Sleeping with Her Enemy

by Jenny Holiday

  Cue the wail. The wails were coming really close together. Admittedly, everything he knew about childbirth, he knew from TV, but didn’t that mean that the contractions were coming close together?

  “Okay,” Amy said again, the word becoming her soothing mantra. “After this wave, we’re walking inside.”

  “I can’t walk,” Kat sobbed. “I can’t move!”

  “Well, you’re just going to have to, to keep the baby safe,” Amy said sharply, raising her voice. The tone was in such contrast to her previous reassuring demeanor that it caused Dax to rear back a little as he mounted the steps to the porch.

  It must have had the same effect on Kat, because she eased her death grip on the railing. Amy glared at him and jerked her head toward Kat. Responding to the unspoken order, he ran around and took Kat’s arm, mimicking the hold Amy had on the other one.

  She nodded. “Good. Now we move, quick, before the next contraction.”

  They had to stop in the entryway to allow another one to pass, but they made it into his bedroom before the next one hit. Dax, still on the phone with the dispatcher, ran ahead and smoothed the rumpled sheets even though his rational mind knew that childbirth probably didn’t require a tidy bed.

  “I have to push,” Kat panted as Amy positioned her back on the bed. “I have to push.” Kat seemed markedly calmer than she had outside. “They said this would happen—all of a sudden I’d have the urge to push.”

  Amy grabbed the phone from Dax. “Hi. I’m in charge here. The mother says she needs to push. What do I do?” He watched her nod and murmur a few “uh-huhs.” Then she handed the phone back.

  “Okay,” Amy said again, laying a hand on Kat’s forehead, which was covered with sweat. “Next time you feel the urge, you’re going to take a deep breath and bear down like…um, like you’re going to the bathroom.”

  “I’m scared,” Kat said quietly, grabbing Amy’s other hand.

  “Nah,” Amy said. “People do this all the time. You’ve got billions of years of evolution on your side here.”

  Kat took a shaky breath. “Okay then, let’s do this.”

  Amy moved down to the foot of the bed. “You let me know when you feel like you need to push, okay?”

  Kat nodded even as tears began to slip out of the corner of her eyes.

  He wanted to ask if he should so something. Boil water? That’s what they did on TV, right? Tear sheets into bandages? But the two women were in a world of their own. Some kind of metaphysical thing had passed between them, and he had a feeling anything he would say right now would just tip them out of the zone.

  Kat had been wearing a maternity sundress. He would have called it a muumuu, but she would have slapped him. Amy lifted the dress up even as she made eye contact with him. Apparently he wasn’t forgotten after all. “Your sister is about to have a baby. It’s probably better for everyone if you go stand up by her head and try to make yourself useful. Keep the dispatcher informed.”

  He jumped as if she’d lit a fire under his ass and moved to the top of the bed, taking Kat’s proffered hand just as another contraction hit.

  “I have to push!”

  “Okay, go!” Amy yelled.

  His sister she squeezed his hand so hard he thought she would break it as she yelled, “Motherfucker!”

  “I can see the head—it’s not through yet, but your baby has black hair!” Amy said, grinning. “You’re doing great!”

  Kat just panted and heaved a great breath in. The wail became a war cry as she bore down. Holy crap, he’d had no idea. TV didn’t do justice to any of this. This was both terrifying and amazing at the same time.

  “Good! Good!” Amy was sweating, too, staring intently at his sister’s…nether regions. He watched her eyes widen. “Here it comes!”

  His sister gave one more enormous push, and then, for a second, everything was silent.

  Amy looked up, and her voice broke as she said, “Your baby is here.”

  Another wail then, and not Kat’s. Amy’s eyes filled as she looked at him—his did, too. “I think you should get a blanket? They said we should keep the baby warm.” She was whispering now, all the fight seeming to leave her.

  He bolted to the linen closet in the hallway and came back with a stack of towels, sheets, and blankets. Both women were doing a mixture of crying and laughing. Amy covered the baby, whom she’d placed on Kat’s chest, with a beach towel.

