“I need two sides of ice cream with that,” Laura snapped.
“I’ve had two kids myself and I know how bad it is when you hit the, what—493rd week?” Madge snorted. “But you don’t have to bite my head off.”
Josie tapped the table. Laura and Madge looked at her. “When you’re pissin’ Madge off, you know you’ve crossed the line.”
Laura’s eyes filled with tears. Aw, shit, Josie thought. “I’m sorry,” Laura said, her lip trembling, wide, wet eyes looking at Madge like she’d just run over her cat. “It’s just…you don’t…it’s just…” She flinched and grabbed her belly, bending over and taking a deep breath. “It’s just hard.”
“Is something wrong?” Josie asked.
“No.” Laura’s breath caught, a hitched gasp, and then smoothed out. “It’s just these stupid Braxton Hicks contractions.”
Madge waved her hand. “Early labor. Whatever. Call me when you’ve gone through twenty-one hours of labor alone ’cause your car’s broken, your husband finally gets you to the hospital, and you end up giving birth in the lounge on top of some stranger’s trench coat.”
“That happened to you?” both women asked in unison.
“No. Just call me when it happens.” Smirk.
Josie and Laura shared a what the f**k? look and then Laura dug in as if she’d just spent a year on Jenny Craig and this was her first off-plan meal. Josie had been right. Within minutes all the coconut shrimp were gone, Laura using her finger to scrape the last of the dipping sauce. Chugging down her water, she banged the glass on the tabletop like a Viking. Madge, as if reading her mind, zipped by with a pitcher, leaving it on the table for the two to share.
“I know it’s not a perfect solution,” Laura said, wiping her mouth, looking around the restaurant for Madge. Josie could almost hear the words “where’s that cake?” coming out of Laura’s brain. “But this way, the guys don’t know, I don’t know unless I choose to look at that part, and yet the baby will be protected in case something happens to me because the real father—” She cringed at the words.
“Biological father,” Josie helped.
“Yes, the biological father will be listed.”
Taking a sip of water, Josie nodded slowly. It could work. She could see that. Or, at least, she could easily pretend that this would work. The hard part would be knowing and keeping her mouth shut. For—well, ever—she would have the answer to a secret that was at the fundamental core of Dylan and Mike’s, and really Laura’s, being. One that they wouldn’t know, and one that could alter so much in their relationship if it were revealed.
She’d rather shit an eight-pound football than carry that around.
Almost.
Biting her lip, she decided to stuff her mouth with more food, and then looked down. She’d only eaten one coconut shrimp and now the other one was gone. “Hey,” she said, tipping her head up and looking at Laura, who was now chewing suspiciously.
A guilty look crossed Laura’s face. “Sorry.”
Madge to the rescue with two pieces of cake. Josie wrapped her arm around hers and snarled at Laura. “Mine.”
The three women laughed. “It’s only yours if you eat it before I eat mine.” Laura mugged and they began the chocolate fest.
“Not to bring up a touchy subject,” Josie said through a mouthful of cake. As if the baby’s paternity hadn’t been a heavy topic. “But when are you going to finally have this kid?”
Laura glared at her. “You think that I’m hanging on to her for no good reason? She’ll be born when she’s born. Or when they make me give birth to her. Time’s ticking right now, and Sherri says they can give me five more days. After that, it’s going to be tough.”
Sherri was Laura’s certified nurse midwife. Josie admired the woman’s approach. With a master’s degree in nursing, she was sort of like an obstetrician and a midwife combined, except she couldn’t perform surgery. If Laura needed a C-section she would have to use the obstetrician who supervised Sherri, or whoever was on duty that night.
Josie knew from enough years of working in hospitals that that was a crap shoot. Sometimes you got someone great, and sometimes you got a completely incompetent ass**le. Most of the time, you got somebody in between, so she really hoped that Laura would have a smooth birth. The problem of too much fluid in the womb, the polyhydramnios diagnosis that Laura had gotten in her second trimester, had resolved enough that she could stay with the midwives, but she was still enough of a concern that Josie had some serious trepidations about the birth.
The medical issues were one thing. The other part made her scratch her head and wonder how this would work operationally. There were two dads, and while she was sure that the staff at the hospital was an enlightened group by and large, they probably didn’t get too many situations where two men were in the room. Plus Josie as a friend. Rather than saying anything, because Laura was about as sensitive as any forty-week-and-two-day pregnant woman would be, she just nodded and said simply, “You’ve got my number programmed in your phone. You know where and how to find me, and I’ll show up in my pajamas and barefoot if that’s when this baby decides to be born.”
Laura looked up from her plate, chocolate and peanut butter smeared at the corners of her mouth, her cheeks persistently pink and rosy, as they had been the entire last month of the pregnancy. “You will?” she said.
“Of course I will. You know that,” Josie answered. “And so will Dylan and Mike.”
“They will, no matter what,” Laura said, wiping her mouth with a napkin. “They live with me now. They have no choice.”
About a month ago, the three had all moved into Mike’s cabin. For the past two weeks, though, they’d been staying at Laura’s place—her lease didn’t run out for a bit. Her place was closest to the hospital where Laura hoped to birth. Josie had forgotten one day, absentmindedly dropping by for morning coffee, greeted at the door by a very wet Dylan wearing only a towel.
That was the end of her morning ritual with Laura. He’d invited her in, and Mike had poked his head around the kitchen to say “hi” and welcome her to join them for breakfast, but it had felt intrusive. As if she would be the outsider. Begging off had been easy. Finding a cup of coffee at a shop was simple.