by Kent, Julia
“Eh, I’m kidding. I’ll just hide the box in my pocket. Sure. Let’s meet at Jeddy’s. Josie’s at the office working on some late project with her developer, yammering on about regression analysis and correlation for matching people up.”
“Sexy,” Mike said with a laugh.
Alex joined him. “Nothing sexier than a woman who can talk math.”
Mike could think of a few sexier things, but wisely kept his mouth shut. “See you in a few.” Alex hung up. Good man. Nice to turn to someone other than Dylan when he needed a bit of assistance.
Mike put his phone down and stared at the glowing lights of the drugstore. He’d already rushed in and bought four tests—one of each kind they sold—and now he pulled out of the parking lot to race to Route 2 and get into Cambridge. He figured Laura was weepy and Dylan could handle her for the extra time.
This was worth it.
Bzzz. His phone rang as he got on the entrance ramp. Dylan.
“What’s up?” Mike asked.
“Laura and I had a…I don’t even know what the fuck it was. A fight, I guess.” The poor guy sounded like he’d been hit with a bulldozer. “Anyhow, Laura left. She’s on her way to Jeddy’s.”
“Jeddy’s? SHIT!”
“Why shit?” Dylan sounded alarmed. Mike felt alarmed.
“Because I called Alex and he’s getting the ring from the jeweler’s and we’re meeting at—”
“Jeddy’s. Jesus. Can’t we get a little more original?”
“I doubt Laura’s going to beg Josie to meet her in the free-weight room at the gym,” Mike said with a snort.
“Only if they start serving coconut shrimp at the juice bar. Damn. You need me to race there right now, don’t you? Get the ring, propose to Laura—at Jeddy’s?” Dylan’s howl of protest mixed with the kind of breathless, gasping laughter that Mike felt inside, too, but couldn’t quite express.
“I guess so.”
“Let me give Cyndi a quick call and make sure she can keep Jillian longer.”
Mike thought about that for a second. “Why not bring her?”
“Cyndi?”
“No, doofus. Jillian. Have her be there. Make it about us. All of us.”
Dylan inhaled slowly, then said, “Done. I’ll be late, but let’s do it.” Mike expected him to hang up, but he stayed on the line, his breath coming in even patterns, his silence saying so much. “You ready to do this?”
“I married you, didn’t I? How could proposing to Laura be any harder? Hopefully there won’t be any camera crews around.”
“I’m not worried about that. Frank tipped them off, and he’s long gone, so—”
“Frank tipped them off? You sure about that?” This was news to Mike.
“Yeah. Nick got back to me damn fast. Turns out he knows the one of the cameraman—”
“You sure he didn’t tip them off?”
“Turns out Nick’s gay. Went on and on about his own husband and how great it was that we—you know. So…no. Nick didn’t tip them off.”
“Gotcha.”
Awkward silence filled the air, and then:
“He dug around, and it was Frank who tipped off the press.”
“Nice. He must have done it before we talked to him. Asshole. Good thing he’s gone.”
“Oh, he’s long gone after the way we handled him.”
Mike grinned. This was what Dylan and Mike had started to tell Laura before she freaked. Going to Frank with a very comfortable figure in the form of a cashier’s check, plus a printout of the outstanding warrant for his arrest in Connecticut, had been blindingly simple. The man had taken the check and the papers, scanned both, and reached out to shake each of their hands.
Then he’d walked out of Mike’s office.
Simple.
Too bad Laura couldn’t be so uncomplicated.
“How we gonna do this?” Dylan asked Mike, whose chest was warming with joy as he picked up speed on the highway, careful not to go too much over the speed limit yet feeling pushed by an unseen force to get to Laura quickly. To find her. To look her in the eye and propose to spend the rest of their lives together.
The only way they knew how.
Chapter Nine
Josie
Madge had seated her as if she were expected, a quick hug and a carafe of coffee her greeting. The place was half full tonight, filled with a hodgepodge of people with vaguely familiar faces and a large group at a horseshoe booth reminiscing about college from thirty years ago.
