. . . . . . .
Carlos sat at his desk and stared at his phone. His meeting had been canceled at the last minute. That unfortunately gave him time to make that phone call he’d been avoiding all week.
All week? He’d avoided making that call for the past five years.
He picked up the phone.
“Yes, hi. I’d like to schedule an appointment with Dr. Guerriero? Just a physical. Yes, Carlos Ibarra.” He swallowed hard, as the person on the other end took his insurance information. “I totally understand if you can’t get me in for a while—oh, you have a cancellation tomorrow? I don’t know if . . .” He took a deep breath. “What time tomorrow?”
He hung up the phone and stared out the window. Tomorrow. Damn it.
No, tomorrow was too soon. He should call back to reschedule. He picked up the phone.
“Dr. Ibarra?” One of the nurses poked her head into his office, and he put the phone down again. “There’s someone at the front desk to see you. She says she’s your cousin?”
He stood up. If Jessie had left the NICU to come over to his office to see him, it was either really good or really bad news.
“I’ll be right there.”
He almost ran down the hall.
“Jessie?” He poked his head into the waiting room. The huge smile on her face answered his question. She ran over to him, and he threw open the door so she could follow him back to his office. But the door was barely shut before she threw her arms around him.
“We get to take her home today! Yesterday they said maybe, but I was too scared to tell anyone. Last night I couldn’t sleep, partly because of the fireworks going on all night, but mostly because I was just praying that I would have my baby at home with me by tonight. And my prayers were answered. Just a few hours for them to do all of the paperwork and to give us all of her instructions. Oh, Carlos! I get to take my baby home!”
He hugged her tight and pulled her down the hall to his office. Once the door was closed, he hugged her again.
“I didn’t think she’d be able to go home this early. You’ve got a fighter on your hands. When they told me you were here to see me, I . . .” He wiped his eyes. “Anyway, this is wonderful. I’m so happy for you and for Eva, who won the mom lottery.” He took a step back and handed her the tissue box on his desk. “Where’s Jon? Do you need help getting Eva home?”
Jessie took a handful of tissues and shook her head.
“He’s upstairs with Eva. I’ve barely stopped crying since the doctors told us she could go home today.”
Carlos gently pushed her down in one of the chairs in front of his desk and sat next to her.
“And you, you’re okay?” He shook his head. “No, you don’t have to tell me. I’m your cousin, not your doctor.”
She leaned over to hug him.
“Just for that, I’ll tell you that my blood pressure is almost normal. And I can even fit into some of my pre-pregnancy shoes now. Not clothes, let’s not be ambitious, but I was getting very nervous I’d never be able to wear those Tory Burch flats again, so that was a tiny relief.”
His office phone rang and he ignored it.
“I don’t know who Tory is, but if that’s a relief to you, it is to me, too. Do you need anything? Food, diapers, a crib, bottles, anything?”
She laughed, even though tears were still trickling down her face.
“Don’t forget, you already brought me those enchiladas. We’ve already defrosted one pan and have been eating them all week. And I think my mom has spent all day every day since Eva was born cooking for her little namesake; my freezer is going to be filled to bursting soon. I don’t even know what else we need. I’m mad at myself for not letting my friends push the date of my shower up. I thought it was tempting fate, if you can believe that. Thank God someone already bought us the bassinet so she has somewhere to sleep.”
He made a mental note to buy whatever was the most expensive thing on the registry. Okay, okay, maybe Angela was right; he could pull back a little. The second most expensive thing.
She stood up.
“I should go. I probably have to sign a bunch of stuff, and I can’t wait to get our little girl out of this hospital, even though I’m sort of terrified to pull her away from the people taking care of her.”
Carlos put his hand on her shoulder.
“You and Jon, you are the people taking care of her. And you’ll do a wonderful job, I promise.”
She punched his arm.
“Damn you, Carlos. I just stopped crying, and now you’ve got to get me started again?”
She leaned in for a hug, and he kissed her on the forehead.
“I’m so happy for you, Jessie. And I can’t wait to spoil little Eva rotten.”
She opened his office door.
“I can’t wait for that, either. Oh, and you thanked your friend Nik for me for the cupcakes, right? Tell her I said that was so thoughtful. I want to send her a thank-you card, but this week has just been . . .”
He had not thanked Nik on Jessie’s behalf, no.
“Don’t worry about it. You’ve been kind of preoccupied this week; she understands.” He was sure Nik did understand, so that wasn’t exactly a lie. “Go back upstairs to your baby. Call me if you have any questions at all, okay?”
Right, right, she was his cousin, not his patient. This shit was hard.
“Actually, you should probably call the NICU and not me, they know this stuff better than I do. But let me know if you need anything at all, okay?”
She nodded.
“I will. Have I ever told you how glad I am that you’re my cousin?”
He grinned.
