“Where’re Mike and Dylan?” she asked.
“Oh, they went out to get some food. I’m really jonesing for some sushi.”
“And you know…all that?” Josie said, spinning her hand around in the general direction of Laura’s crotch.
“Well, all that,” Laura said, quietly mimicking Josie’s gesture, “is the equivalent of putting my vagina in a juicer. Whoever invented crotch ice packs is my new best friend.” She closed her eyes and sighed. “Sorry, Josie. You’ve been replaced.”
“Oh, God!” Josie said, “Did you really have to go there? The words ‘vagina’ and ‘juicer’ should never be spoken together!”
Alex just laughed, a sound of understanding, and abandon, and amusement, and acceptance that took away Josie’s sense of alienation.
“You’ll be…here,” Laura said, spinning her wrist over her pelvis, “someday. You’ll understand.”
“The only way any of these parts are getting anywhere near a juicer is when I cozy up to the bar and lean into it a little too hard to get my fifth pomegranate margarita.”
Alex slid an easy arm around her shoulders and squeezed her upper arm, a playful, affectionate gesture that made Laura raise her eyebrows even higher. “I’m sure you will,” he said, and then dropped his arm, walking over to the base of Laura’s bed and grabbing the chart.
Laura mouthed Oh my God to Josie, and Josie mouthed back I KNOW, and crossed both sets of fingers.
Leaning over the baby, Laura hissed, barely audibly, “I can’t believe you picked a guy up at my birth!”
Josie just shrugged.
Laura pointed to Josie’s belly and whispered, “You’re having one of these someday,” pointing at Jillian, then at Alex, then her.
Josie glared back. “You take that back,” she whispered.
Biting her lips to keep from giggling, Laura shook her head.
“Then I curse you with twins next time you’re pregnant,” Josie growled as menacingly as a girly whispervoice could manage.
“Oh, you bitch,” Laura whispered back. She didn’t argue, though, at the idea that she’d be pregnant again. Her mock outrage turned to amusement.
If Josie were Laura right now, with a baby sucking the life force out of her, drinking her milk, and with a cold pack attached to her pubes, she’d be threatening homicide on anyone who suggested that she might have another one. Maybe Laura was just high on painkillers. That had to be it; it was the only way to explain why she would ever want to go through this obscenely barbaric experience again.
What had he just done, and when could they do it again? The taste of her was still in his mouth, her juices still on his h*ps and thighs, the feel of her pushing against him still in his flesh, and her name still echoing among the leftover groans trapped in his throat. He helped lead her back to the sidewalk and up from the little alcove, marveling that they’d just used to have wild, hot, nearly public sex.
And she liked it!
Women never indulged in this—ever—with him. Once, in college, he and a short-term girlfriend had been so drunk after a football game that they’d had a quickie under the bleachers, ten thousand stomping and roaring fans above them. The complete abandon and the risk of getting caught made the act incredibly explosive for him and setting every sense ablaze, pushing his cl**ax harder than it had ever been before, making him come and come, draining him dry and leaving him with a memory that got him through years of mast***ation sessions.
This? What he and Josie had just done without effort, without talking, without worry or fear or hesitation?
A thousand f**king times better.
How had the perfect woman, sexually aware and aggressive enough for him, willing to have outdoor sex and with a brain that intrigued, have been so close yet so far away for half a year?
Holy shit.
His brain was wired as they walked into Laura’s room. Alex could tell that Laura was exhausted; he shifted into OB mode, his brain a bit relieved to focus on something less overwhelming. The full rush of hormones, and pushing, and breastfeeding, and the recomposition of atoms and molecules inside her to make room for motherhood, was etched into her face. It was in the way her hands moved, how she cradled the baby’s neck, the subtle shift of her hip as she adjusted to having the baby’s weight outside her body now. Every new mother went through some degree of it, the biological reality of birth setting in.
Like Laura, some mothers were determined to have a low-intervention birth. Some mothers chose to use technology and modern medicine as much as possible to blunt the stark, animal nature of birth. Others had no choice but to use Pitocin to bring a baby forth with a flagging heart rate—and then there were those for whom a crash C-section was a thankful act of God. Most fell somewhere in the middle. A calm, steady doctor willing to use his brain, not just policy or statistics, to make rapid-fire decisions could mean the difference between one extreme and the other. As a resident, Alex had been proud of managing to take a laboring mom, who was failing to progress but didn’t want a C-section, through a birth far better than the one she’d have experienced in another doctor’s hands.
All these mothers were, at some point in their recovery, in the same exact place that Laura was right now. Alex wondered how the two fathers would make the similar adjustment. It was different, he knew that. No nine and a half months of hormones coursing through their veins, only bystanders to the violence of birth. Still, men had to go through a change as well, beyond being protective of the new life that they had helped to create. He thought he could tell which fathers were going to be good pretty quickly, even though he’d been without a father for most of his life. His grandfather had filled in, and was a fabulous father figure, but that’s all he had been…a figure. The empty part of him that wished he had a dad made his stomach tighten as Dylan and Mike came in on cue, looking like they’d be among the good ones.
Josie had taken the baby—with confidence, this time—to burp her when she pulled away from her mother’s breast. Mike and Dylan both grinned expectantly at the baby, but kept a respectful distance from Josie, who now cradled Jillian in her arms, swinging her gently, keeping the baby content.
“Josie’s not fainting this time,” Dylan stage whispered.
“Where’s my sushi?” Laura barked. “You can talk about anything you want, but not until I’ve had my sushi.”
Mike handed her two containers of California roll. “Sushi.” He sniffed. “That’s not sushi.”