The Baby (The Boss #5)

by Abigail Barnette

  “Okay, that’s a point. But this is also coming from the guy who made his helicopter pilot just sit around while we f—” I noticed Olivia’s interested stare. “While we…played board games.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  Olivia wiggled and let the nipple of the bottle go with a wet pop. I threw a kitchen towel over my shoulder and went to take her. Instead, when I leaned down, El-Mudad snagged the towel from my shoulder and flipped it over his own. He lifted Olivia with practiced ease and said, “I miss this, with my girls.”

  “You got to be pretty involved with them when they were growing up?” I asked, taking a seat at the table.

  He rubbed Olivia’s back as he considered. “As much as I would have liked to be? No. I was too young to realize that they were a blessing and not possessions.”

  I frowned. El-Mudad was thirty-six. “Wait, how old are your kids?”

  “Amal is fourteen, and Rashida is eleven.” He shrugged one shoulder. “I wasn’t a teenager, but I might as well have been. Bijou was the one who had to mature quickly when we had the girls.”

  “Bijou was your wife?” He’d never mentioned her by name before.

  “Yes. I met her in France, on a trip with my father. She was a waitress at a café.” He smiled fondly at the memory, but the fondness quickly turned to black humor. “I should have skipped the coffee that day.”

  I shook my head. “No. Look at what you got out of it. I mean, my mom probably regretted sleeping with my father at that party. Objectively, you could say that I ruined her life. But she doesn’t see it that way.”

  “You’re right—” Olivia’s loud burp interrupted him. He chuckled and drew his head back to look at his shoulder. “Ah, you hit the target. Very good.”

  “Gross.” I did take her, this time, because after one good burp like that, she was ready for a post-bottle nap. “Usually, I would feed her solids.” I nodded toward the pot of mac and cheese. “But, once she’s had a bottle and a mighty belch, there’s a short window of time get her napping, and we definitely need to talk about why you’re here.”

  “Yes, we do,” he agreed. “Go, I will wait for you.”

  “You can wait in the living room. It’s way more comfortable in there,” I told him, and he got up and followed me.

  After a quick diaper change and some gentle tunes from the light-up seahorse, Olivia was down for her nap. I found El-Mudad in the living room, one arm thrown along the back of the couch, his head tipped back, mouth open. Apparently, I’d put him to sleep, too.

  Just as I was trying to decide whether or not to wake him, he snored and woke himself. He blinked at me.

  “Sorry to disturb you,” I said, wincing internally. I was never going to be as cool and confident as he was, but very few people on Earth were.

  “No, it’s fine. I didn’t come here to sleep on your couch.”

  I went to him and sat on the other end, pulling my feet up beneath me. “So, I’m glad you’re here, but…why are you?”

  “I’ve spoken to Neil. He contacted me from…Arbor Rest, I think it was?” Apology colored his words. He knew I hadn’t talked to Neil. But he had? I felt jealous and destroyed, all at once.

  Was Neil leaving me for El-Mudad? He obviously loved him more than he loved me, if he couldn’t even talk to me on the phone, but he could contact our lover. I actually felt the wash of bitter acid that filled my stomach, and tasted it on the back of my tongue. A month. Neil had been gone for a month, and in all that time, he hadn’t spoken to me.

  “He thought that news would hurt you. Please believe me, and him, when I tell you that he wants to see you. He is just unable to,” El-Mudad tried to reassure me.

  “Why?” It was an unfair question to ask him. “Why can’t he see me, but he can see you?”

  “He spoke to me on the phone,” El-Mudad clarified. “And he only called because he was concerned about you. He asked me to check in.”

  “Oh.” I bit my lip. “Sorry. I’m just—”

  “Defensive?” Emir smiled faintly. “He knew you would be.”

  Great. Neil knew me well enough to gauge my emotions from the freaking past, but I didn’t know him well enough to know that he’d gone back to drugs and alcohol to cope with his daughter’s death. I hadn’t known he was suicidal.

  “I am truly sorry that this has happened to the two of you,” El-Mudad said, reaching across the back of the couch to take my hand.

