by Doyle, S.
I ended the call without saying goodbye and caught the maître d’s attention.
“Yes, sir?”
“Please explain to the lady at the table near the window there has been a family emergency and I needed to leave. Put whatever she wants on my tab then call an Uber to see her home safely.”
“Yes, sir.”
I texted my driver, who was parked nearby, and waited for him at the corner of the street.
He pulled up and I got in the passenger seat next to him instead of in back like I normally did. As if being up front would get me where I needed to go faster.
“Virginia Mason Hospital. As fast as you can, Sean. Don’t stop for red lights.”
“Yes, sir.”
* * *
Virginia Mason
Ethan
I opened the door to her room. There were two beds but the bed closest to the door was empty. Which meant maybe I wouldn’t have to spend the night sleeping in the chair next to her. I could pay the hospital for the room and board if they gave me a problem.
I stopped before I pulled back the thin curtain and took a few breaths. That edgy feeling of panic had been with me since Daniel called. The sense of things being out of control usually wasn’t good for my mental health and when it came to Jules…
There was a reason she needed to be contained into certain compartments in my head. Reasons I had to have full control over my emotions at all times, especially when it came to her.
There are going to be bruises. But she’s fine.
The anger surfaced, but I breathed through it until I felt steady enough to see her.
I rounded the corner of the curtain and froze. The right side of her face was scraped pretty badly and there was a red mark across her forehead that looked fairly nasty. Her eyes were closed, and I could see her chest rise and fall.
I took my breaths with hers. In and out until I had control over my thoughts and feelings. Only then did I reach out to touch her hand. But I could see mine was still shaking.
I remembered the night I’d once spent in the hospital. A drunken debacle that had basically ended my college career as far as my parents were concerned. As drunk as I’d been, though, I remember hearing her voice through all the noise. I remember how it anchored me when I was lost and confused.
“Jules,” I said quietly. Not enough to wake her if she was truly asleep, but enough to let her know I was there, if she was awake and simply hurting.
Her eyes popped open and as soon as she focused on my face, she groaned.
“I told Daniel to wait until tomorrow.”
“And I’ll find some sufficient way to punish you for doing that after this is behind us. I am your emergency contact.”
“It wasn’t a big deal,” she argued.
“Says the woman lying in the hospital bed,” I muttered. I didn’t want to jostle her so I pulled the heavy, squat chair as close to the bed as I could. I didn’t touch her hand again. I didn’t trust myself not to squeeze it and I didn’t want to add to her physical discomfort.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“A concussion is not fine. What happened?”
She sighed and closed her eyes. “I was crossing the street and I tripped over something. So I was bent over. A car coming to stop at the intersection didn’t see me, so he bumped into me.”
“A. Car. Hit. You.”
“It was an accident. I tripped and he just tapped me but…”
I snapped my jaw shut and clasped my hands together. A car had hit her head, hit her face. A tap, but if he’d had any kind of speed…
“I have to go,” I said as I stood abruptly. “I’ll check with the doctors. Before I leave.”
She nodded. “Okay. He’ll tell you. Staying overnight…it’s just a precaution. I’ll need a day or two off but then I’ll be back to work.”
“I’ll determine that after I speak to your doctor. Do you want me to call your mother? Maybe she could come…or your brothers.”
“Oh no, please don’t. She’ll only worry and it’s nothing. I’ll be home tomorrow.”
I pushed my hands into the pockets of my suit pants to steady them. “I’ll have Daniel come stay the night.”
She shook her head and I could tell it hurt her. “This is why I called him in the first place. Ethan, it’s not a big deal. Go home. I’ll see you in a few days.”
I started to walk out the door. There was no way I was going to be able to sit there all night with her, thinking about what could have happened. That I could have lost her. It would drive me mad. Five more miles per hour. Two? Could have crushed her skull.
My back to her, I was almost to do the door. “You’re sure you’re going to be okay?”
“Yep. I’m fine. No big deal.”
I stopped. That was a Julia answer. Which meant she wasn’t fine.
Shit. I was going to have to do this. I was going to have be stronger than I believed I was. For her.
“I’m going to go find the doctor. Then I’ll be back.”
She didn’t say anything, which made me think she’d already nodded off. The doctor confirmed what she’d told me. And he also confirmed what I knew. If the driver had been going any faster, it could have been fatal.
After walking back to her room, I took up residence in the chair while she slept. When she woke, she would see I hadn’t left her and it would mean something to her.
I ended up falling asleep in the damn chair and the next morning my neck probably hurt worse than her head.
* * *
Therapy
Ethan
“Hmm,” Carol noted. “Sounds to me like he spent the night with a friend who was in the hospital. I don’t know that I would classify that as a freak-out.”
“Oh, no, that’s fair,” I interjected. “I was totally freaked out. I made the doctor who’d treated her stay past his shift in case anything changed with her condition and I’d given every nurse who bothered her throughout the night to check her concussion grief about it. I was a complete basket case. And I didn’t like it.”
