Designed

by Alicia Renee Kline

  I responded in kind, my left hand running up his back while my right grabbed onto a fistful of hair. As we kissed, I positioned my back against the house, partially so we wouldn’t be as visible to any spying neighbors, but mostly because I needed the structure to support my body. I leaned against the siding as if it was the only thing holding me up, which quite literally it was.

  For a few brief but glorious moments, I was completely lost in his embrace. We kissed hungrily, greedily, as if it were possible to make up for a decade’s worth of neglect in one session. The electricity that flowed between us was palpable; my body buzzed with every touch. I ran my hand down his chest, feeling his heartbeat against my fingers. I moaned at the intimacy of the action, feeling my own desire coursing through my veins. He hardened noticeably against me.

  “I love you, Chris,” I whispered, coming up for air.

  “I know.”

  We both stared at each other, our heavy breathing amplified by the stillness of the night.

  “Do you want to come in?” I asked, praying that the answer was yes.

  “Not tonight,” he demurred.

  I tried to mask the disappointment that flashed across my face, but it was no match for his quick reflexes. He smiled at me to soften the blow of his declination. Carefully, he traced my jawline as he drank me in with those eyes. I stared at him in rapt attention, waiting for an explanation.

  “We both know this won’t be a one night stand,” he continued. “We’re not going to start it as one.”

  I nodded in agreement, though a very large part of me wanted to drag him inside anyway.

  “I’ll call you,” he promised.

  I nodded again, speechless as he shoved his hands in his pockets and walked away from me, back to the Civic. I stood on the porch and watched him leave, willing my heart rate to slow and my breathing to stabilize. When I was certain that I could safely walk without falling down, I entered my home.

  Even though the hour wasn’t that late, I needed to lie down. I made one stop prior to heading to my bedroom. I stopped off in the kitchen, grabbing the vase of sunflowers from the table.

  If Chris wouldn’t be here with me tonight, I damn sure was going to guarantee that his flowers were.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The ringing of my cell phone roused me from a deep slumber. I stretched my arm out from underneath my comforter, searching blindly for the device. My hand made contact with the vase of sunflowers that had found their way onto my nightstand, narrowly avoiding a tragic collision. Fortunately, I hadn’t put enough force into my action to do much more than slide the bouquet a couple inches to the left. My fingers clasped the cylinder for a second, making sure it was completely stable before letting go. And the phone kept buzzing.

  By the time I got to my cell, my eyes had adjusted to the lack of light in my bedroom. Though I was blind as a bat without contacts or glasses, I didn’t need their aid to verify that it was either very late or very early.

  “Hello?” I answered sleepily. I hadn’t bothered to check the display to see who was calling; I just wanted it to stop so I could go back to my dreams. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t remember what I’d been visualizing moments before; I was pretty sure it had been about Chris. And I’d woken up with a smile on my face, so it had to have been good.

  “Hey, sunshine,” my brother chirped. He sounded wide awake.

  I suppressed a yawn. “What time is it?”

  “Let’s see.” He paused, undoubtedly consulting either the clock on his phone or one on a wall somewhere. “It’s four in the morning.”

  “Jesus Christ, Matthew. This better be good.”

  “It’s time,” he said simply.

  “Time for what?”

  I rubbed at my tired eyes, annoyed. Couldn’t he see this wasn’t the time to be coy? I wished I could reach through the phone and choke him.

  “It’s time for a baby.”

  That line grabbed my attention and I was immediately coherent. “You’re shitting me.”

  “I promise you I’m not. We’re at the hospital right now. We’ve gotten checked in and Lauren’s all situated. It will probably be a little while yet, but she wants you here.”

  “She was just over here a few hours ago,” I said stupidly. “She seemed okay then.”

  “I think she’s still okay now,” Matthew teased, “just in active labor.”

  “Very funny.”

  I got the room number from him and ended the call, promising to be there as soon as I could. He told me not to rush, but I sensed that if there wasn’t some urgency in the matter he wouldn’t have called me prior to sunrise. How much of that had to do with his own fear about the process I would find out soon enough.

  Sensing that I was about to embark on a long day ahead, I opted to jump in the shower. Less than ten minutes later, I was towel dried off and clad in a pair of yoga pants and a tank top. I secured my damp hair into a bun and slipped on my seldom used glasses.

  “I can do this.” I told myself, addressing my reflection in the mirror.

  The scared part of me wanted to go back to bed and hide under the covers. I considered dialing Chris’s number to get a confidence boost, but decided against it. I had no idea when his next shift was and I didn’t want to wake him up when he had already bolstered my ego mere hours before. Besides, he’d promised to be there for me after the fact, not during. No, this was something that I needed to do on my own. Lauren wouldn’t appreciate it if she had a cheering section in the delivery room; it had shocked me on some level she’d even asked me to share in one of the most private moments possible.

  I grabbed a hoodie on the way out of my bedroom, pushing my arms into it and zipping it up as I moved about the house, gathering my bearings. I wasn’t cold, but it helped considerably in masking the goose bumps that had erupted on my skin. Time for the poker face.