  To the two of us. My heart ached at the truth of the statement, something which I hadn’t acknowledged. Neil was going through a rough time, and so was I, but we were in the same terrible situation together.

  “I’m not mad at you,” I said, and just saying it made it true. “I’m really glad you’re here. I’ve been super lonely.”

  “That was why he sent me. He knows you very well.”

  “Not well enough to know that his death would have utterly destroyed me.” It was churlish and horrible to blame him for putting his needs before mine, and I hated myself for saying it, but when it was someone who was your whole heart and soul…

  “He knows. And I have faith that he will tell you that one day.” A fleeting twinge of sadness passed over El-Mudad’s face, then vanished. “He has the opportunity. Some are not so lucky.”

  “There’s a story here,” I said, not out of sarcasm, but solidarity.

  He nodded. “I told you about the name I use in clubs? Emir?”

  “That…it was from a Turkish guy who fucked you,” I remembered aloud.

  “Yes. He was my very first.” El-Mudad paused, sucking on his bottom lip. “My first fuck. My first love. And my first heartbreak.”

  I waited in silence until he continued.

  “You see, he has a problem, like Neil’s. Sadness turns to excess, excess turns to illness. There came a point where I couldn’t stay, anymore.”

  The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. “You don’t think I should leave Neil, do you?”

  “What happens between the two of you, that is for you to decide. But I know that, no matter how often I drove Emir to the hospital, I lied to doctors, I held him in my arms as he shivered and vomited all over himself…never once did he show remorse.” El-Mudad looked away. “Neil, for all of his flaws and excesses, knows that he is hurting you, and he cares. Emir knew how he hurt me. And he did not, or could not.”

  I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I’m so sorry. You must have loved him very much.”

  “To my detriment. But, if you notice, I have not run from Neil. And I will not run from you.”

  I launched myself across the couch, into El-Mudad’s arms. It was so familiar, yet so strange to me in this context; usually, he held me as Emir, my sex partner, and usually, I was crying for much better reasons.

  I’d gone so long without any touch like this. Platonic hugs and pats on the back were awesome, but I needed someone with whom I had a much different emotional connection. Next to Neil, El-Mudad was the only guy for the job.

  He let me cry on him for a long time, stroking my hair and occasionally kissing my forehead. I totally got snot on his t-shirt, but he didn’t complain. The sun went down over the Atlantic while he held me, and we watched it together, until we sat in the twilight dark of the living room.

  “Can I tell you a secret?” I whispered, reluctant to break the tranquil silence around us.

  He made an affirmative noise.

  “This house is kind of scary when you’re alone.” I was angling for him to stay. I didn’t care if he knew it. I didn’t care if it was pathetic. “Not in a Scooby-Doo way. I just think if someone broke in all the way on the other side of the house, you know? And you hear all those stories all the time about people living in other people’s houses, and the residents never know—”

  “Sophie,” he said, gently scolding. “Ask me to stay.”

  I smiled sleepily. “Will you stay?”

  “For as long as you need me.”

  Like clockwork, Olivia woke just in time for dinner. And, as
was so, so typical of me, I’d forgotten to make it.

  “Son of a bitch!” I sat up and all the drainage in my cried-out head sloshed forward, giving me and instant, pounding headache. “I forgot to make anything to eat!”

  “You still have the mac and cheese,” El-Mudad reminded me while I freaked out. “I’ll go heat it up.”

  “Yes! You are a lifesaver!” I told him, and sprinted off to collect Olivia.

  The little banshee stood in her crib, holding onto the bars as she howled. Angry tears streamed down her face. I couldn’t imagine it was fun to wake up with wet pants and an empty stomach.

  Wait, I could totally imagine that. I went to college.

  “Come here, baby.” I lifted her up and seated her on my hip. Her golden curls were sweat-damp at the back of her neck, and her body was warm from sleep. I took her to her changing table and stripped her out of her onesie, all while she screamed and wriggled and was generally furious with me.

  “’I wish the goblins would come and take you away, right now,’” I teased her. Then, I revised, “Wait. No. I wish the goblins would come and take me away, right now. You can’t appreciate what Bowie is packing.”

