach out to any of the women I’ve gone out with for a second date, and they don’t reach out to me for one either. Usually, they hear I’m a doctor and they’re all in, but then by the end of the date, they learn I’m a gynecologist, and when I blink, all that’s left is a trail of smoke from how quickly they ran away.
I hear Lucy whisper to Cooper that I’m in the room, and he laughs. “Dude, sorry. I didn’t realize you were standing back there.”
“You should be. That was horrifying to witness. As payment for seeing and hearing way too many things, you have to help me talk Lucy into setting me up with a woman for a night.”
Cooper’s eyebrows shoot up, and clearly his mind has gone somewhere less G-rated.
I grimace. “Let me rephrase that: I need a fake girlfriend to go with me to a fundraiser so I don’t have to date my colleague.”
His face clears, and he looks relieved that I’m not asking Lucy to pimp out one of her friends. Apparently, these two have really high opinions of me these days.
“Didn’t you just ditch Jessie for something similar to this?”
I throw my hands up. “I didn’t ditch her. I was sleep deprived and forgot. There is a difference. But even if I did do it on purpose, could you really blame me? Who in their right mind would help a woman so rude and abrasive?”
“Well, you’re not exactly daisies and roses yourself there, Dr. Stuck-up.” Jessie suddenly appears from around the corner like an evil genie I accidentally summoned. My skin prickles at the sight of her sharp green eyes. They are blazing. Strangling. Smothering. One dark blonde brow is cocked up, her arms crossed over the yellow t-shirt pulling tight against her chest and small baby bump. The corner of her mouth is tilted. She looks like venom wrapped up in sunshine.
“Jessica,” I say, giving her a short nod like we’re in a saloon in the wild west. If I had a cowboy hat on, I’d tip it down, so it covered just one of my eyes. I need a piece of wheat.
Jessie’s gaze falls down the length of my body, tripping like a rock skipping across a pond. Face. Shoulders. Biceps. Torso. Thighs. Feet. At first, I think she’s checking me out, until her head tilts and she smirks. “Your fly is down.”
I chuckle once. “Nice try. Did you steal that shirt from a toddler?”
“Nope. From your mom.”
Somewhere in a schoolyard, a group of teenage boys all crow with laughter.
“You two aren’t very nice,” my sister mumbles quietly from the sideline. Poor Luce. She’s still hoping Jessie and I will kiss and makeup, and no doubt that’s what she was imagining would happen if Jessie moved in with me. Over my dead body.
Jessie and I lock eyes, and both of our smiles fade. Blue rams into green, tension racing between us like a current. It’s not the good kind, though. It’s that special brand that has turned friends into foes, made business partnerships crumble, and sent countries to war. It’s not a delicate string tying us together. It’s quicksand, gripping our ankles and pulling us both down inch by inch until we’re smothered. It’s loaded and charged, and—
Lucy’s loud clap zings around us. “Okkkkaayyyyy! Who’s hungry? The pizza will be coming out of the oven any minute, so everyone grab a plate.”
Jessie walks up and stops right in front of me. I know I’m partially blocking the cabinet that holds the plates, but I’m a mean bully now and make no attempts to move out of the way. She, of course, won’t back down either. She’ll drill a hole right through my body to get to the dishes if she has to. Inching up closer, she stands directly beside me, and her shoulder presses against mine as she reaches partially around me into the cabinet.
In the second before she pulls away, she leans close to my ear. “I’d watch your back if I were you, Dr. Stuck-up. I’m not good at forgiving and definitely never forget, but I’m excellent at getting even.”
I turn my head just enough to look her right in the eyes. “Looking forward to it, Oscar.”
Oscar is the nickname I christened her with the day she started calling me that awful Dr. Stuck-up, and she still has no idea what it means. When she’s not calling me by that little gem, she calls me by my first name, Andrew…which I might hate even more. Every single thing between us is an equal back and forth, so if she calls me Dr. Stuck-up, I call her Oscar. She calls me Andrew; I call her Jessica. It’s how things are done around here.