The hot coffee felt good. Josie’s thigh moved against the white plastic bag she carried, and she looked at it with a mixture of excitement and guilty.
Pregnancy tests. If Laura wasn’t quite sure, it couldn’t hurt to run into the bathroom at the restaurant and pee on a stick, right?
Josie chilled out and drank her coffee, her body relaxing in waves. When was the last time she just sat around? Everything in her world was about Alex or the business. Long gone were the days of curling up on the couch and binge-watching a season of television, or wasting hours listening to music while cooking. Lately, their idea of dinner (when Alex wasn’t gone) was sandwiches and salads, or worse—frozen dinners.
Starting a new business, starting a new life as roommates…lovers…significant others…whateverthefuckyoucalledthis—it was overwhelming. No wonder her shoulders were practically glued to her ears all the time from tension.
Every time the front door swung open she looked up, like a dog trained by a bell. Not Laura. Not the second time. Third time a group of loud college guys came in, and the fourth—what looked like a small Girl Scout troop.
The fifth bell was—Alex?
He walked in and searched the room, clearly intent on finding someone specific. She knew, though, it wasn’t her he sought.
One eyebrow shot up, involuntary but appropriate. Who was he meeting? Madge? But he hadn’t said anything about seeing Madge and Ed, so—
“Josie?” he called out in a voice that told her he was just as surprised to see her. “What are you doing here?”
“What are you doing here?” she countered, standing as he drew close. To be eye to eye she would need to stand on the seat of the booth, and the thought crossed her mind. He wore scrubs and a look of exhaustion on his face, hair messy and eyes tired. He’d just finished up a little more than twenty-four hours at work and she didn’t expect him at home for quite some time. She reached up on tiptoes and he bent down for a great big hug.
One that made the inside of her hip feel like it was being gouged by a rock.
“Is that a sledgehammer in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?” she joked as her slim little hand reached into his front pocket and pulled out—
A jeweler’s box.
She froze. He was frozen, too, looking over her shoulder and down behind her, brows drawn together and eyes ablaze with intelligence and disbelief.
“What is that?” they both said in unison. Her fingers fumbled the box, but she kept hold of it.
This was the size of an engagement ring.
“Oh, Alex,” she murmured, body stinging with cold and hot electric wires that charged at random. “Oh, my God.” Her hand flew to her mouth and she dropped down on her heels, the feeling like being dropped on her head.
But he wasn’t listening.
Alex
Alex had rushed into Jeddy’s searching for Mike, to deliver the ring and be on his way, back home for a shower and, he hoped, a late-night frolic with his beloved.
Instead, he found his beloved staring at him from a booth, a bit slack-jawed with an expression that mirrored his.
“Josie?” he called out. “What are you doing here?”
“What are you doing here?” she countered. He crossed the room and reached for her, that small, warm body like part of his beating heart. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, enjoying the scent of her, eyes opening to pull back and—
What was on the booth in that white bag?
He blinked rapidly, widening
his eyes on purpose to make sure lack of sleep wasn’t making his eyes play tricks on him.
Oh. Oh, my.
Pregnancy tests.
There were pregnancy tests spilling out of a drugstore bag on the booth next to his girlfriend.
“Is that a sledgehammer in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?” she joked as her slim little hand reached into his front pocket and pulled out—
Laura’s ring.
Shit.
She froze. A million thoughts traveled through his mind at the speed of light, most of them involving little brown-haired babies. Josie was pregnant? They were going to have a baby?
His face spread with the most amazing smile he’d ever felt in his life, as if it were connected directly to his heart.
“What is that?” they asked in unison.
He looked down. Josie was juggling Laura’s ring like it was a hot potato.
“Oh, Alex,” she murmured. “Oh, my God.” Her hand flew to her mouth.
Double shit.
