“Uncle,” Steven gasped as I skidded to a stop on the wet tile and came perilously close to pushing him into the deep end.
I grinned. I was breathing hard, my chest rising and falling with tremendous force. Sticking my tongue out at Steven, I did a cannonball into the water and plunged nearly to the bottom of the pool. I pushed the air out of my lungs and let my skinny frame sink to the cement floor. There was a pleasant, mild pressure from the water surrounding me and I kept my eyes closed as I floated slowly to the surface.
When I emerged, the summer air felt almost cold on my skin and I could tell without opening my eyes that the sun had gone behind a cloud. I shivered.
“Hey, jerk,” I yelled at Steven. “Wanna go over to my place? Mom bought Doritos from Costco!”
Steven didn’t answer, and I opened my eyes to find that I was alone. Blinking in surprise, I hauled myself out of the water and wrapped a towel around my dripping trunks. I heard voices coming from inside of the house and went inside to find Steven with the most beautiful woman in the world.
Lyssa Holmgren, Steven’s older sister, was eighteen.
And the love of my life, or so I had been convinced for almost a year now.
She stood in the kitchen and I could tell that neither she nor Steven had heard me come inside. Lyssa was wearing a pair of little denim shorts that all but rode up the deliciously round cheeks of her ass and a shirt that her tits were nearly spilling out of. Her red hair was tied back in a sweaty ponytail and her blue eyes flashed with excitement.
“I honestly didn’t wanna come back for the summer, but Mom and Dad said I have to wait until next year to get my own place at school,” Lyssa said. Then, she turned to face me and grinned. “Hey, kiddo,” she said. “What’s up?”
Her greeting made my heart sink. There was no way a woman like Lyssa would ever think of me as a man – to her, I’d always be just like I was right now: skinny and pale and dripping water all over her parents’ expensive flooring.
“Hey,” I said, glad at least that my voice had finally started to go down in pitch. “So, you’re back for the summer?”
“Obviously, loser,” Steven said, rolling his eyes at me. “Back for the summer?” He repeated, using the cartoonish voice that always made me laugh.
But I didn’t laugh. How could I, when Lyssa was giggling at me? When her boobs were bouncing around under that thin shirt, begging to be touched?
God, I wanted her so much. I clenched my towel tighter, hoping that my hardening cock wouldn’t show.
“Be nice, jerk,” Lyssa said to Steven. “Hey, Danny, you want anything?” She walked over to the fridge and pulled out a Diet Coke.
Just you, I thought.
But I couldn’t ever say that – Steven would murder me, and Lyssa would laugh.
“No,” I lied. “I’m good.”
Now, back in my office, I couldn’t believe that Lyssa had made an appointment. Did she know it was me?
Dan Andrews was a common enough name – especially in a city like New York.
What would it be like to see her again?
I frowned, remembering the last time I’d seen her. It had been the year before, when she and her husband had separated and she had temporarily moved back in with her parents. I’d gone over for dinner and brought a bottle of wine, hoping to cheer her up. I hadn’t seen her in years– not since her wedding at age twenty-one, back when I had been sixteen – and while it sounded dumb, even to me, I was hoping that a familiar face would help.
But when I had walked in and seen her sitting in the living room, it had broken my heart. There had been no trace, none at all, of the Lyssa Holm who I had known before. She didn’t even look the same. She had been sitting with her hair loose and her shoulders hunched up over her neck and chin, almost as if her hair was a protective cape. Her pale hands had been clasped in her lap, and her blue eyes had no trace of the laughter and light and fun that, even more than her curves, had made me fall so hard for her.
The sight had been chilling. I’d met her now ex-husband a few times – the most recent time at their wedding – and had always gotten a strange, menacing feeling from him. Like he was the kind of guy who was all smiles on the outside but could turn his charm off like a light switch. At the time, I’d rationed with myself (no small feat for a sixteen-year-old kid) that I’d only had that kind of reaction out of jealousy.