Her full mouth blooms into a wicked smile before she pulls back with her plate and walks away, promises of future torture hanging in the air.
That’s when I look down at my jeans. “Dammit,” I mumble, and then I zip up my fly.
Dinner was a tense affair, as it usually is when Drew and I are forced to breathe the same oxygen. I feel bad that we’re both so disagreeable around Lucy, who is just an agreeable little sprite, an angel-fairy sent to the world to bestow goodness and sweet vibes on all of us. But it’s Drew’s fault. He had a chance to mend the strife between us, and instead, he threw new logs on the fire. It burns before my eyes.
Drew’s not in the room right now. He walked down the hall again to make a secretive phone call to his doctor, saying the meds still aren’t working and the butt rash is getting worse. At least that’s what I’m assuming the calls are about. So I’m on the floor with Lucy’s little boy, Levi, and we’re putting together a puzzle while Lucy and Cooper snuggle on the couch. Basically, our nightly routine.
I’m trying to focus, but this twenty-piece dinosaur puzzle just isn’t holding my attention. My eyes keep sliding down the dark hallway in the direction of where Drew disappeared. I have no idea why, but I’m curious about who he’s talking to back there. It’s definitely not because I wonder if he has a girlfriend or anything. I mean, he may be attractive from a subjective point of view—like classically speaking I suppose his broad shoulders and muscled frame might be considered paintable—but his personality is garbage. How he could get any woman to date him is beyond me. I don’t even know how he’s managed to have any patients at his practice. I would never want to see a stuck-up, know-it-all, mansplainer like him.
“Uh—I’ll be right back. I need to go to the bathroom.” I state this out loud like I have never before done in the history of my existence. I look suspicious as I stand up and walk like a nutcracker toward the hallway. Right leg, left arm. Left leg, right arm. Or should it be the opposite? How do I normally walk?
“Why are you walking like that?” Lucy asks.
So not like this apparently.
“Trying not to pee myself,” I say, because that’s an excellent excuse for every abnormality when you’re in your third trimester. Then I scurry down the hall. A couple of feet into the dark, I hear Drew’s voice coming from a cracked door at the end of the hallway. Levi’s room.
I inch forward, my back pressed against the wall like Ethan Hunt from
Mission Impossible until I can hear him.
“…no, no, I promise you’re not bothering me at all. It’s okay to be nervous—this is your first baby. It’s perfectly normal and expected.”
He’s on a call with a patient? I guess that makes sense. He is a doctor, though I have trouble actually picturing it. Also, I know I should turn and walk away to give him privacy while he’s on a medical call, but anyone who thinks I’m capable of turning and walking away right now is crazy. I’m getting a glimpse of Drew in the wild, and I fully intend to put on my safari hat and pull out my binoculars.
I step forward an inch more and peek through the crack. There he is, phone to his ear, profile to me. He’s starting to get the slightest five o’clock shadow, and his mussed brown hair looks as rebellious as his attitude. I’m not afforded many moments like this where he looks away, giving me enough time to examine him without repercussions, so I seize the opportunity to catalogue each of his features. His soft blue cotton t-shirt pulls, hugs, and kisses his upper body like it wants to have his babies. His facial features are symmetrical and sharp, perfection chiseled out of a rare, smooth stone, contrasted beautifully by his full, soft lips. But it’s his dark blue eyes that are the real killers. They’ll pull you in and knock you out in a flash if you’re not careful.
But I hate him, so it’s fine, and I barely even notice his attractiveness.
“You did great just now. How was your pain during that contraction on a scale of one to ten?” There’s a brief pause while he listens to whoever is on the other end of the line. “Okay. Well, I tell you what. I’m going to hang out on the phone with you until the next one starts so we can time it together, and then if—” Another pause. “No, don’t apologize. It’s okay to cry. You went into labor with your first child while your husband is out of town. That’s a lot to deal with, and if I were in your position, I would have already gone through a whole Kleenex box.” He chuckles, and for some reason, I find myself smiling too. I almost don’t recognize this side of Drew. He’s…tender.