“Oh, um. That’s…that’s, um…” His words didn’t just fail him. They fled his body like rats on a sinking ship. God damn it—of all the times to have his mind go blank, to try to explain what was going on, and yet—she had some explaining to do, too!
Baby! They’d made a baby! His mother would be a grandma. Grandpa Ed would meet his first great-grandchild. Alex would help make an entire human being with the woman he adored most in life.
“I…I know what it is, Alex,” Josie whispered, so somberly it jolted him out of his baby reverie. Fuck. Now Mike and Dylan’s surprise would be ruined because he’d—
“You bought this for me,” she added. It wasn’t a question.
“Uh,” he stammered. That was not what he expected her to say.
As she opened the box with shaking hands, tears filled her eyes. “Oh!” she gasped, looking up, a blend of terror and joy in those eyes, the look one he could describe on his deathbed in sixty or seventy years, so crystal clear to him as if it were painted on his soul by Michelangelo.
A hand reached out and snatched the box from Josie, closing it. “Thanks!” Mike had appeared out of nowhere, his other hand clapping Alex on the back. “I appreciate it. Laura’s going to love this.” And with that, he winked at Josie.
Alex swore he felt the earth move as Josie’s heart snapped shut, closing up like a potato bug being poked in the stomach.
“Ha!” she said, the sound like someone being gut-punched, the air forced out by pain. “That’s a beautiful ring. Of course,” she said, clearing her throat, clearly struggling for composure. “Of course she’ll love it.”
Unsure what he was watching, Alex knew one thing: she was upset, and if he wasn’t completely off-base, he would swear she was also…
Disappointed?
She wouldn’t look at Alex. Pulled away, but not to the booth where she’d just been sitting. Just pulled away, like an animal that needed to have four paths of escape to feel safe.
He wanted to wrap his arms around her, to make her feel protected and sure, to cradle the new life inside her—their baby. If she was mad at her erroneous impression that he would ever be so presumptuous as to propose to her now—when she had made it abundantly clear in a thousand different ways that she wasn’t ready for marriage—he needed to talk to her, to soothe her, to make everything smooth between the two of them.
“Josie,” he said softly.
She wouldn’t look at him.
His eyes skittered over the pregnancy tests in the bag behind her, then he took a careful inventory of her face. The understandable assumption that the ring in his pocket was for her and her anger made him—
And then her eyes met his, and something in him melted and exploded at the same time, because she wasn’t angry.
She was sad.
Laura
The gas station bathroom had turned out to be the last place on earth where she should have tested her urine to figure out whether she was going crazy or really pregnant.
Then again, the toilet was so nasty it wasn’t hard to straddle the porcelain bowl and aim for the end of the little plastic stick.
Which, sixty seconds later, gave her the answer.
Pregnant.
Two more tests later and she was sure.
The wind whooshed out of her. A wildfire flush ripped across her pale skin as the truth began to sink in. She really was pregnant. A trembling hand reached up and brushed her long, blonde hair off her face, tucking it behind her ear. She looked pale, though the blinking, half-dead fluorescent light in the nasty bathroom might have accounted for some of that. A roiling feeling of nausea hit her—and it wasn’t the pregnancy.
Damn was she fertile, because hello? Still nursing and on the pill? Did Mike and Dylan have supersperm?
Apparently so.
At least one of them did.
After she washed her hands and carefully threw out all the tests, she climbed back in the car and headed toward Jeddy’s. Ridiculously late at this point, she sent Josie a quick text while she was at a stoplight.
By the time she got to Jeddy’s, she could see Josie talking with Alex. Alex? Good grief, were they joined at the hip? She’d told Josie absolutely no testicles at this meal. Ovaries only.
Ovaries, estrogen, and lots of ice cream.
As she yanked the front door open and prepared to pretend to be okay with Alex’s presence, that flush she’d felt earlier turned into a full-blown creepy-crawly feeling, like being gently stroked with a paintbrush.
Josie.
Alex.