“See?” Jules said. “He acts this way, as if he cares—”
“As if I care?” I exploded. “When, in the last twelve years, have I given you the impression that I didn’t care? If anything, there have been too many lines I’ve crossed over that time.”
“Interesting. You were aware that you were crossing these lines?” Carol asked me.
I lifted a shoulder. “For the most part. Yes.”
“Do you want to share a moment you can recall?” Carol asked.
“I guess…” I looked at Jules for confirmation. “I suppose it was when we had the baby talk.”
“Baby talk?” Carol asked, looking for clarification from both of us.
I nodded. Yes, in hindsight, that might have been an odd conversation. For coworkers, for friends.
For anyone but us. Because I never saw us as being normal.
“When I offered to be the father for Julia’s kid,” I explained further.
“Yes,” Carol said, nodding. “Let’s talk about that.”
4
Five years ago
Julia
“Are you kidding me with this?” I looked around the abandoned building situated in a nowheresville town in Nebraska that we’d had to drive two hours from Lincoln to even find. There was nothing but cornfields surrounding the complex for miles.
We were standing outside a chain link fence that had a lone sign reading KEEP OUT.
“Can’t you see it?” Ethan asked.
“The building?” I pointed to the large factory in front of me. “Yes, it’s quite large.”
“I mean the potential. Jets, Jules. Beautiful, fuel-efficient jets that will revolutionize the entire airline industry.”
My head fell back on my shoulders. “Ugh! Ethan. Not this again.”
“Yes, this again,” he said. “I’m committed to this, Jules. You need to get on board.”
“You can’t make me stand by and watch as you th
row away a billion dollars on an industry you can’t possibly compete in. We’re talking about going against Boeing and Airbus. Not to mention all the government regulations and the issues with the major airlines.”
“They’re vulnerable right now. I can feel it. Now is the time.”
“You have a successful, thriving company. You’ve already revolutionized the medical industry. You’ve saved private insurance and the government untold amounts of money because of the breakthroughs you’ve made with your software. You’ve amassed more wealth than anyone ever has at your age. Can’t that be enough?”
He looked at me like I was crazy. “Uh, no. Have you met me? Ethan Moss. Visionary genius.”
I took a deep breath and tried again. “Ethan, you can’t possibly think this will work.”
“I bet that’s what Elon’s VP of operations told him when he said he wanted to make electric cars.”
“Yeah, and I think the jury is still out on that one if he ends up having a nervous breakdown. I don’t want you to have a nervous breakdown!”
“Come on, let me show you.” He pulled on the gate in the fence. There was a chain holding it closed but there was enough slack to let him create an opening and slip through. There was no hope for it. I knew Ethan too well. When he got into this kind of mood, the only thing to do was humor him.
I followed him inside the compound. There was a massive parking lot next to the building, which told me that at one time it had been a busy enterprise. I pulled out my phone and looked up the address.
Farm equipment. That’s what had been made here until the popular company moved the base of operations to Mexico. Which must have sucked for all the people in this area who weren’t farmers, as the factory had to have offered the only solid-paying jobs.
He pulled open the door, which oddly was unlocked, although I couldn’t imagine there was anything left inside to steal. And someone would have to come a long way for some old office furniture.
The building looked like a typical factory. Huge ground floor that was surrounded by what appeared to be offices on a second level. And a catwalk so anyone in the offices just had to open a door to look down and see what was happening. I followed Ethan up the stairs to the second level, grateful I’d worn jeans and boots for traveling instead of my normal office attire as the place was covered in Nebraska cornfield dust.
He’d told me only this morning that we were heading for Nebraska, but I’d learned to keep a change of clothes in my office for just these occasions.
As Ethan’s number two person at Phoenix—the name he’d eventually settled on for his company—I was expected to be prepared at all times and for any occasion.
A sporting event, a charity ball, negotiations with leaders from foreign governments. There wasn’t anything we hadn’t done in the last three years.
So wear-something-durable-we’re-leaving-in-an-hour was not an unusual way for me to start my day. This wasn’t even the first I’m-going-to-build-jets-here trip we’d taken. But it had been over a year since I’d last talked him out of this idea, which had made me believe we were in the clear. I should have known better.
He opened the door to an office that was on the north-facing side of the building. It was empty except for a dusty desk and two metal folding chairs. The view outside the large windows: more corn fields.
“Ethan, we’ve talked about scalability. Government contracts. FAA regulations. Every time I show you what a potential waste of money this will be, you agree with me.”
“This time it’s different. It’s not about how much money we’ll make or lose. It’s bigger than that, Jules. It’s about the future. Our legacy.”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “Our legacy?”
“Yes, what we leave to our kids and the generation after that.”
“Are you talking children in general or your children?” Because that would have been surprising to me. That Ethan either:
a) thought about children,
b) wanted them for himself.