  My house was close to the hospital anyway, but I made record time there considering that the rest of the world hadn’t yet risen. The few cars in the parking lot were mostly concentrated by the emergency room entrance. I spied Matthew’s Mustang in the circular drive up front, parked illegally. If I’d had a set of his keys on me, I would have moved the car into the parking lot beside my Miata.

  I continued past the yellow convertible into the main entrance, walking by the security guard at the desk with enough purpose in my step that he barely looked at me. With Matthew’s directions looped on repeat in my head, I made it to Lauren’s room as though I’d been there before. The door was partially open and I knocked hesitantly in order to warn them that I was here.

  Matthew crossed the room in about three steps, pulling the door open the rest of the way and ushering me in. We partook in our usual greeting, though the embrace he held me in felt tighter than normal.

  “You holding up okay?” I asked quietly.

  I felt him nod, though he didn’t let me go for a few more seconds. When he did, I turned to the star of the show. Lauren looked like she’d been swallowed up by the hospital bed, surrounded by medical equipment. The mattress had been raised so that she was in a sitting position, though she was turned on her side and not facing us.

  “The nurse told her to try to sleep as much as possible,” Matthew explained softly. “She’s not fully dilated, and I guess that means she’s not feeling the urge to push yet. But how they expect her to sleep while she’s having contractions is beyond me.”

  “I can hear you, Matthew,” she commented dryly.

  “Nice going, dork.” I elbowed him and walked further into the room. “Why don’t you go move your car before it gets towed? I’ve got things under control in here.”

  “Are you sure?” he asked reluctantly.

  “Of course I’m sure. Now go.”

  He hesitated once more before I glared at him, convincing him to get going. Even so, he promised that he’d be right back. Fortunately, he missed the eye roll his overbearingness elicited from his wife.

  “So how are you, sweetie?” I a
sked as I slid into the chair at her bedside.

  She took in my appearance much as I did the same with hers. She appeared to be as tired as I felt, though her reason for exhaustion trumped mine. My leading question was ignored for a brief moment.

  “I think I’ve seen you wear glasses like once in never,” she said with a smirk.

  “Consider yourself special then. Are you okay?”

  She winced at the phrase and I mentally slapped myself. One of her biggest gripes was being asked that very thing, prompted by her long history of a dysfunctional relationship with Eric. At one point, she’d advised me that it felt like every conversation she’d had with my brother had either begun or ended with that inquiry.

  “Sorry.”

  She shook her head. “It’s fine. I guess I’m as good as I’m going to get. My back hurts like hell and I hate this IV, but they’d probably be mad at me if I took it out. And I’m so hot, and at the same time, so cold.”

  “Let’s put your hair up,” I suggested. She stared at me as though I’d grown two heads. “It’ll keep it off your face, and maybe help make you more comfortable.”

  “Whatever.” She shrugged, then her face contorted as she experienced another contraction. Her eyes squeezed shut, she held one hand on her stomach, the other gripping the railing of the bed.

  I waited for her pain to subside, pretending that I wasn’t going back in my own past and feeling it with her. A miscarriage couldn’t possibly be the same amount of pain, right? Knowing how bad that had felt, I couldn’t imagine what she was going through now. And she didn’t exactly make it look like a walk in the park, but she didn’t whimper like my eighteen year old self had. I sat in awe.

  “Okay, I’m good now,” she said after a few moments.

  I pulled out a hair band and a brush from my purse and had just walked over to the bed when Matthew returned.

  “So I leave for five minutes and the two of you decide to play beauty shop?” he quipped.

  This time the eye roll came from me, and I continued with securing her hair in a ponytail high on the top of her head. When I was done, she thanked me and I hovered by the chair I’d just come from, debating if I should reclaim it. There was a worn looking loveseat positioned against the far wall of the room to provide additional seating, but I didn’t want to assume that my being here would supersede her husband.

  Matthew and I had one of our wordless conversations and he ended up bringing the loveseat beside her bed, pushing the single chair out of the way. We both sat on the loveseat so we could be near her, though for some strange reason she grabbed my hand instead of his.

  “I’m so tired,” she whispered. “If I would have known that I’d be doing this today, I would have taken a nap.”

  I smiled, repeating the nurse’s supposed suggestion to give sleep a try. Given the way her eyes were having difficulty remaining open, she was happy to at least attempt it. She settled back on the bed, her hand still clutching mine. Her eyelids closed, but it was several minutes before her grip on me relaxed and I was certain she’d fallen asleep.

  “How long has she been in labor?” I asked Matthew softly.

  “I think we first knew about midnight, though I suspect it started sooner. She said she felt sick to her stomach when I got home from work. She barely ate any dinner. And I was too dumb to put two and two together.”

  “You should have called me.”

  “She didn’t want to bother you until she knew for sure. We didn’t want to ruin your date night.”

  I blushed, remembering the feel of Chris’s lips against mine, his body pushing me against the side of my house. A shiver consumed me and I pulled my sweatshirt tightly about me with my free hand.

  “So it went well, I take it?” he pressed.

  “I suppose you could say that,” I hedged.