“I’m not sure, refresh my memory about why? You had at least ten or fifteen reasons, correct? Can you list them for me?”
She walked into the hallway.
“Never, you’re cocky enough as it is.”
She disappeared toward the elevators with another wave over her shoulder, and he went laughing back to his desk.
Maybe he should text Nik to thank her for the cupcakes. He couldn’t keep pretending to Jessie that he’d done that without actually doing it, right?
And wouldn’t Nik want to know that Eva was okay and was getting to go home from the hospital? She’d been there the night Eva was born; she’d cried along with everyone else. Shouldn’t he let her know?
He laughed at himself. That was a pretext, and he knew it. He didn’t need to thank Nik; he needed to apologize to Nik. He hated what he’d said to her that awful morning, he hated the memory of the hurt look on her face when he’d walked out of his house, and he hated that she’d remember him like that. Even if she didn’t love him back, he didn’t want her to hate him.
An email was probably the way to do this, not a text. A text felt too immediate. Like he’d be expecting a response.
He scrolled back through his work emails until he found her email address.
To: Nikole@NikoleDPaterson.com
From: Carlos_Ibarra@eastsidemedicalcenter.com
Subject: cupcakes
Jessie wanted me to make sure to thank you for the cupcakes. They made her so happy. She appreciated it a lot. So did I. She’s doing a lot better and Eva is, too—they’re taking her home from the hospital today.
I’m sorry for what I said that morning and how I acted. I can’t apologize enough.
You don’t have to respond to this.
Carlos
That seemed so blunt and inarticulate, but at least it was all true.
He pressed send.
Nik pulled into the grocery store parking lot at ten on Friday night. It was her favorite time to go to the grocery store, and she hadn’t been able to go on a Friday night in a while. The place was almost empty, the employees were in party moods, and the other people who were there on Friday nights were always buying huge bags of chips and cartons of cheap beer, which always made Nik so happy she wasn’t going to their terrible parties.
As she walked inside, a bleary-eyed man carrying a huge bag of diapers almost knocked into her on his way out.
“Sorry!” he shouted. Then he walked into the parking lot right into the path of a car that braked just in time. Poor guy probably hadn’t slept in a week.
That made her think of Jessie and Jon, and baby Eva. And Carlos.
She’d barely been able to think about anything else since she’d gotten Carlos’s email the day before. She’d written and deleted about five responses until she’d finally given up.
She walked through the store, still thinking about the email. She stopped in the baked goods aisle and stared at four shelves full of different gluten-free flours without really seeing them. She wanted so much to respond, but she had no idea what to say.
She shook her head to try to clear her mind. Thinking like this was not going to help. And for God’s sake, especially not in the grocery store. She had a list, remember? And—she finally realized what she was staring at—sorghum flour was not on it. She pushed her cart until she found olive oil and checked it off her list.
She sped through the store, grabbing bananas, granola, bread, tomatoes, bacon. Oh good, she could make herself a BLT when she got home tonight. People always said it was a bad idea to go to the grocery store while hungry, but she always made herself delicious meals when she got home from the grocery store on those Friday nights.
She made her way to the dairy aisle to stock up on yogurt. When she saw the big tubs of sour cream, she laughed out loud, startling the employee stocking the dairy case. She didn’t think she would ever be able to see sour cream without remembering when she’d spackled her face with it after she’d set herself on fire with chilies. And when she laughed so hard with Carlos about it that they’d ended up sitting on the bathroom floor in tears. She grabbed six containers of yogurt, still with a smile on her face.
Would she always think about Carlos whenever she saw sour cream? She hoped so, despite everything. Seeing that sour cream made her think of how happy she’d been around him, at every moment. It made her think of how proud he was of all of her accomplishments, from writing for the New Yorker to signing up for boxing class. It made her think of how he’d dropped everything to help her, more than once, and how happy she was to be able to help him the night Eva was born. She never wanted to stop thinking about him.
Wait.
Holy shit.
Oh no.
WAS THIS WHAT LOVE WAS?
Being happy when you thought about someone; wanting to never stop thinking about them, even when you were fighting; having every damn thing in the grocery store remind you of them, from diapers to sour cream; wanting to be a better writer and friend and person because of how they were and how they made you feel; wanting to be with them, all the time, even though you kept fighting it.
Motherfucker.
She was in love with him.
Now what?
She walked to the register like she was in a dream. She didn’t know how to do this. How did a person even handle this sort of thing?
She didn’t like this; she didn’t like it at all. She felt gooey and vulnerable and helpless. She didn’t like feeling any of those things. If this was what Natalie had meant by trusting herself and her emotions, she wasn’t a fan of it at all.
When she’d been with Justin, she’d felt anxious and needy and constantly on edge, like she had to prove herself all the time. Thinking about him had never made her feel happy like thinking about Carlos did. She knew Carlos loved her—as difficult and prickly and loud as she was—just for being her. And she loved him for being the funny, kind, warm person he was. She loved him so much.