Mike.
Dylan.
Jillian?
Why were they all here, of all places?
Dylan looked at her with those soft puppy-dog eyes that she loved so much, his body bent protectively around Jillian, who was in his arms and playing peekaboo with Madge. The old waitress used a cloth napkin to cover her face and reveal it, much to Jillian’s delight, squeals of laughter filling the restaurant.
Sweaty, confused, and bubbling over with emotion, Laura took in the scene. Mike and Dylan walked close to her, while Josie hung behind, moving off to a corner, face impossible to read.
What was going on?
Mike gave Dylan one of those looks that drove her nuts all the time, the exchange of glances that was some form of shorthand. Madge took Jillian from Dylan and gave him a wink.
No, really.
What.
Was.
This?
“Mama! Mama!” Jillie shrieked, her voice still happy but beginning to take on that edge toddlers get when they realize they might not get what they want immediately. Madge frowned, shrugged, then brought the baby to Laura, handing her off.
She seemed so little, yet so gigantic compared to the tiny newborn she’d been a little over a year ago. Time really flew, didn’t it?
Lately at the speed of a supersonic jet.
Alex stayed in place and looked awkward, eyes shifting between Laura and Josie, his mouth turning down with a slight frown when he looked at Josie. Had something gone wrong? Why was Josie standing apart from him, her face a mask, but her eyes so red?
Was Madge sick? Had something happened to Ed? Jillian played with the necklace around Laura’s neck and moved just enough to make Laura’s stomach feel off, a tendril of nausea making its way up.
And then.
Mike and Dylan moved within a few feet of her and Jillie, Mike’s eyes glistening with…was he crying? Nearly crying? Dylan looked nervous, giving Jillian a wink and stopping to study Laura’s face, his head at an angle, his eyes steady and true.
“What are you—”
They both dropped down, each on bended knee.
Oh, God.
“Laura,” they asked in unison, “will you marry us?” The words echoed like a chime that hits the perfect frequency, all sweetness and light, all love and comfort in one clear note.
Mike held out a ring, with two enormous diamonds on either side of a pearl the color of her hair. His hand was susp
ended in thin air, Dylan gently taking the box from Mike and standing, slowly. Mike rose as well, and they closed the gap between them.
She was completely stunned.
“This is the part where you answer them,” Madge shouted. In a dim, distant part of her mind, Laura knew that other patrons were watching, with various smiles of amusement or confusion dotting their features. How often do two men propose to the same woman?
With one ring?
“I…I… Oh my God, yes! Yes, of course, yes! But we can’t actually be married!” she protested. The room erupted into applause as she said yes, the rest of her words drowned out by catcalls and cheers.
“Yes, we can,” Dylan said firmly, eyes firm and loving. “The real marriage is the one the three of us forge together.” And with that, he kissed her, Jillian’s little fingers slipping into her hair, her babbles a sweet backdrop to the taste of her one true love.
Her other one true love interrupted them with hands on her shoulders, his sun-kissed hair pressing into the family crowd. “That’s my wife you’re kissing,” Mike said with a mock growl, dropping the jokes as he turned Laura toward him and slipped the ring on her trembling hand. It fit perfectly.
Her arms slipped around his neck and his kiss tasted like love and dreams, his hands like anchors and tethers, Dylan’s arms enveloping them both until Jillian said, “Top it! Top it!” and the three broke apart, breathless with glee.
“This wasn’t the first proposal I’ve ever seen here at Jeddy’s. Not even the first time I’ve ever seen two guys propose to the same girl in one day. But I’ll be damned if I’ve ever seen two men propose to the same woman and have them all marry each other!” Madge crowed. “That deserves a big meal, on the house!”
Madge turned to Alex and said with a half-grin, “Same for you too, sport. When you decide to make a decent woman out of Josie, I’ll give you whatever you want.”
The look on Josie’s face made Laura’s joy fade.
She’d never seen Josie look so sad.
Josie