Suddenly, I can’t stand here and listen any longer. I need to get far away from this version of him. I skip the bathroom and go right back to my place on the floor beside Levi, absentmindedly picking up a dinosaur tail and trying to shove it into the spot where its head should go. Levi notices and silently takes the puzzle piece out of my hand then replaces it with the right one. What a kid. I think this is his way of apologizing for waking me up at the butt crack of dawn every day.
After a minute, Drew comes back into the living room. I peek at him from the corner of my eye and watch him stuff his phone in the back pocket of his dark jeans.
“Everything okay?” Lucy asks him.
He nods and lets out a deep breath. “Yeah. I just might have to go into the hospital later tonight depending on how one of my patients progresses over the next hour.” Drew’s eyes lock with mine, and I hate that I’ve heard how tender he can be. I suddenly blush under his attention, which is so ridiculous I want to kick myself.
Drew crosses the room and sits down in the armchair directly behind me. He does it on purpose; I know it. There are plenty of other seating options in the room, but he chose the one hovering over my shoulder so he could breathe down my neck and rattle me.
Well, no rattling here, buddy. I’m easy as Sunday morning.
“Get your knee away from my back!” I snap over my shoulder. Okay, maybe not so much Sunday morning as Monday evening, stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic.
“Why? Is it bothering you, Jessica?” He doesn’t move his knee. He presses it more firmly against my shoulder blade. Not painfully, just with the purpose of reminding me that he’s there. And just like that, the familiar Drew is back, and I hate him all over again.
“I mean it. Stop touching me.” My words are sharp little razors.
“I’m not touching you. You’re touching me. I’d appreciate it if you’d remove your back from my knee.”
I whip my head around to pierce him with my eyes. “I was here first!”
He shrugs. “Well, I’m here now.”
“Children, please,” Cooper says, interjecting with a smile and a hand gesture toward Levi. “If you want to stay with us grown-ups, you’ll have to behave.”
“I have no problems with that,” I say, itching the back of my head with my middle finger.
Drew leans closer, and his breath tickles my ear. “Real mature.”
“Get a mint.” For the record, though, he doesn’t need one. I think he must have chewed gum after dinner. Spearmint. I bite my lip, because it’s not fair. I know my breath smells like garlic-pizza-death while he’s a walking Winterfresh commercial. If he smiles and exhales, I’m sure a blast of icy-cool air will rush out in a puff. I want to drag it all into my lungs, but I force myself to take shallow, barely-life-sustaining breaths instead.
“I’m going to have to separate you two, aren’t I?” Lucy is giving us both the mom eyes. Will they teach me that look in the hospital once I deliver?
Drew sits back in his seat, and neither of us says a thing. We’re both being so immature, but I don’t care. Drew makes me do irrational things, and apparently, I have the same effect on him.
Our war of silence (less impressively known as quiet mouse) begins as Cooper tells Levi it’s time for bed and to give us all hugs. There’s a brief reprieve in hostility as the pudgy little dumpling wraps his arms around my neck and sparks my growing motherly instinct to cherish this hug forever. He then moves toward Drew, who reaches out quick as a snake and drags Levi up into his lap to tickle his nephew into oblivion. Levi squeals with laughter and Drew’s ferocious smile splinters my heart into pieces for two unbearable seconds. Then Cooper and Levi disappear down the hallway, and it’s just me, Drew, and Lucy again—immersed in stone-cold silence. I swivel around so I’m sitting adjacent to Drew and he can’t touch me anymore.
Lucy’s tender heart can’t stand this, so she groans loudly and sits forward on the couch. “Good grief. You two need to get over all this insanity. You’re both adults acting like two-year-olds. Does that not bother you guys at all?”
