It's Complicated

by Julia Kent

  Dylan turned a slight shade of pink and looked away. “Yeah…good point.” Then he perked up. “But at least I didn’t almost faint at the birth like some people.”

  Dylan’s eyes were focused on a point behind Alex and he turned to the right to see Josie standing there, hands on hips, one leg cocked higher than the other, a sour smirk on her face as she said, “Oh, yeah? Well, at least I didn’t show my ass to—” She froze, turning and realizing that it was Alex standing right there.

  I wouldn’t mind seeing your ass, he thought, biting back the offer.

  “Alex,” she said, various parts of her tensing and relaxing at the same time, her body language changing.

  Something was completely different about her this morning. As he took a good, long look, still drawing on that calm composure that Mike seemed to have infused in him, he almost laughed. It looked like she had gone through the same morning ritual that he had, though in feminine terms: hair done, makeup, and an outfit he imagined she never actually wore. If she had put that much concern into her appearance this morning, could it be that she had hoped that she would run into him as much as he had tried to manipulate running into her?

  The only way to know would be to let the next few minutes unfold the way that he had planned them.

  Leave it to Dylan to make some kind of dig to make her look bad in front of Dr. Perfect.

  “Alex. Hi,” she barked, shocked and consumed with a tingling feeling of realization at just how close she was to him, as if having him in proximity to her like this sent some sort of electric jolt, a current, through her. Which, apparently, it did—and that made the connection between her thinking brain and her mouth shut down entirely at the same time that the floodgates between her heart and her nether regions opened with a giant, roaring tidal wave.

  “Hi, Josie,” he said, reaching out and down, touching her shoulder briefly. The slight gesture of welcome may as well have been a flamethrower lighting her entire body on fire. The tingle went from a light, muted sensation to a full, roaring flame.

  The awkward silence between the four of them was broken—finally—when Mike pointed to Dylan’s enormous stuffed giraffe and said, “Meet Jillian’s bodyguard.”

  “What’s wrong with it?” Dylan asked, shrugging. He looked exhausted but exhilarated all at once, and Josie looked down and realized that he was wearing two different shoes. The night must have been tough—she knew they had taken the last twenty-four hours in shifts.

  “That thing definitely won’t fit in a bassinet,” she found herself saying, and Alex laughed, a polite, slightly over-done chuckle that made her realize that he was just as interested in her as she was in him. And just as nervous about that interest as she was.

  Dammit.

  That meant that her awkwardness and his awkwardness were on display for Mike and Dylan to absorb and to amuse themselves with.

  As if he read her mind, Dylan, with a mirthful look in those eyes, turned all of his attention to her and said, “What are you and Alex up to?”

  Alex’s eyebrows shot up and he looked down at her, just over his shoulder, and it was his turn to put hands on hips and say, “What are we up to?”

  A sinkhole needed to open up and swallow her. Instead, Sarcastic Josie kicked it. “We,” she said, fanning the air between the two of them with a hand that ping ponged back and forth, “aren’t up to anything. I am here to visit my best friend who just shat an eight-pound thing out of a hole that is not meant to have eight-pound things come out of it.”

  “Yes, it is,” Alex argued. “That’s exactly how nature intended it.”

  Fuck. He had her there.

  “If that’s how nature intended it, then we all know God was a man because no woman would do that to other women.”

  It was the best she could do, and she stormed off to Laura’s room. Fortunately she knew the number and she walked in to find Laura there, sitting up, her legs split—which made Josie cringe at the sight—under a thin hospital blanket. With baby Jillian in front of her, completely undressed and unwrapped from her little burrito blanket, diaper in place, Laura bent gently over with the baby’s entire foot in her mouth.

  “Umm…hi?” Josie said, waving slightly. “The hospital food isn’t good here, I guess?”

  Laura slipped the baby’s foot out of her mouth and started laughing quietly. Then she clutched her abdomen and winced. Josie wondered why. There had been no C-section, so why would it hurt to laugh?