Beyond the obvious fact he was a workaholic, he’d never had a relationship that lasted more than a few nights. The thought of him committing to a single woman, deciding to have children with her, didn’t compute.
It also made me a little sick to my stomach to think about. Ethan’s women were chosen by very strict criteria:
a) hotness,
b) hollowness, and
c) greed.
The more they wanted him for his money, the less guilty he felt about dicking around with them then kicking them to the curb when he was done.
That’s who he was going to make babies with? Blech.
“Well, probably more accurately, your children. That’s something we never talked about really. Do you want kids?”
Did I want kids? That felt like a loaded question. Especially considering I felt as if I already had them. Four of them if you included my mother along with my brothers.
With children of my own I believed I would be less resentful of their neediness. More loving.
Not that I didn’t love my family. I did…they just made it so tiring sometimes. Children, I imagined, would be no different.
“I don’t know. I haven’t given it much thought.”
“Uh, hello.” He pointed to his Apple watch. “You better start thinking about it. You’re going to be twenty-six this year. Your prime birthing years are almost up.”
“You’re such an ass. Women are having children well into their thirties and forties these days.”
“Yes, but not naturally. It’s all doctors and petri dishes. If you want to do it the old-fashioned way, you should think about it before you turn thirty-five.”
“I’m not even dating anyone,” I said, throwing up my hands. “Hell, working for you doesn’t give me any time to date anyone. You expect me to meet someone, fall in love, get married, and have babies while trying to help you revolutionize the airline industry?”
His smile was all snark and I wanted to slap him in the face. “I’m glad you’ve come around to my way of thinking.”
“It’s not like I’m going to be able to stop you.”
“True. I’ve already bought the building and the surrounding property so you can’t talk me out of it this time. But you know, no one ever said you had to do the whole love and marriage thing. You could choose to become a parent on your own.”
“I know that,” I snapped. Wondering why we were having this conversation when he’d just told me he was moving ahead with his crazy plans. “You really already bought the building? Please tell me you called in some engineers to at least consider whether this can be retrofitted to build planes instead of tractors.”
“All I’m saying is that if you want a reliable gene donor for your children, you can always come to me.”
In my head, I was already scheduling a week’s worth of meetings to address the building purchase and plans for reconstruction when his last statement finally landed on me.
“You want to be the father of my children?”
He shrugged. “Makes sense. Don’t you think?”
No, I didn’t think so at all. “You’re my employer.”
He snorted even as he walked around the desk and ran a finger through the dust. “I’m more than that.”
“Fine. My friend, as well. But you’re not…I mean…you’re not my…boyfriend…lover…whatever. Is what I’m trying to say.”
Awkwardly. Really awkwardly.
He looked at me then and his face was so serious. Serious in a way I didn’t get from him very often.
“If we had to do it…for our child, I would. There would be purpose behind it. A reason. It would be okay for us to have sex under those conditions.”
I’m certain my mouth was open. In the history of our relationship, he’d never once mentioned having sex with me. In college, he’d forbidden me to even discuss it. And thanks to an ungodly amount of Guinness beer he didn’t remember the one and only time we had done it.
The only time we’d ever kissed
.
“I don’t want to have sex with you!”
He smirked then. Like he knew I was lying but couldn’t call me out for it because then we’d be talking about us having sex.
And Ethan and I did not talk about having sex. Ever.
He walked over to where I stood, a little too close for me to be comfortable but I wasn’t backing away from him. Ethan wasn’t someone you could show weakness to without him taking advantage of it.
“Think about it, Jules. We’d make a great kid.”
Pain lodged in my chest. I acknowledged it then I pushed it aside. Into the space I’d made for all the things Ethan did and said that hurt me but shouldn’t. Not if he was just my boss. Just my friend.
“You brought me out here to convince me to build airplanes, not talk about babies. So start talking, Mr. Moss.”
He frowned as if he wasn’t going to let me off the hook quite so easily, but he must have seen something in my face. Something that told him to back the fuck up. Because he did.
“Not airplanes, Jules. Jets. The fastest, most efficient jets in the world. And our own airline to fly them.”
* * *
Therapy
Julia
“You knew,” I whispered. Hit with the memory of him looking at me and knowing, even when I said I didn’t want to have sex with him, that I was lying. “This whole time you’ve known... This is so humiliating.”
“Why was that humiliating for you, Julia?” Carol asked.
“Because it was one-sided,” I said angrily. “Which meant we were never really equals. Which, of course, I knew. You were always the boss, but this…this just pisses me off even more.”
“But he told you yesterday that it wasn’t one-sided,” Carol pointed out. “That he’s in love with you.”
I shook my head. Those words didn’t make sense to me. Not after all this time. Not when he could have changed us whenever he wanted, because he’d known how I felt. Knew that I would crumble at his feet if he so much as crooked his finger at me.