I don’t know, does it, Andrew? I blink, suck my cheeks in, and keep my laser beams focused on him. His blue eyes sparkle as he tips a brow that says, You wanna answer that, Jessica?
So neither of us speak, and Lucy pulls out the big guns. “Fine. Then, Drew, maybe Jessie would like to know all about how you need a fake—”
“Don’t!” Drew breaks first, jutting his finger out to point at his sister.
I shift my shoulders so I’m sitting up nice and tall now while aiming a delighted smile at Drew. “What is this interesting news you’re keeping from me, Andy?” Ooo he must really hate that name because his jaw flexes. I file that away under IMPORTANT.
“It’s nothing.” His voice is hard as granite.
Lucy shifts a little more toward the edge of her seat with a sigh. “And maybe you, Jessie, would like to tell Drew that you’re miserable here and would like to stay in his—”
“LA LA LA—nothing! Jessie would like nothing,” I say quickly, and Drew smirks.
Lucy throws up her hands and stands. “You two are unbearable to be around. I’m going to pour a glass of wine—don’t kill each other while I’m gone.”
“No promises,” Drew and I both say in non-adorable unison.
Lucy disappears into the kitchen but then promptly sticks her head back around the corner and, giving her best impression of an auctioneer, says in a fantastic rush of words, “Drew told his colleague he has a girlfriend even though he doesn’t, and now he needs a date to a gala!”
Drew’s eyes widen, and his cheeks burn red. I want to drink that blush up through a straw and savor it for the rest of my life. I bust up in an obnoxious laugh, pointing at him like I’m the sort of person who delights in giving wedgies.
“And Jessie wants to stay in your guest bedroom because she’s miserable here but is too prideful to admit it!”
I gasp and clutch my heart. The knife hu
rts so badly. Drew takes his turn laughing while Lucy runs away like a coward. YEAH, YOU BETTER RUN!
I turn my angry gaze to Drew and let Lucy’s revelation roll over me like a tidal wave of sweet, sweet revenge. “So…got yourself caught in a bit of a lie, did you, Dr. Stuck-up? Better hope whoever you choose doesn’t stand you up!” I add extra emphasis on the p sound.
“If you hadn’t blocked my number, maybe you would have heard me say I didn’t stand you up.” He pauses and then amends his statement. “Well, not on purpose at least. I had a—”
“Yeah, yeah, Lucy told me. You were sooooo tired that it just slipped your mind that you had agreed to come to my house mere HOURS before. Sorry, I’m not buying it.” Honestly, when Lucy called me back and told me what happened with Drew, I couldn’t decide which explanation made me feel worse—that he stood me up out of vengeance, or that he completely forgot about me because I’m that unimportant. Not true—I can decide. Being put aside and forgotten hurts the most. And yet, you’d think after having it happen to me repeatedly, it wouldn’t sting so much.
Drew sneers and rolls his eyes, his large hand gripping the side of the armchair like it wronged him.
“You’re impossible.” Drew is looking away and out the window, but finally, his eyes slowly magnetize to mine. “What is it you want to hear? An apology? Because I already tried that, and any chance of that happening again flew out the window when you called me a scumbag and then blocked me.”
“I do not want an apology or anything from you. Not now, not ever. Hence the blocking.”
“Great. Well, then I guess Lucy was wrong, and you really don’t need a nice, quiet, restful place to stay for the next few weeks. And I mean it’s too bad really. My house is spacious, and you’d practically have it all to yourself since I’m never home.” He’s gloating now, a self-satisfied smile on his mouth as he leans forward to rest his forearms on his knees. “And I bet you love sleeping on that little twin bed in Lucy’s spare room.” It’s horrible, squeaking every time I turn over, and the room is so small it would never fit my queen bed even if I wanted to move it. “Yeah, I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t want to come stay at my house that has a large empty bedroom perfect for moving your own stuff into, complete with an en-suite bathroom and soaker bathtub.”