  “Now we wait for the professionals,” Amy said, still sniffling a little. “But she looks great!”

  “She?” Kat asked, clutching at Dax’s hand again.

  Amy nodded. “Yes! Didn’t you know?”

  Kat shook her head, grinning through tears. “No. But I had a hunch.”

  “Dax!” came a voice from the living room. “They’re here.”

  “Yes!” He ran out to meet Gary and the paramedics. The bedroom was too small for the assembled crowd, so after asking Amy a few questions, the paramedics asked everyone to wait outside.

  “Is there supposed to be so much blood?” Amy asked, grabbing his arm as she followed him out. “There was a lot of blood.” General Amy, the magnificent creature who’d gotten them through this, was gone, having been replaced by a wide-eyed, frantic woman on the verge of panic.

  All he could do was shake his head. It seemed impossible that anything bad could happen now that the baby was out. But women died of postpartum hemorrhage sometimes, didn’t they? Just as he was about to join Amy in a group panic attack, one of the paramedics came out.

  “Everything is fine,” she said, smiling. “Kat has a beautiful daughter who appears healthy, and she’s doing great herself.”

  He’d stood reflexively when she entered, but now he sagged back onto the couch, limp with relief.

  “My partner is cutting the cord now. We have a marine unit waiting to take her to the mainland. From there, we’ll take her to Saint Mike’s to get checked out, but from this vantage point everything looks good. They’ll likely keep her overnight and send her home in the morning.”

  “Thank you.” He heaved a shaky breath and turned to Amy. “And thank you.”

  “Yeah,” the paramedic said with a grin as she turned to head back to the bedroom, “I hear you were a real boss in there.”

  Amy shook her head. “She did all the work.”

  Before he could protest, his sister and niece—he had a niece!—were being carried out on a stretcher.

  “Can he come with me?” Kat asked the paramedics.

  “Of course,” said the paramedic they’d been talking to. She looked at Amy. “But we can only take one of you.”

  Amy held her hands up as if she was being robbed. “Oh, I’m not family.”

  “I should take her instead of you,” Kat said, swatting Dax’s arm as she was carried past.

  She wasn’t wrong. He could only nod and follow them outside where they transferred Kat to a waiting gurney.

  “Amy!” Kat shouted as they prepared to load her into the ambulance.

  “Yeah?” Amy leaned over a grinning Kat.

  “I will see you again. And when I do, I will shower you with the accolades you deserve.” She turned to look at her baby, and Killer Kat looked almost…maternal for a moment. “We will see you again, I mean.”

  “Are you going to be okay?” he asked Amy, ignoring the fact that everyone was waiting on him.

  “Yeah!” She nodded vigorously. “You go. I’m fine.” Her eyes darted around like she was trying to figure out where she was, and when she caught sight of herself—she was still wearing the polka-dot bikini—she laughed. “I’ll just change and head home.”

  “Just leave out the back door—you can leave it unlocked.”

  “Okay.”

  He didn’t know he was doing it until he was doing it.

  He kissed her. Not a drawn-out, passionate kiss like the ones they’d shared before. Just a quick one, on the lips, while he framed her face with his hands. Quick, but hard. Urgent.

  Why? Who the f
uck knew? The situation just seemed to call for it.

  Chapter Nine

  After she got home and showered, Amy was tempted to just put on her pajamas and go to bed with her iPad and browse real estate listings. That was her default mode. But she pep-talked herself out of it. She’d just delivered a baby for heaven’s sake. Why not put all that adrenaline to good use and, like, go out and do something non-work-related?

  The problem was she wasn’t really sure what. Dax had been right on when he’d pointed out her alarming lack of friends who didn’t have to do with Mason. She supposed she could call the female half of one of their couple friends, but…meh. She really didn’t feel like dissecting the breakup. And, hey, why hadn’t any of those people reached out to her? She was the jiltee, after all.

  Maybe she’d just woman up and call Cassie. At work parties, she and Cassie almost always ended up huddled in a corner talking animatedly about something. And Cassie seemed to have an active social life that didn’t always include Jack.

