Fuck, I thought. You’ve got to be kidding me.
I rubbed my temples with one hand.
“Okay,” I said, desperately wishing that Lyssa wasn’t coming in for her follow-up appointment today. “That’s fine.”
Alice gave me an awkward smile and directed me to my first appointment of the day, with a young couple. The med students clustered into my office and took copious notes, even jumping in to ask questions here and there. If it had been any other day, I would have been pleased and even encouraged that they were taking this seriously. Even though I was only thirty-two, med school felt like such a long time ago that I could barely remember my own shadowing experience.
Today, though, I wasn’t fucking having it. I wanted to see Lyssa and Lyssa alone. I needed to talk to her about Steven and Meredith.
And if I was being truly honest with myself, I needed to see her because I just needed her.
The day dragged on, painfully slow and peppered with questions from the med students. When Lyssa arrived for her appointment, Alice showed her into my office.
Lyssa looked withdrawn and tired as she sat down in the chair across from my desk. Her ripe, round curves were barely concealed in a black sheath dress but it was hard to feel lust and arousal when I knew that she was so anxious. She glanced around, not making eye contact with the med students but blushing furiously anyway.
“Why are they here?” Lyssa asked, in a voice barely above a whisper.
“They were just about to take a break,” I lied. I looked up at them. To my dismay, the young men were eyeing Lyssa with predatory gazes. Their eyes lingered and hung on her curves and I felt a powerful, protective urge to put my arm around her and keep her out of their line of sight. Any pride I had felt towards them instantly evaporated and I could feel my jaw clenching. Lyssa kept her head down, her chin almost tucked against her neck and her cheeks flamed red.
It wasn’t just anger that I felt towards the med students. The bulk of my anger was directed at the universe and at Curt, the man who had taken such a beautiful, spunky woman and turned her into this shell, this husk.
“Okay, you guys,” I said with more force than necessary, getting to my feet. “Go ahead and take your lunch now. We’ll resume shadowing when you get back.”
They all frowned as they got to their feet and shuffled out of the room.
As soon as they were gone, I sat down and looked at Lyssa. She still wasn’t looking at me, and her breathing was raspy and shallow.
“I’m sorry about that,” I said. “I had actually forgotten they were supposed to come in today.”
Lyssa swallowed. She flicked her eyes over me and finally, began to relax, just a little bit. The tension between us grew stronger and after what felt like an eternity, her lips curved into the faintest hint of a smile.
I couldn’t say anything of the things that I was desperate to tell her. You look so gorgeous. I missed you. I’ve been thinking about you, non-stop.
Instead, I cleared my throat.
“I have your test results,” I said.
“Oh?” Lyssa blinked. Her hands were clutching each other tightly in her lap, on top of those rounded, delicious thighs that I loved so much. I had to fight the urge to get to my feet and walk to her and take her hands, stroke her soft skin and tell her that everything was going to be okay.
“You’re perfectly healthy,” I told her. “And perfectly capable of having a child.”
Lyssa’s chin wobbled and I thought I saw the hint of tears in her blue eyes, but she nodded and sniffled.
She didn’t smile, and I felt my heart lurch to the side.
“Lyssa, this is good news,” I said gently.
She nodded. “I know,” she said softly. “I’m just afraid.”
Hearing the fear and the sadness and the anguish in her voice nearly killed me. I couldn’t help myself – I got to my feet and walked over to her, gently putting my hand on her arm.
Lyssa flinched.
“What is it?” I asked her gently. “This is good news, remember?”
Lyssa looked up at me with her wide blue eyes.
“You said you wanted to talk,” she whispered. “I figured that meant you didn’t want to see me anymore.”
“Oh, fuck,” I muttered, groaning inwardly and closing my eyes. “No, no, Lyssa – baby, that’s not what I wanted to say to you.”
“Then what?” Lyssa asked. She sniffled and I pulled her into my arms. It was a bit awkward, as she was still sitting, but holding her close felt so fucking good. I inhaled her hair, breathing in the light floral fragrance that I had come to love so much.
“About your brother and his fiancée,” I said. “Come on. Get up.”
I pulled away and Lyssa gave me an expectant look. “What?”
“Come with me,” I said. “We’ll go somewhere else and talk.”
Lyssa followed me out of my office and down the hall. The med students were crowded in the waiting room, hunched over takeout salads and bags of cheeseburgers.
“Dr. Andrews?” Alice asked. “Are you going out?”
“I’m leaving for the day,” I said shortly.
Her eyes widened and she looked over at the med students.
“But ...”
“Don’t worry about,” I said. “We’ll deal with it later.”
And then with Lyssa in tow, I left my office.
I took Lyssa two blocks down, to a deli, where we sat. After ordering sandwiches and milkshakes for both of us, I swallowed.
“I’m so sorry that I frightened you,” I told her. “I feel like such an asshole.”
Lyssa shook her head. “I shouldn’t have assumed anything,” she said.
By the sound of her voice, she was clearly still not comfortable. It was enough to make me hate myself. I didn’t know how I had managed to do something so colossally stupid – telling a woman that I needed to talk to her without actually specifying the subject.
