She was talking so fast he could have been forgiven for hearing gibberish. But she made sense. Perfect sense.
“Fine,” he said. “I agree to your terms.”
He was hard as a rock and had just agreed to be celibate for nine long months.
* * *
THE COOKIES WERE DONE. Josh had consumed his share while they’d been cooling. She wrapped up Jerome’s intended share for Josh to take home with him. Jerome would never know that he missed out on a batch of cookies.
He had Little Guy under his arm and Dana was pretty certain she was going to get him out of her apartment before she fell apart again...until Josh left his plate of cookies sitting on the counter rather than picking them up.
“Did you want kids?” he asked her.
She’d already finished the dishes. Wiped the counters. There wasn’t much more to do to occupy her hands.
“Yes,” she said. “After I graduated, fell in love, got married...”
He cocked his head and quirked his eyebrow, and she tried her best not to respond. The man had just agreed to celibacy, rather than counter her platonic proposition by suggesting that they have sex with each other during the next nine months. There was absolutely no point in salivating over him.
It had been ten days since they’d had sex and not once during that time had he given her any indication that he wanted to repeat the experience.
He didn’t want her when she was thin and able—he sure as hell wouldn’t want her once she was fat and waddling to get from point A to point B.
“What if you fell in love before you graduated?”
“I don’t know,” she told him. “I take life as it comes. There’s enough to deal with every day without borrowing trouble.”
He stood there holding his dog. She wrapped her arms around herself.
“I used to figure I’d have kids someday, too.” His words dropped into the silence. She’d expected him to say more, but he picked up his cookies and left then, without making any definite plans to see her again, or discussing practical realities. He hadn’t asked about a doctor’s appointment, or the cost of vitamins, or if she was telling her parents about the baby.
Fair or not, right or not, she felt cheated when he walked out her door and left her standing there. She’d agreed to become a partner with him in the most magnanimous project she’d ever take on, to allow him to be by her side during the most miraculous and probably the most painful moments of her life, and then he’d just left.
She took a hot bath. Cried a little.
And told herself that Josh’s visit had been a good thing.
He had a job with benefits.
She no longer had to worry about providing health insurance for her unborn child.
* * *
EARLY MONDAY MORNING, before work, Josh called Sara, Michelle’s caregiver. It was the first time he’d spoken with her since she’d told him not to call.
“Good morning, Mr. Redmond.”
“Good morning, Sara,” he said as though they still talked every day. “How is she?”
“The same. No better, no worse.”
He’d known that would be the case. Sara would have called him if there’d been any change.
Michelle wasn’t going to change. She wasn’t going to come back to the world, laugh out loud, drink wine...or have children.
By what right could he?
“Let me know if there’s anything she needs, Sara. Anything that I can do to make her more comfortable or—”
“The fresh flowers you ordered to be delivered every morning are nice. I really think she likes them.”
So did he. On some basic level Michelle was still with them and she’d always been drawn to gardens.
And he had a thought...
“Sara, I’d like to call Dr. Humboldt and see what he thinks about an outing.” Michelle’s attending physician hadn’t expected her to hold on long after she’d been released from the hospital. Plans had been made in the short-term. But it had been months and nothing had changed. “If he agrees, would you be willing to accompany her? I’d buy a van and a chair and hire someone to drive and handle pushing the chair around. I’ll give you money to hire a medical technician to assist with her apparatus....”
He was making it up as he went along, considering what the idea would entail, but knew that the idea was a good one.
“Where would we take her, sir?”
“Gardens,” Josh said, his mind whirling to all of the places he’d been in the world, and places Michelle had said she’d wanted to visit.
“She loved the Arnold Arboretum there in Boston,” he said. He knew because he’d attended a fund-raiser there with her and had been impatient to get to the alcohol trays while she’d been taking forever looking at plants from the 1800s. “It’s open year-round.”