  It was a strange position to be in, trapped in the middle between your brother and his best friend. We’d drawn boundaries in the sand so many years ago, afraid of disrupting the balance between relationships. We’d been pretty successful at maintaining them, but it would take some work to maneuver our way around the topic again. On one hand, I shared almost everything with Matthew. On the other, I kept fairly tight-lipped about my dalliances for a multitude of reasons. My inability to share had cost me years of my life and arguably a bit of my sanity, but there were just things that needed to be kept to yourself.

  “It would really be easier to talk to Lauren about this,” I admitted finally, “but I’d say we’re in a decent place.”

  “How was dinner?” he asked, going for the question I’d be most prone to answer. “When he told me you two were going out, I suggested that place. Lauren liked it; I figured you would, too.”

  “We didn’t go there,” I admitted.

  Matthew stared at me for explanation, but clarification needed to wait a moment. Lauren was apparently having a contraction, as her hold on my hand tightened and a low moan emitted from the bed. Two sets of blue eyes swung over to her. She remained lying still with her eyes closed, fighting consciousness. My brother leapt up from beside me, going to the head of the hospital bed. His eyes were filled with concern as he stroked her brunette ponytail.

  “She’ll be fine,” I soothed, flashing back to my own experiences, “let her sleep while she still can - it will take the edge off a little.”

  His mouth opened as if he was going to protest. But whatever he saw in my eyes stopped him dead in his tracks. He wasn’t going to argue with me. However scared he was, he was going to defer to my limited wisdom.

  One of the labor and delivery nurses came in to check her progress. Uncomfortable, I squirmed in my seat after relinquishing my friend’s hand. A large part of me wanted to get up and never return, to leave while this was all a very benign scene. But it was Matthew’s turn to force me into submission with a silent glare and I reluctantly stayed put. I watched blankly as the nurse consulted the myriad medical machinery, then turned my head as she conducted a more physical examination of things.

  “Shouldn’t be too much longer,” she hypothesized, “things are coming along nicely. Poor thing must be exhausted; she won’t be able to sleep in about an hour or so.”

  With that, she left us to digest her words.

  “Have you called Doug?” I asked, knowing that Lauren’s dad being here far outweighed me recounting the previous evening with Chris.

  Matthew checked the time on his cell. “I guess I should now. It’s almost seven; I didn’t want to call too early for no reason.”

  “I think there’s enough reason now. Tell him to wake up Gracie and bring her along. She can complain about lack of sleep on the way up. Lauren will want her bestie here on the day she gives birth, even if she doesn’t want her in the room while it’s happening.”

  Matthew smirked, then headed outside the room to make the call. I knew it would be a quick conversation; I doubted much could tear him away from his wife’s side at this point. In fact, my presence was likely the only reason he’d left at all. He believed that she would be okay as long as I was here. I wasn’t exactly certain what to do with that knowledge, that misplaced trust.

  True to my prediction, he returned less than ten minutes later. He didn’t stop at the loveseat, instead assuming his recent position at her side. Nervous energy kept him from being able to sit down, though he leaned against the bed as much as possible without waking Lauren up.

  “I told Doug what was going on. From what I’ve read about things, I don’t think we’ll have a baby before he gets here. I told him to take his time; that you were here, too.”

  I really didn’t know why that put everyone’s mind at ease, but whatever.

  “So he’s calling Gracie and promising to take her out to breakfast to get her butt out of bed. Then they’ll be up, maybe around lunchtime.”

  I nodded. Lunchtime seemed so far away. My stomach rumbled, reminding me that it had been nearly twelve hours since I’d eaten anything. If Matthew heard, he didn’t say anything.

/>   “We went to the hamburger place where we had our first date,” I began, continuing the interrogation from what seemed like hours before.

  My brother caught my drift seamlessly. “That probably made him infinitely more comfortable.”

  “Yeah, except we were overdressed and I was ogled by a group of seventeen year olds.” I shrugged. “But it was my idea. I told him that it was ridiculous to do the whole first date thing like we’d never met.”

  “Right. I told him pretty much the same thing, but he was worried about making a good impression. He didn’t want you to think that he hadn’t put any thought into it.”

  “We both know how much thought went into this. About ten years’ worth, to be exact. So after we ate, he drove me to a park and we sat and talked about those thoughts. And maybe what’s happening today a little bit.”

  As if it had just hit him, his eyes burned with the realization of why I might have said no to our current arrangement. Of what Lauren had asked me to do, of why I might have an issue with it. Part of me wanted to slap him upside the head for being so dense, but I knew he was just in the blissful haze of being a newlywed with an impending child on the way. The knowledge of my loss was too new for him to be ingrained in his mind and it wasn’t anything that I had broadcast since I’d revealed it to him. Whether Chris had expounded on it in private was beyond me.

  “Oh my God, Blake, I’m so sorry. I didn’t even think about that.”

  “It’s okay, dork. I freaked out about it a little bit, but Chris talked me off the ledge. I didn’t even have time to overthink it - here we are already. I promised her I’d do it, and here I am.”

  “I’m glad that whatever Chris said worked.”

  “We haven’t gotten through it yet,” I joked, “there’s still time for me to bail.”

  “I’d understand if you did. But I know you won’t. You’ve never bailed on me before.”