  The baby was asleep and startled at the vibration of the bed and the sound of their voices. Laura quickly swaddled her back into the little wrap and pulled her close, nestling the baby’s cheek against Laura’s bare chest. Laura held a finger up to her lips and Josie nodded silently, creeping carefully over to the chair next to the bed and settling in as Jillian settled down, little even breaths indicating that she’d fallen back asleep.

  “Has motherhood turned you into a cannibal?” she asked.

  Laura shook her head. She looked almost as tired as Dylan, with her face puffed and swollen a bit, blood vessels all around the ring of her eye socket bright red and popped, a sprinkling of them on her cheeks as well. Her face, though, exuded joy. And it was contagious, for Josie started to feel it too, seeping in and replacing the awkwardness and the desire that she had just felt out in the hallway with Alex.

  “I just…she’s so beautiful, Josie,” Laura said. “I had this impulse to see if her foot would fit in my mouth.”

  “That must be a motherhood thing.”

  “I guess so. I don’t know. I’m only on day one of this and there’s really no manual.”

  Josie made it a point to crane her body around Laura and Jillian to look at the stack of parenting books and infant care novels on her bedside, all provided by Dylan, Mike, and Dylan’s parents. “I beg to differ—there are plenty of manuals.”

  Laura rolled her eyes and sniffed with a derisive look. “Those will tell me the basics but no one tells you that minute by minute, hour by hour, you have to make this up on your own. You have to wing it.” She lowered her voice to a whisper and leaned in. “It’s like…the breastfeeding…nobody really explains what it feels like when that baby latches on or how, no matter how many consultants come in and try to help you with lactation, it’s on you. You have to figure out what works for your baby, so I’m not kidding when I say there is no manual for this. There are just people who wrote some books to give you some ideas.”

  This was not the conversation Josie had expected to have with her best friend today. What was she supposed to say back? She had nothing in common on this one, and so she defied her own natural state of talkativeness and just nodded. This was her future with Laura, wasn’t it? Lots of nodding, lots of absolutely not understanding what Laura would be going through, and a growing divide as she watched her best friend focus her entire life on this child and on the family that she was building with Dylan and Mike.

  It made Josie feel lowly for the first time since she’d ever met Laura. It didn’t take away from how thrilled she was for her best friend. It didn’t take away from the feeling of hope and excitement and tenderness she felt when she looked at Jillian, but it tapped into a new set of emotions that were dangerous inside.

  She’d spent years—decades, really, almost two decades—since her father had died doing nothing but escaping instability and seeking a quiet, peaceful existence. A safe existence that gave her the time to think. And all that escaping and seeking had ended—disappeared, really—the moment the baby was born. Josie had reevaluated everything that she’d been doing as an adult, through the lens of watching other people, like her best friend, grow up.

  It made her want to do anything but. It made her want to grab Alex and fuck him in the on-call room, made her want to go spend outrageous amounts of money that she didn’t have. It made her want to go on a spur-of-the-moment trip to Paris because she could—and Laura couldn’t. Josie could do all of those things, and now she couldn’t do them the same way.

  It felt as i
f her friend’s choices had stripped her of assumptions and deep, deep down in an abyss inside her that had a bottom she hadn’t touched yet, she knew that this was good.

  But on the surface? It was chaotic and overwhelming and too much for her to handle right now.

  “How are you feeling?” Josie knew damn well it was a stupid question, but it was all she could think to ask. Her eyes were riveted to the baby, a pinkish-purple creature with swollen eyelids and little dots of baby acne all over her face. She didn’t look like anyone until Laura pulled the tiny, thin cotton cap off her head and smoothed the little strands of wavy blonde hair.

  Was Mike the father? This was going to drive Josie a little crazy until she knew. Though it really wasn’t her business to know, Laura and the guys had made it her business, so now she was eager to learn the truth.

  “The testing,” Laura said quietly, “is already in progress. Her blood type’s not conclusive, so we had to send it for DNA matching after all.”