  I managed to get her into her light cotton sleeper and a bib and carried her to the kitchen, where El-Mudad waited for us with plates of food.

  “You’re going to eat this with us?” I asked incredulously.

  “Is it poisoned?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “Then, I think I’ll be fine.” As I buckled Olivia into her high chair, he added, “You know, you shouldn’t always think of me as some mysterious, sophisticated stranger.”

  “I don’t think you’re a stranger.” That wasn’t entirely true. What little we knew about him outside of sex was largely superficial. “I do think you’re sophisticated and mysterious.”

  “Is that an insult?” His laugh was rich and throaty.

  It was also infectious. “It’s not meant to be.”

  “You see yourself as wholly apart from this life,” he said. It wasn’t a denouncement but an observation. “It must be nice.”

  “Nice?” I scoffed. “Yeah, it’s really nice. I have all this money, a giant house—seven giant houses, two of which I’ve never even seen before—and all I really want is my husband. And he’s like the one thing I can’t have.”

  “It’s true, then, that money can’t buy happiness.”

  “That’s just what conservatives say to make poor people feel bad about wanting to be rich.” The words were bitter in my mouth, but they were true. And the damn shame of it all was, money really couldn’t buy happiness. But it could buy people like Neil a better chance of recovery from stuff like this. “If we couldn’t afford a private treatment center, what would have happened to him?”

  El-Mudad leaned forward, as though he would tell me a secret. “If you worry about what could have happened, how will you have energy to handle the things that have happened?”

  “‘Fess up. You’re secretly a therapist.”

  He chuckled and picked up his fork. “I went to a lot of trouble to microwave this. Don’t let it get cold.”

  As we ate, me alternating my own bites between the ones I squished up for Olivia, we talked about more cheerful subjects, like a boutique hotel he was eyeing in Paris—“So, the girls won’t have to travel so far to visit their mother”—and how many undeserving actors, actresses, and shows had won awards lately for movies and television shows we’d hated. I told him what I knew about Neil’s foundation, though I hadn’t really cared much about it since it had opened. All I wanted to hear was that it was still operating appropriately, nothing had gone horribly wrong, and, then, to never set foot in that building again. It was too painful to remember that stupid phone call, the one that had started all of this.

  “Do you think, due to circumstances…” El-Mudad began hesitantly.

  I knew what he wanted to ask. “No. Neil loves the foundation. He worked too hard for it. It obviously hasn’t been on his mind for the past few months, but someday, it will be, again. And it’ll be good for him to have something. You know, to, like, live for?”

  “He has much to live for,” El-Mudad said, reaching over to wipe a string of drool from Olivia’s chin with her bib.

  Yeah, well, try being on this side of the table and tell me that, again. It wasn’t his fault. People always tried to say the “right” thing to be comforting, but there wasn’t any right way to comfort someone going through this.

  After dinner, El-Mudad helped me put Olivia to bed. His magnetic charisma worked like a charm on babies, too. When he was in the room, she didn’t even see me. And, if she did, she didn’t look impressed. That’s how distracting his very presence was; everything else seemed bland by comparison.

  The bedtime routine seemed to go a lot faster than it usually did, and I realized it was my nerves giving me that impression. I had no idea what he thought I expected from him tonight. I didn’t know what I expected, either.

  We closed the door to Olivia’s room and stood in the hall, just looking at each other.

  “Are we Emir and Chloe tonight?” I asked, swallowing the lump of anxiety in my throat. “Or are we ourselves?”

  “It wasn’t something Neil and I discussed,” El-Mudad said, rubbing his stubbled jaw with one hand. “What do you need, Sophie?”

  “I need…” I closed my eyes. Was it cheating on Neil if I said I needed to be myself? To be Sophie, the woman who hadn’t been intimate with another person in so long she didn’t know if she could, anymore? Or would he understand when I confessed to him? Because I would confess to him, no matter what occurred in his absence, and no matter what blanket permission he might grant in hindsight.

  “Sophie,” I decided. “I just… I need someone to hold me. And to love me and just tell me…”

  I looked down at my hands, and the tear drop that had run off my cheek to splash there.

  “Sophie,” El-Mudad said quietly. I looked up, and his big brown eyes held nothing but sympathy and… “I love you.”