Oh no, this was awful.
She preferred her comfortable, easy, safe flings with guys she didn’t care about to all of these terrible feelings. Her first instinct was to get in her car, get on the freeway going east, and just keep driving.
Yes, that was a good idea. She should drive until she hit the desert and then stay there. That way, she would never have to deal with this and maybe eventually it would go away.
She stuck her credit card in the stupid card reader that beeped at her like she’d done something wrong and thought hard about that plan. She could go right now. These bananas and that granola, plus the bottled water that she’d bought weeks ago and had been too lazy to take out of her trunk, all of that could last her a few weeks, right? Not that she would have any way of knowing. She hadn’t driven to the desert or slept outside since . . . okay, it was definitely within the last ten years—she’d be fine.
She pushed her cart to her car and loaded her groceries into the trunk. What all did she need, anyway? Food, water, a bucket of some sort? There must be an REI that was open late nearby somewhere where she could buy one and a flashlight and an emergency sleeping bag that would become an actual cocoon for her so she didn’t have to deal with how she’d fucked everything up.
She sat in her car but didn’t turn it on.
She put her head down on her steering wheel. And, oops, she honked the horn with her nose. She sat up with a jerk and waved an apology to the dog in the car facing hers. It still barked at her.
Maybe driving to the desert in the middle of the night in July wasn’t the best idea she’d ever had, but the alternative was to actually think about this, and how she didn’t know how to do this, and what if his email had meant he was apologizing for saying he loved her because he hadn’t actually meant it, and how she didn’t know what she would do if she never saw him again, and the desert sounded better than all of that.
The Vons parking lot was no place to figure this out. Maybe . . . maybe Carlos would be waiting on her doorstep this time. Yes, she would go home, and he’d be waiting for her there. She would leap into his arms and say she loved him and that she was sorry for everything, and he would say he’d never stopped loving her, and they’d go upstairs and have lots of sex, and everything would be perfect.
She started her car and raced home, convinced more and more every moment that that was what was going to happen. It made perfect sense. He had sent that email so she would be ready to leap into his arms when he showed up! Which she would!
She pulled into the parking lot behind her building and walked around to the front with her groceries, ready to pretend to be surprised as soon as she saw him.
But no one was there.
Fuck.
Did this mean she was going to have to figure out how to fix this herself?
She walked into her apartment and put her entire grocery bag in her refrigerator, too tired and confused to unload it.
She pulled out her phone to text Courtney and Dana. But what was she going to say to them? “I just realized I’m in love with Carlos and don’t know what to do”? She already knew what they would tell her to do.
TELL HIM—that’s what they would say. Courtney would use all caps; Dana wouldn’t but would use exclamation points, but the message would remain the same.
But didn’t they know how hard it would be to tell him something like that?
Yeah, they’d been her friends for fifteen years. She was pretty sure they knew. But they would tell her to do it anyway. The assholes.
When she realized that she was cursing at her friends because of their imaginary conversation with her, she knew she’d gone fully around the bend. Okay, tonight she was going to make no impulsive decisions, neither driving to the desert nor texting anyone would happen. She turned off her phone and went straight to bed. Maybe in the morning she would be over this love nonsense.
She woke up the next morning after ten full hours of sleep and stumbled to the kitchen to make coffee. She opened the refrigerator to get milk and did a double take at the full grocery bag stuffed onto the middle shelf of her refrigerator.
“Why the fuck did I do that? Was I drunk last night?”
Oh. It all came back to her now. Way worse than drunk.
The coffee pot beeped at her, and she poured herself a cup and drank about half of it like a very hot tequila shot.
She sat down and stared into her coffee mug for five full minutes. Then she took out her phone to text her friends.
I realized I’m in love with Carlos and I don’t know what to do.
She sat there, staring at her phone, waiting for their responses.
OMG. This is so exciting! I knew it! You’ve got to tell him!
That was Dana, of course. Wait a minute, what did she mean, she knew it?
FINALLY. But why are you telling us, tell HIM.
“Finally” was not the response she had expected to get.
Why are you guys acting like this is old news? I just realized it last night and I almost had a breakdown in the Vons parking lot!
She poured another mug full of coffee. What had she been thinking last night, granola? All she wanted right now was a doughnut.
Oh, honey, we’ve known this for weeks, but it doesn’t matter that you’re late to the party. All that matters is that you got here at all. Right, Dana?
Right! Go get him!
She hated them so much.
“Go get him!” they said. Like that was easy. Like she knew how to do something like that. Like she wasn’t terrified to do it.
She finished her cup of coffee and poured another one. Then she picked up her phone and scrolled back through her call log until she found the number. She took a deep breath.
“Hi, Angela? Hi, this is Nik. We, um. We met at the Dodgers game, and . . . yeah, that Nik. I need a favor.”