  Josie nodded, flustered by how quickly this had all happened. “Oh…..” Her voice trailed off. Nowadays, the lab didn’t have to give up if the mathematics of Mom’s blood type plus Possible-Dads’ blood types turned up an inconclusive result. A simple prick of the guys’ fingers, and the baby’s, plus a bunch of paperwork, was all they needed. For a few hundred dollars out of pocket and about a week or three of waiting, Jillian’s idyllic life of three parents, all showering her with adoration, could still be shattered. Because it was one thing to imagine happily-ever-afters…once they really knew, for certain, that it was Mike or Dylan, what would that mean? How compassionate and understanding can one man be when he imagines himself to be a biological parent and then science brings all that to a screeching halt with DNA analysis? Does the science override the love?

  Whoa. What made her think that either man would love the baby less if he weren’t the bio dad? That was one hell of an assumption. Not an unreasonable one in most situations—plenty of guys harden their hearts and aren’t able to accept not being the father. Dylan and Mike weren’t most guys, though, and this was not most situations. They had proven themselves to have the capacity for a love that was so great it extended beyond convention. Perhaps, too, they could love, equally, the little girl who had come into the world in a most typical manner, into a most atypical family structure. Regardless of whose DNA she shared.

  And only Josie would know the true identity of the bio dad, anyway—unless the three changed their hive mind at a future time. Josie had been analyzing the baby’s features to get clues to her paternity. Thick blonde hair? Must be Mike’s. Blue-black eyes that darkened by the hour? Dylan’s. Long, slim surgeon’s fingers? Mike’s. A little chin that jutted out like a fighter’s? Dylan’s. It was maddening. Deep in her thoughts as she stared at the baby in Laura’s lap, a greater, meta-awareness that maybe no one else was doing this struck Josie between the eyes.

  Maybe no one else was trying to figure this out.

  Maybe it was just her.

  She knew it would take a while to learn the answer. Right now that felt about right. A baby’s beginning should be about the baby and not about the wondering. None of the three really seemed to care—it was a formality that Laura wanted out of the way. Respecting that was part and parcel of respecting Laura and the three of them.

  Josie didn’t think twice about how to respond, even if her brain was cluttered with her own musings about her internal process in sorting all this out. She put her hand on Laura’s and smiled, catching her tired green eyes. “It’s okay, Laura. We will do whatever we need to do and make sure that all the paperwork is taken care of. You don’t need to worry about that right now.”

  “The only problem,” Laura said, “is that the nurses here told me I need to sign the birth certificate within ten days of Jillian’s birth. So I don’t know if the tests will be back in time for that.”

  Josie frowned. “You can amend a birth certificate later, right?”

  “I think so,” Laura whispered.

  “Why don’t you just pick one guy and then amend it later if it’s wrong.”

  Tears filled Laura’s eyes and Josie felt guilty for upsetting her. Then Laura inhaled deeply and her face shifted to a more practical look. “You’re right. You pick.” She pulled a piece of paper from a sheath on the nightstand.

  “What?”

  “I will sign this. I already filled most of it out.” It was a birth certificate form. “And you just add the name of the father. I don’t want to know who you pick. And then when the DNA tests come back, if it’s wrong, we amend. If it’s right, we leave it alone.”

  “Geez, you don’t ask much from your best friend, do you?”

  Laura nudged her. “C’mon. Do it for me?”

  Josie bit her lower lip, grabbed the form, and just picked the first guy who came into her mind—other than Dr. Alex. Scribbling quickly, she folded the form and handed it to Laura, who put it in an envelope.

  “Done,” Laura said, a huge sigh escaping from her.

  Not quite, thought Josie.

  The grateful, tired smile that greeted her words was all Josie needed. Well, maybe not all. “May I?” she asked, reaching for the baby.

  Laura smiled and leaned forward to hand Jillian to her. As she shifted, though, she winced, flinching with a wretched look on her face. The calm but tired look was replaced with a tight, pained expression, then a deep breath. Two deep breaths. Three. Ouch. Josie imagined that her nether regions must look like hamburger right now—really nasty hamburger—and knew that the ice packs and the Lidocaine spray were probably the only thing keeping Laura sane. That and baby Jillian.