Seeing Lyssa on the couch, sad and alone, had brought all of those feelings rushing back, and I’d had to clench my fists and shove them in my pockets to avoid punching a giant hole in the wall of her parents’ opulent living room.
I couldn’t believe that she was coming to me, of all people, for treatment.
With a sigh, I looked down at the paper and prayed that it was anyone, any other woman named Lyssa Holm than the one who had never failed to leave my mind racing and my cock hard. Furthermore, what did this all mean? Was she coming to a doctor because she’d gotten back together with that raging asshole, that jerk who had stolen the light and laughter from her blue eyes, stripped away her saucy smile and changed her?
Broken her, I thought. Not changed. Broken.
My intercom buzzed and I took a deep breath.
“What is it, Alice?”
“I have your first appointment,” she called back. “Ms. Palmer – are you free to see her?”
I didn’t reply for a few seconds – my mind was still on Lyssa. How could I be expected to return to reality, to do my job, when it felt like my world was imploding?
With a sinking feeling, I realized what I had to do. Assuming it was the same Lyssa Holm, there was no way in hell that I could work with her in a professional capacity. Some people already thought the ethics surrounding fertility work was dicey – if I worked with my best friend’s younger sister, whom I’d known since childhood, that was a recipe for disaster.
What I would have to do, I thought, was tell Lyssa the truth when she came in for her first consult. That I couldn’t work with her, but that I’d be happy to recommend several of my colleagues if she was serious about pursuing her options.
It killed me, because it was the exact opposite of what I wanted to do ... which was pull her into my arms and tell her that everything would be okay, that she would be okay – that no one would ever hurt her again. But as much as I cared for her, I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t risk my reputation and my career, just to nurse a crush that had lasted for almost two decades.
It was too much.
I cleared my throat and pressed the intercom buzzer.
“Alice?”
“Yes?”
“I’m ready for Ms. Palmer now,” I said. “Please, send her in.”
And just like that, I tried to get over Lyssa Holm for what felt like the hundredth time in my life.
5
Lyssa – Tuesday
I spent the whole weekend with my phone in my hand and my fingers poised over the screen, wanting to call into Dr. Andrews’ highly-rated practice and cancel my appointment.
It was silly. Like Anna had said, time was running out for me. It would be desperate and sad to go to a fertility clinic ... especially since I didn’t have a man, and it wasn’t like guys were lining up to date me.
And it’s not like you’re ready, I told myself.
In fact, if I was being honest, sex was frequently the last thing on my mind. With Curt, my ex-husband, I had learned to completely disassociate from my mind and my body whenever we had slept together.
Well, sleeping together was a ... charitable way of putting it. It was embarrassing and naïve, but until I’d met Anna, I’d assumed all women felt the same way about sex: that it was nothing more than a means to an end to keep your husband satisfied and to (hopefully) get pregnant.
Anna, however, had told me otherwise.
“Ray was such a jerk,” she’d told me. “And we fought like cats and dogs about the stupidest shit. But god, he was good in bed.”
I had blinked at her in surprise.
“
You ... you liked sleeping with him?” I asked skeptically. Anna’s ex-husband, Ray, hadn’t been abusive like Curt. But they hadn’t had a good relationship, and he’d basically disappeared after signing the divorce papers. It was one of the reasons why Anna hadn’t moved Trina out of Brooklyn and into Manhattan: without child support, she couldn’t afford it.
“Well, yeah,” Anna had replied. She’d wrinkled her nose. “It wasn’t worth it, though. And then I worried about him cheating on me all the time and bringing home like, diseases and shit.”
I’d always wanted to love sex. Curt had made it impossible, and I often worried that I’d never experience the kind of fun, lusty encounters or passionate, intense romantic love-making that Anna had described after several bottles of wine. I could close my eyes and think about sex, think about how I wanted a man like Brad Pitt to romance me and wine and dine me. We’d laugh and flirt and talk and kiss.