  Well, why not? Even though she felt like a kindergartener going up to a strange child and saying, “Will you be my friend?” she fired off a text.

  I just delivered a baby, and I could use a drink. What are you up to?

  The reply came almost instantaneously.

  What???? Already at Edward’s with some friends. Get over here. We’re sitting at the bar.

  Half an hour later, Amy was bellied up to the bar with Cassie and her best friend Danny as well as two of the women from Rosemann, the advertising agency that shared the forty-ninth floor of the Lakefront Centre. She’d met the theatrical Danny a couple of times—he was funny and friendly. The women she didn’t know very well, but they had nodding relationships and would sometimes make small talk in the ladies’ room. But, hey, she was on Mission: Friends, and this bunch seemed as good as any.

  “Last time I was at this bar, I’d just been left at the altar,” she said. It was the truth, and she felt like naming it. It had been only a week since that day, but it felt like she’d lived a lifetime in the interim. “And today I delivered Dax Harris’s sister’s baby,” she added.

  “Holy crap,” Emma said, one of the advertising women. “I’m not sure I’m cool enough to be hanging out with you.”

  Amy grinned. “Nah. Those are the two most dramatic things that have ever happened to me, and they happened within a week of each other.”

  “Well, I think you might deserve a drink more than anyone else on this planet,” said Misty, the other woman.

  “Yeah,” Danny said, sliding his own margarita toward Amy. “Drink up, and tell us all about this asshole.” He signaled the bartender for another round. “The ex-fiancé, I mean, not the baby.”

  Several margaritas later, Amy and her new best friends, having dispensed with Mason rather quickly, had also settled the question of what neighborhood Misty should move to—Amy had signed up to take her condo-hunting. Then they had moved on to flipping through their Pinterest boards, tipsily making cases for certain decor decisions over others for Misty’s hypothetical new place.

  Amy’s phone beeped an incoming text in the middle of a monologue from Danny on how black accent walls were the new black.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed reflexively. “Look! Here’s the baby I told you about!” It was a picture from Dax along with a text.

  Gloria Amy Harris, 6 lbs, 2ozs. Mom and baby at home and doing well.

  “Oh my God, her middle name is Amy!” she shrieked. “Do you think that’s after me?”

  Cassie snatched the phone out of her hand, and everyone crowded around to study the picture.

  “No,” Danny said. “It must be after the other Amy who ushered her safely into the world in the midst of an emergency birth.”

  “One thing I would like to know,” Cassie said, setting the phone down on the bar and narrowing her eyes, “is what were you doing at Dax’s house on the island on a Saturday? I thought you two hated each other. That’s one detail you left out of this whole story.”

  “We were, ah, paddleboarding.”

  “Is that a euphemism for something?” Emma cackled at her own joke.

  “What?” Amy said, defensive. “We did kind of hate each other. But we’re friends now. Sort of.”

  “I see,” said Cassie, who was looking at Amy’s phone again. “That’s why he wants you to come for family dinner tomorrow night? Meet the parents and all?”

  A stupid little thrill ran through Amy as she snatched her phone back. There was indeed a text inviting her to dinner at Kat’s place tomorrow.

  Another text arrived. “They just want to thank me,” she said, holding up the phone to show them a text that said as much. “His sister is super…persuasive.” She shrugged and dropped her phone into her bag. She’d reply later. “Anyway, I’m not going.”

  “Why not?” Cassie protested, with more vehemence than seemed appropriate for the situation.

  Because an evening lusting inappropriately over Dax while surrounded by his happy family feels like torture? “I dunno. Dax and I don’t really get along. Probably not a good idea.”

  “You just said you were friends,” Misty said.

  “Yeah, well, we’re experiencing a truce. But no need to push it.” Amy hopped off the stool. “I’ve got to go to the ladies’. Back in a sec.”

  “Leave your bag on your stool to reserve it,” Danny said. “It’s crazy-crowded. I’ll watch it.”

  Apparently “a sec” was too long because when she arrived back at the bar, she found the group huddled over something, whispering.