  On the fourth exhale, Laura’s shoulders slowly relaxed, her breathing went back to normal, and her back unfurled a bit, allowing her to sit back, looser and in less pain. She tried again, keeping her back against her pillows, stretching her arms out with the baby instead, and Josie hurried to make up the distance.

  Josie very carefully, tentatively, took the baby, gingerly wrapping herself around so that her whole tiny body was supported with the length of Josie’s arms and both of Josie’s hands. She felt so lightweight, like a kickball, one of those big ones at Toys“R”Us that you grab and expect to be heavier than they are. Not even eight pounds, little Jillian was a heavy soul, one born into an incredibly unique situation with a family structure that made Josie see it in a different light for the first time.

  Josie’d first been derisive, and then accepting, of Laura, Mike, and Dylan’s triad. But now, holding the baby, new thoughts emerged. How would society view the child of two men and one woman? Getting people to understand that some kids had two mommies and some kids had two daddies was hard enough. How was little Jillian supposed to walk into preschool and announce that she had two daddies and a mommy? This kid was going to have to be tough, to know herself deeply, to stand up to the taunts, to neutralize ignorance. Jillian was up to the task—but was Josie?

  A deep, steely protectiveness poured into Josie as the baby snurgled and then sighed, nestling against Josie’s arm. Josie smiled and kissed her little head, breathing the baby smell deeply and smiling harder at its sweetness. All worries for the future could wait. Huffing this newborn reminded her that life was good, and this was already shaping up to be a fabulous day. Seeing Alex had sent her body into overdrive, senses alight and primed for something. Would he really be interested in her today, or was yesterday just some sort of fluke? Dressed in casual clothes, he seemed to be here not as part of a shift, but for a personal reason.

  Was she the personal reason? The kiss in the elevator, the near-sex in the on-call room, his steady support as she nearly fainted—did it really add up to more? Maybe she hadn’t misread a damn thing. Maybe he was as attracted to her as she was to him and made a special trip on his day off not to check in on Jillian and Laura, but to check her out.

  “Is that Dr. Alex’s voice I heard out in the hallway?” Laura asked. As they both looked, the giant stuffed head of a giraffe walked into the room a
s if it were animated and stalking all newborn babies on the wing. After the head, the neck entered the room, then the body, and finally Dylan, as if the giraffe were in control, pulling him in. His grinning face was stretched from ear to ear with a level of excitement and love that was contagious.

  Josie matched his grin and looked down at Jillian and said, “That’s one of your crazy dads. He’s the craziest one.” As Mike came in, she went on. “The other daddy is calm and peaceful and placid on the outside, but he’s kind of weird, too. You’ll just have to deal with it. Your mama is unconventional, but in a different way, so…Jillian, the deck is really stacked against you. Good thing you have your Aunt Josie to keep you normal.”

  Jillian’s three parents all snorted in unison, and Alex walked into the room just in time to overhear Dylan tease back, “If teabagging the set of balls from Jeddy’s in front of an audience is normal, then—”

  “Shh,” Laura said, noticing Alex. “Hi, Doctor…I forgot your last name,” she said, reaching for a glass of water and chugging it, a sheepish look on her face.

  “Alex. Alex Derjian,” he said, reintroducing himself, shaking Laura’s hand. “You had quite a bit on your plate last night, Laura. It’s no wonder you don’t remember my name.”

  “Thanks,” she replied, tipping her head at the baby, who now rested in Josie’s arms, her little pink cheeks slack with sleep.

  “Teabagging?” He cocked one eyebrow and looked at Josie. “It sounds like I interrupted a very interesting conversation.”

  Shooting daggers at Dylan, who just smirked, she said, “Not as interesting as Dylan’s butt—”

  “Hey!” Dylan snapped. “Man Code says we don’t talk about that.”

  “Man Code says you don’t show somebody your brown starfish, either,” she retorted.

  Alex and Mike managed to stay neutral, their faces impassive, but from the flare of their nostrils she could tell they were trying not to laugh.

  “Show what?” Alex finally said.