But after the kissing, it all went black. I had no idea how I’d like for a man to touch me, how I’d like to be touched. No idea how it would feel to run my hands over a man’s muscled body and feel him close to me.
That was the scary part – being naked around someone, letting them see all my faults and flaws. It wasn’t just because of my weight. It was because of the intimacy of it all, of worrying that a man would laugh at me, the way Curt had cruelly (and often) done so.
Sometimes, like now, I thought that maybe I was broken for good. Some days, I woke up so proud and happy – that I’d managed to turn my life around, to transform it into something that I wanted to keep doing.
Other days, I was filled with doubts and negative thoughts. Despite what everyone, from my parents to my divorce lawyer had told me, I still felt responsible for everything that had happened to me. After all, Curt hadn’t forced me to marry him. He hadn’t literally dragged me to the altar and put a ring on my finger.
And there had been dozens of times over the years where the chance had presented itself for me to leave.
It had taken me years, years, to act on how I felt.
So maybe, I deserved all of this. Maybe I deserved to die alone and childless, wishing that I’d taken another path in life instead of this one.
It was enough to make me cry.
In the end, I decided to go. It couldn’t do any harm, right?
That was what I kept telling myself. This year had been a year of firsts for me: between putting myself through paralegal school, getting a job, and moving into the first (!) apartment that I’d ever had on my own, I was building up steam.
And part of that meant moving on, even when I felt like collapsing in a pile of tears and failure. I had to be strong, for myself if for no one else.
I had made it through so much already. Surely, a little doctor’s appointment wouldn’t be enough to derail my progress.
Dr. Andrews’ office was in Manhattan, not six blocks from the law office where I worked. My boss, Brent, had been kind enough to give me the morning off for my appointment ... and kind enough not to ask details. The day was cold and foggy, my least favorite kind of January morning, and I took the subway into Manhattan, then walked to the building where my fate would be revealed.
“Hello,” I said to the receptionist, leaning over and trying to smile. “I’m Lyssa Holm – I have a ten-thirty consult with Dr. Andrews.”
The receptionist nodded and gave me a friendly smile. She passed me a clipboard loaded with papers.
“I’m just here for a first consult,” I said as a flush spread over my cheeks. The paperwork seemed like it would take ages to fill out – how much did he really need to know?
“This is just standard,” the receptionist said warmly. “Don’t be nervous. Dr. Andrews is wonderful – he’s just very thorough,” she added, laughing softly to herself.
“Okay,” I said.
But I was nervous. I was nervous that again, my failures and mistakes would be spilled out on the page. I could just picture a stern doctor, questioning me and berating me and working himself into a state of anger when I didn’t know the answer to an inquiry about my own body and health.
You’re doing it again, I told myself as I took a seat in the waiting room. You’re getting out of control, you need to stay calm. He’s a doctor. He’ll be professional, if not exactly nice.
Not every man is like Curt.
The pen slipped in my sweaty grip and I clenched it in my hand as I filled out the questions about my age, sexual activity, health history, and worst of all: how long I had been trying to conceive.
The questionnaire was innocuous, but answering the questions was stirring up a lot of feelings – and memories – inside of me. Back when Curt and I had been married, I had tried convincing myself over and over that as soon as I got pregnant, he would turn into a good man. That he’d be a good father, a father who loved his son or daughter and wanted a big family.
But what if I hadn’t ever really believed that, deep down?
What if the only reason I hadn’t ever gotten pregnant was because I had been married to a monster, and I hadn’t even been able to hide the truth from myself?
I swallowed hard. I felt weak and lightheaded, and I was just about to scurry out of the office when the receptionist called my name.
“Ms. Holm? Dr. Andrews is ready for you now,” she said. “Right this way.”
As I followed her down a spacious, cheerfully-lit corridor, I felt as if I could have been walking down Death Row to the electric chair instead of a fertility clinic.