  “Hello?” she said, startling them. “Hey!” she added when she realized the thing they were so intent upon was her phone. “What are you doing?”

  Cassie clamped a hand over her mouth and shot Amy a guilty look. Danny bit his lip like he was trying not to laugh. Then he dropped her phone back into her bag and brushed his hands together. “Oh, you know, we just RSVP’d you to dinner tomorrow.”

  “You did not!”

  “We signed you up to bring wine,” Cassie said, holding in laughter and not even having the good grace to look chagrined anymore.

  Amy grabbed her phone and scrolled back through the texts. At least they didn’t say anything embarrassing. Unless… “Did you guys delete any texts?”

  “No!” everyone protested in stereo.

  “We’re not doing this for shits and giggles,” Danny said, patting her on the arm. “We just want you to be happy.”

  We just want you to be happy. Maybe it was the margaritas, but tears prickled in Amy’s eyes. Because unlike all the times her mother had uttered the same sentence just before she’d done something shitty like force Amy to take ballet instead of play softball, she thought Danny might actually mean it.

  “Yeah, but don’t go and fall for this guy,” Danny said. “He sounds like kind of a jerk. Keep things casual.”

  “He is kind of a jerk,” Misty said, “at least from what I’ve seen from afar at the office.”

  “But you keep saying you aren’t looking for a relationship, right?” Cassie said.

  “That’s right,” Amy said. “I was with Mason for seven years, so I’m thinking it might be time for a little…” Gah, if she couldn’t even say it, how could she do it? No wonder she was such a disaster at this.

  “So it doesn’t really matter if he’s a jerk, does it?” Misty asked, grinning. “Because he’s also hot as all get out.”

  “All right then!” Danny slammed his fist on the bar. “We’ll expect a report tomorrow night. Preferably with pictures.”

  Amy laughed in spite of herself. “It’s not like that either—at least not with him.” Then she stopped laughing. It could have been, had she not blown it. “I gotta find someone else to, um…be casual with.” She’d already blown it with Dax.

  “Are you on Tinder?” Danny asked.

  “What’s Tinder?”

  Cassie rolled her eyes. “Don’t get on Tinder!”

  “We can’t all have attentive billionaire boyfriend
s,” Emma said, taking out her phone. “It’s a matchmaking app, and it’s good entertainment. It’s not like you have to actually do anything. But you could play around a little, check out the field.”

  Amy was confused. “I have no idea what you guys are talking about. It’s like you’re speaking English, but somehow the words aren’t adding up to something I understand.” She took a loud slurp through her straw, hoovering the dregs of her drink. “How many of these have I had?”

  “Anyway!” Cassie said. “The point is that it’s your time now. The world is your oyster.”

  It didn’t really feel like it, but Amy appreciated the sentiment. “Thanks,” she said, her voice having grown embarrassingly scratchy.

  “Here’s to you, sweetie,” Cassie said, lifting her glass. “I think things are gonna start looking up.”

  …

  Twenty-four hours later, Amy was addicted to Tinder. It was sort of awful, but it was sort of awesome. The instant decision, the swiping. The thrill of receiving a grammatically appalling expression of interest.

  She was intent on the idea of a casual hookup or two—the antidote to the seven-year thing with Mason. A day ago, she would have said she was old-fashioned enough to think that she should meet her hypothetical hookups in the normal way. At bars, in the park—in the actual world, in other words—where she could see if she was actually attracted to them in the flesh. And of course so she could make sure they didn’t set off any Spidey-sense alarm bells.

  She swiped through a few more profiles. But apparently this was how people did it now. And there was one advantage to Tinder that the real world lacked. She could cull guys without having to administer a real-life spelling test.

  But no! That was not the point! It didn’t matter if a one-night stand could spell!

  “Hey.”

  “Oh!” She jumped about a foot as the elevator doors opened on the tenth floor of Kat’s building to reveal Dax standing in the corridor. She fumbled the Tinder app closed on her phone in the midst of right swiping a very cute guy. He’d had green eyes like Dax.