“No,” I told her firmly. “This isn’t your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong – I was the jerk.”
At that, Lyssa looked up at me and bit her lip. “So, about my brother,” she began. “What did you want to say?”
I sighed. “Don’t be mad at me for this,” I told her. “But I think Meredith is bad news.”
Lyssa nodded slightly. “Yeah,” she said softly. “She is.”
“And I don’t know that he’s ever going to do anything about it,” I continued. “But I don’t want to piss him off and say the wrong thing. That would just make him push me away.”
Lyssa nodded again. “My parents don’t like her, either,” she said quietly. “My mom thinks she’s a gold-digger.”
“Have they said anything to your brother?”
Lyssa snorted. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “Like, come on, Dan. This is my parents we’re talking about here. My mother always keeps her opinions to herself.”
I sighed.
“She’s always made me feel really bad about my weight,” Lyssa said. “But she does this thing where she acts so nice and smiley as she’s saying something mean. So like, no one else notices it.”
“That’s shitty,” I told her.
Lyssa nodded. “This one time, she told me – in front of everyone, even my parents – that she envied me because it ‘must be nice not to care what I looked like’.”
“That’s so fucking passive aggressive,” I replied.
“Yeah,” Lyssa said. “Steven is a good guy, I know, but like, he doesn’t see it. At all. He just thinks that she’s so perfect because she’s so pretty.”
I groaned.
“Can’t you say something,” Lyssa pressed. “You’re his best friend.”
“I know,” I said. “And this is why it kills me.”
The waitress stopped by and put our food down in front of us – Reuben sandwiches and strawberry milkshakes. Lyssa stared at her sandwich for a few seconds, then picked it up and took a bite. When she set it down, she looked at me and held my gaze for a moment.<
br />
I reached across the table for her hand and she stiffened.
Immediately, I pulled away.
“I’m sorry,” I told her. “We’ll move at your pace, okay?”
Lyssa bit her lip. “What ... what exactly does that mean?”
“It means that we’ll only do what you’re comfortable with,” I said.
“Thank you,” Lyssa said. She sighed. “I feel like such a fuck up.”
“You’re not,” I told her. “You’re a wonderful person.”
“You didn’t let me finish,” Lyssa said. It was the closest I’d heard her come to assertive in years, and I held my breath as she kept talking.
“I feel like I wasted so much of my life already,” she continued. “And I don’t want to do that anymore. Like, I’ve made progress, right? But I’m so scared that something is going to happen that’ll come and ruin all of that.” She bit at her bottom lip. “I’m just frightened, Dan. Sometimes, I think I’ve forgotten how to be a person.”
This time, when I reached for her hand, she let me touch her. For a few seconds, we sat in silence. I stroked the back of her hand with my thumb and Lyssa sighed softly, closing her eyes and exhaling through her nose.
“Do you realize something?” Lyssa asked me.
“What?”
“This is like, the first time we’ve done something normal together in years,” Lyssa said. She smiled slowly. “I remember when we were all kids, how we’d all hang out together. You know – before I thought I was too cool to hang out with my brother.”
There it was again – the age difference between us. At fifteen and twenty, the age difference had seemed wider than the Atlantic Ocean. But now, at thirty-two and thirty-seven, it didn’t seem so strange at all.
If anything, it seemed almost normal.
I wondered if Lyssa felt the same way. Given how anxious and upset she had been when she’d first come into my office, I didn’t want to pressure her to make any big decisions. No. The time for that would have to come later – and at her own pace, just as I had said.
But would it ever come? Would Lyssa ever want to be with me, for real?
Or would all of this blow up in my face?
17
Lyssa – Monday
I kept myself busy over the weekend. Anna, Trina, and I all went ice-skating together on Saturday and despite the freezing temperatures outside, we had fun. On Sunday, I stayed in my apartment all day and cleaned. I’d gotten a good deal on the place where I lived now, but it couldn’t be a permanent solution – the carpet was thin and cheap, with stains from the previous tenants showing through, and the blinds had broken the first time that I’d touched them with a feather duster.
There goes my security deposit, I thought as my heart sank.
In reality, I was just trying to keep my mind off Dan.
When he’d told me what he was really thinking – about my brother and his fiancée, Meredith – I had almost begun to disassociate once again. I’d been so panicked and scared and nervous going into his office that I had immediately expected the worst.
And to hear that it wasn’t even about me had nearly made me faint.
That, on top of the news that I was, indeed, fertile had changed my life seemingly overnight. I was starting to feel like a real unit with Dan.
Almost like we were a couple.
In fact, at times, I had to remind myself that we weren’t.
It wasn’t just Dan and the urge to have a baby that had made my life feel changed. I woke up in better moods now because I didn’t have constant nightmares about escaping the horrors of my past. Instead of dreaming about Curt, I dreamed about Dan.
One night, I even had a dream about a baby. Well, a little girl, to be more precise. She had my unruly tangles of red hair and Dan’s dark eyes and she was a chubby little thing in green overalls and a white top. She was giggling and laughing and trying to walk. As she took a step forward, she fell backwards on her little butt and gasped at her own resilience.
If I had been more of a religious person, I would have taken the dream of my daughter as a sign.