  I closed my eyes. “Thank you.”

  “It isn’t pity. You have given yourself to me, and you’ve asked for nothing in return. That isn’t common, especially among the people I’m used to associating with.”

  “The first time Neil told me he loved me,” I began, unable to keep the tremor from my voice, “he said he knew I didn’t want anything from him. I think that was why he could love me. But, now…”

  “But, now, you want something,” El-Mudad finished for me.

  I nodded. “I want him back.”

  “He will come back to you. You are his north star. He cannot find his way without you.”

  I took a breath that shook from the bottom of my lungs.

  El-Mudad put out his hand. “No expectations, Sophie. But let me love you. You’re aching inside.”

  In more ways than one. Somehow, he’d twisted my agony into something bittersweet and hopeful. I put my hand in his.

  We started toward the bedroom. Maybe if things were different, I wouldn’t have wanted him there with me, without Neil. As it was, I needed the familiarity and comfort of my own surroundings.

  On a more practical note, how familiar was I supposed to get with another person with Olivia in the house? Though she slept through the night, now, she might need me. What if she woke while I was in bed with with El-Mudad? I would feel ashamed, but I didn’t know why. I wasn’t doing anything wrong, and she wouldn’t know what was going on, anyway. Still, I would feel like I had to answer to her for something.

  No, I would feel like I had to answer to Emma.

  “Wait.” I put my hand on El-Mudad’s arm to stop him, just for a second, until I could get my wits. “I think…I think I want to take a bath. If that’s okay?”

  We went to the bedroom, me to the dressing room and him to the bathroom. I heard the taps turning on. I found a slinky gold peignoir set and brought it with me to wear after I got out. Maybe it was a seduction thing. Maybe it
wasn’t. I hadn’t decided, because I hadn’t gone over my mental future conversation with Neil, yet.

  He wouldn’t care, I told myself, then guilty changed tacks to add, but you would.

  I went to the bathroom and found El-Mudad stirring the bubbly bath water with his hand. “Do you still love this tub as much as you did on my first visit?”

  “More,” I said with an exaggerated groan. I stripped my shirt over my head, and I noticed, in the second before the collar came up over my eyes, that the action surprised him. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” I finished as I slid my t-shirt down my arms.

  “I must say, you’re handling this situation much better than I expected. From what Neil said…” El-Mudad’s voice trailed off.

  “Oh?” I tried to keep my tone light. Neil had sent El-Mudad to me because he was worried. But was Neil so worried because he thought I couldn’t handle taking care of Olivia and myself without him?

  “He simply thought—”

  “I know what he thought,” I said, and the anger crept in. I let it. “You know, if he was so goddamn worried that I couldn’t handle this, why did he leave me?”

  “He didn’t leave you,” El-Mudad corrected me quietly.

  “But he was going to!” I didn’t want to be saintly Sophie, anymore. I wanted to be selfish and angry, the way I’d never allowed myself to be angry with Neil before. He’d nearly abandoned me, so many times. Sure, he couldn’t have controlled his cancer, or his addiction, or his daughter dying. He wouldn’t have gone through any of it, if he’d had the choice.

  He didn’t have a choice when he was suicidal, I reminded myself. You know this.

  I knew it, but I hated knowing it. It would have been so much easier if I didn’t.

  “I have all of this pain,” I bleated helplessly. “I don’t know what to do with any of it.”

  El-Mudad came to me, catching one of my hands and holding it at my side. He cupped my cheek in his palm. “Give it to me.”

  Cradled in the womb-like confines of my tub, I spilled my guts like the bathroom was a slaughterhouse killing floor. I told him about how I’d given Neil that first drink the night Emma had died, and the guilt I’d been carrying over that ever since. I told him how angry I’d been at Emma, and how awful I felt for even saying it out loud. With every admission that should have made me seem like a horrible person, El-Mudad just listened sympathetically, offering a kind word now and then, but never trying to take my pain away. Never trying to fix me. When the water grew cold, he ran more to warm it. And, when I was tired, he helped me out and wrapped me in a towel, drying me as though I were helpless as a child.