“Dr. Andrews will be right in,” the receptionist said, nudging past me and opening a door to an office. “Please, have a seat.”
I went inside and slowly lowered myself down into the chair. The office was tidy and it smelled good, like fresh laundry and a hint of cologne. The walls were artfully decorated with classic prints, but not in a way that looked tacky or outdated.
I could just sense that this guy, this doctor, was going to be so expensive that I’d never be able to afford his help.
When I heard the door open and close behind me, I got to my feet.
And froze in my tracks.
“Danny?” I asked in disbelief.
Standing in front of me was a man whom I hadn’t seen in years – Danny Andrews, my little brother’s best friend.
And judging by the look on his face, he was equally surprised to see me.
I nearly gasped at the sight of him. He had always been slight and skinny growing up, but now he was tall and built and almost rugged – his shoulders strained the white coat he wore over his black button-down shirt and trousers. He was tanned and his dark blonde hair and flashing blue eyes elicited a strange reaction, a kind of feeling inside of my body that I’d never experienced before. My heart was beating as fast as a jackrabbit’s in my chest and my stomach churned.
It took me a moment to realize that it wasn’t fear, it wasn’t a fight-or-flight kind of reaction.
No, it felt better than that. Warmer. Smoother.
He’s really hot now. The thought arrived before I could stop it, and instantly, my cheeks flamed bright red.
“I ... I didn’t know it would be you,” I said, inwardly groaning at how lame the sentence sounded when it was out of my mouth.
He raised an eyebrow at me. “Nice to see you, Lyssa,” he said. “And most people call me Dan, now.”
I blushed even harder.
“It’s more professional,” he said. There was something playful, something teasing, in his manner.
“I would assume Dr. Andrews is what most people call you,” I replied.
Danny – Dan – laughed and I bit my lip. What was I doing?
Was I actually flirting with him?
“Please, sit,” Dan said. He gestured at the chair, then walked behind his desk and sat down. My pulse was racing and I couldn’t believe it – was I really here, sitting in front of this man?
How was it possible? New York City was one of the biggest in the world, and Andrews one of the most common last names.
>
Yet, somehow, we’d wound up together in the same place.
“So, Lyssa,” Dan began, looking over the shaky handwriting that filled the questionnaire. “I see you’re trying to conceive.”
I held my breath, then nodded once.
“I ... yes,” I said, fumbling for words. “Well, to be honest, I don’t really know. I mean, I want a baby. But, um, ...”
Dan chuckled, but not unkindly. “Lyssa, please,” he said. “I want you to relax.”
Our eyes met and I blushed again, my cheeks so hot that they almost burned.
“The truth is,” I said finally. “I don’t know what to do. I want a baby, so badly, and I feel like time is running out for me, but I don’t even know if I can actually have a baby and I need to know, I need to—”
Dan was staring at me and I clamped my lips together, embarrassed and ashamed that I’d become so emotional in such a short span of time. I was breathing hard and little beads of perspiration broke out over my face and neck – suddenly, it was boiling hot in the office and I fumbled with my coat.
“Lyssa,” Dan said slowly. “Please, try to relax. Everything is okay. I promise.”
They were just words – words that I assumed he said to every nervous woman who sat in front of his desk.
There was no way he could have known how much they meant to me, how much comfort I took from the tone of his voice. He had gone from a skinny kid to a big, protective man and I had the insane, wild urge to throw myself into his arms and sob and just let him hold me.
“I just desperately want a child,” I said softly. “I always have. Please, help me.”
Just like that, I’d started begging.
Dan nodded slowly. “Of course, you do,” he said. “And of course, I will.”
6
Dan – Tuesday
What the fuck, I thought as soon as the words were out of my mouth. That was the exact OPPOSITE of what I was going to do!
Baby for Brother’s Best Friend: Brother’s Best Friend Book 1 Page 4