Since I wasn’t, I just hoped that it was a good omen – that soon, in the future, the adorable little girl from my dream would be real. Or an adorable little boy. I didn’t care about the sex of my future child, truly. No matter who I had, I knew that I would always love them unconditionally.
That Monday, I woke up before my alarm went off, in a brilliantly good mood. After taking a shower and trying to tame my red curls into a neat bun, I took the subway into Manhattan and stopped at a deli to buy bagels and cream cheese and coffee for the entire law office. It was kind of a splurge, but I hoped maybe the gesture would make up for how obviously distracted I had been as of late.
I knew it was too early to tell, but I couldn’t help but spend every single moment of my spare time hoping and wishing and praying that I was pregnant. My period wasn’t due for another two weeks but already, I was dreading the day.
“This is a thing that a lot of women who struggle conceiving deal with,” Dan had told me at the diner. “It can be vicious – month after month of disappointment, and feeling like time is running out.” He’d been holding my hand and at those words, he’d laced his fingers with mine and squeezed.
“I know,” I said. “I mean, I guessed.”
“But don’t give up hope, Lyssa. A big part of this is positive thinking. This is going to happen for you, I know it.”
Every time I felt nervous or scared, I thought about what Dan had said and it actually seemed to calm me down. Looking at the calendar now, I replayed his words in my head and closed my eyes, like a little girl throwing a coin into a fountain and making a wish.
“Lyssa?”
I opened my eyes and saw Brent, my boss, standing on the other side of my cube wall. He handed me a thick portfolio of paperwork and nodded.
“I’ll need these scanned and filed by the end of the day,” he told me.
“Of course,” I replied. “No problem.”
“Good.” Brent nodded again. “Everything okay?”
You wouldn’t even begin to understand, I thought.
“Of course,” I repeated. “Everything’s fine.”
“Good,” Brent said. “You have a visitor in reception,” he added. “Lyssa, it’s fine for the occasional friend to visit you at work, but please don’t be away from your desk for more than a few minutes. I’m expecting a few client calls this afternoon, and I do need those papers filed. And don’t forget, we have a deposition tomorrow – the Kane case, which I’ll need you to sit in on. You can take notes and transcribe them later.”
I flushed. “I’m so sorry,” I told him as I made a mental note to tell Anna not to stop by the office again, or at least not until my performance started to improve and get back to where it should be. In the excitement of everything that had been happening in my life as of late, I had completely forgotten about the Kane deposition – it was promised to be one of the firm’s most important cases this year.
“I’ll be right back,” I promised Brent. “And don’t worry, I’ll tell my friend not to visit again.”
Brent nodded and walked away. As soon as he was back in his office, I leapt up from my desk and walked as quickly as I could to reception, expecting to see Anna – or even Dan.
It was neither my friend, nor my lover.
It was Curt.
I froze in my tracks, feeling dizzy and faint. My heart slammed against my ribs, then seemed to stop beating as I swallowed hard. Stumbling to the side, I braced myself with a hand against the wall.
This has to be wrong, I told myself. This has to be a dream.
But I knew – it wasn’t a dream. This was real life, this was actually happening. All of the air whooshed out of my lungs and I gasped as my ex-husband grinned at me and began to move closer.
“No,” I said, backing away.
Curt either hadn’t heard me, or chose to ignore my plea. He stepped closer and closer and I felt my he
art jolt to life and begin to beat again, rapidly – so fast that it hurt. I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with oxygen and went lightheaded as I reached behind me for the marble that lined the interior of the building.
Curt was so close that I could see the dark freckles in his eyes – the same spots that I’d found so sexy when we’d first met. They’d made him seem so dangerous and reckless.
Which of course, he was.
But not in the good way.
“Lyssa,” Curt said in a low growl as he moved closer. Time seemed to stand still and I felt the solid wall behind me, trapping me with my ex-husband. I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out.
Then, everything went black.
“Hey, back up, give her some space. Give her some air!”
“I think she’s waking up.”
“Lyssa? Are you okay?”
The cluster of voices in the air were foreign and far-away, like I was lost in the middle of a foggy haze. My head was killing me, and the ground was hard underneath my body. My whole chest ached, like someone had been sitting on me and crushing my lungs and heart – every time I took a breath, the pain only seemed to get worse.
But slowly, second by second, it faded. My mouth was dry and when I opened my eyes, the lighting was so bright that I almost fainted again.
It took me a moment to realize where I was – sitting on the floor of the lobby, surrounded by a cluster of people including my boss, Brent. There were paramedics and a whole group of people I’d seen in passing before - - people who worked on other floors, who had stopped to gawk at me and watch the spectacle.
“She’s awake,” one of the paramedics said. He rushed in and began taking my blood pressure, ignoring the way I flinched as he moved closer. As he took my arm in his hands and felt for my pulse, I began to shake.
“Please, stop touching me,” I said.
The paramedic ignored me. “Hon, we’ve got to get your vitals,” another paramedic told me. This one, a woman, gave me a sympathetic smile and patted my arm briskly.
Baby for Brother’s Best Friend: Brother’s Best Friend Book 1 Page 11
