Chapter 14

Mike

A month went by with Julia and I only barely talking over text messaging. I definitely didn’t want to be that jerky guy who blew her off, but I also didn’t like how fast she had moved into my building without giving me any sort of heads up. I didn’t care that she bought a condo in my building, but I also wasn’t sure I wanted to be locked into this thing we had going on. A nice, fun, friends with benefits relationship seemed ideal, but if she was living right next to me I honestly didn’t know how to handle that.

I threw myself into my work that month. Taking on more patients and working on our business plan for expansion. It took every bit of my energy, mostly because I didn’t like the guilt that was eating away at me because I had been blowing Julia off.

When Taylor called and wanted to head out for drinks at the local sports bar, I agreed. A night on the town might be just what I was looking for.

“I can call up some girls to keep us company if you want?” Taylor offered.

“Not tonight, man. I just want to drink and watch the game.”

“I hear ya. Ladies are just trouble.”

“Very true. Trouble and a headache,” I added.

When we got to the bar there wasn’t a table left in the place. It was packed with people there to enjoy their weekend. Taylor and I found a spot at the bar after a few minutes of rummaging around and finally settled in with a couple of drinks.

“So what’s new with you?” He asked.

“Not much. Well, I’m expanding the practice soon, that’s exciting.”

“Really? I’m surprised.”

“Why? We are doing great. I’m surprised you still work under the big umbrella of the hospital. You know you’d make a ton more money out on your own.”

“I don’t know, it seems like a lot more trouble than it’s worth. The way things are now I can show up, clock my hours and go home. I don’t work weekends. I’m never on call. I get a flat salary and don’t have to worry about billing; it’s a pretty sweet gig. I actually thought that you would end up coming over to my side sooner or later.”

“But what are you getting paid, like two hundred thousand?”

“Try four,” Taylor said with a flashy smile.

“You’re just a family doc and they are paying you four? That’s outrageous,” I was in shock. I’d always assumed the pay through the hospital was much lower.

“I mean, it doesn’t hurt that I made New York’s most eligible bachelor list. You know I’ve got a full practice and no one is cancelling their appointments.”

“Ahh, so you have all the hot mom’s coming to see you. I get it.”

“Yeah, but I think it’s mainly about productivity. Still, I know you’re making well into the seven figures at your practice. But you’re working all those nights and weekends. You are going to burn yourself out sooner or later.”

“That’s why we are…” I trailed off as I looked toward the doorway and saw Julia coming into the bar with Kendra and two of my friends. One of them was the guy who I shared Kendra’s number with and the other was a mutual friend of both of ours.

“What?” Taylor asked as he noticed my attention had clearly been diverted. “Oh, damn those girls are hot. Devon and Patrick have some good taste in ladies.”

“That brunette is the one having my baby,” I said and then realized I hadn’t exactly filled Taylor in on the whole back story to that comment.

“You’re having a baby? Why is she out with him then? She’s a knock out. Is she crazy? Did you have to dump her because she was crazy?” Taylor had known a few crazy women of his own over the years, so that was of course the first thing that popped into his mind.

“It’s a long story. She’s an old friend and asked me to be her sperm donor.”

“That wasn’t very long.”

“I can’t believe she’s dating,” I said almost to myself as I watched the bar manager open up a table just for their group in the corner.

Patrick was a high powered real estate agent in town. He knew everyone and everyone knew him. If you were buying a large business property or a multimillion dollar condo, you went through Patrick.

I could barely contain myself as I watch Julia flirting with Patrick and him returning the affection. They clearly liked one another. They looked more comfortable than a first date. I couldn’t take it any longer and looked back toward Taylor.

“Why can’t you believe she’s dating? She’s a beautiful girl.”

“She’s pregnant. She wanted to have a baby so bad that she asked me to be a donor. I would have thought she was going to concentrate on motherhood.”

“She doesn’t look pregnant in that dress. She looks like she’s trying to get pregnant,” Taylor laughed at his own joke.

“Well, she is pregnant. About two months along so she’s not showing yet. I really hope she told Patrick about the baby. It would be a pretty shitty thing to be going out with him and letting him like her if she wasn’t planning on continuing to date him.”

“Wow, okay, so did you sleep with this girl to get her pregnant? Is that what’s going on here?” Taylor looked a little confused by all my emotion over Julia being out on a date. Hell, I was even a little confused about it.

“We slept together but she used a donation for the insemination. It’s part of the long story I was talking about before.”

Just then Patrick and Devin happened to notice us and motioned for Taylor and me to come and sit with them. We all played softball together and hung out a lot. It wasn’t unusual for any of us to invite the others over, but I absolutely didn’t want to sit next to Patrick while he was flirting with Julia.

“Let’s go over,” Taylor said as he hopped up.

“I’m not going.”

“Now that would look weird. You have to go. And if you don’t want her dating other people then maybe you should consider dating her yourself. Just an idea,” he walked over to the table and left me there at the bar. I had no other choice but to go join them.

The walk over was torture. I did my best not to look Julia in the eyes, but eventually we made eye contact. She smiled at me and that just made me feel worse for not keeping in touch with her the last few weeks.

“Hey guys, what are you doing out without some pretty ladies on your arms?” Patrick asked.

“Just grabbing a drink and having a chat,” Taylor said.

“How are you?” I mouthed toward Julia as the guys were talking.

“Good,” she smiled back at me.

She looked good. Her hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail and she had a skin tight black dress on. It showed off all her curves which I absolutely thought were becoming more defined. She was rocking a pair of black heels and had her makeup done. She was dressed to impress Patrick and that made my stomach swirl.

Why was she dating? I mean really. Wasn’t the whole purpose of going on a date to see if you could find someone for a relationship? There was no way Patrick was going to want to date her if she was pregnant and no way Julia was going to get herself in some sort of relationship mess while she was preparing for her baby. I didn’t understand at all what was going on.

When the waiter came to the table to drop off the drinks that Kendra, Julia, and the guys had ordered, Julia was drinking plain ice water. If that wasn’t a tell-tell sign that she was pregnant I wasn’t sure what was. No girl went on a date with a guy like Patrick and just ordered water, they usually wanted to drink for free all night long with him.

“Julia’s pregnant,” Patrick announced to the table as if the child was his or something. “Don’t worry, it’s not mine. We haven’t been on that many dates yet,” he laughed. “But isn’t that exciting? I think it’s really brave of you to do this on your own.”

I’m pretty sure my mouth was actually open as I watched Patrick lean in and give Julia a kiss on the lips. What sort of weird parallel world was I in? I had no idea what was going on. And then I felt sick. My stomach had been rumbling since I saw Julia and I finally couldn’t take it any longer. I excused myself and made a bee-line for the restroom.

I barely made it into the stall before everything in my stomach was emptied into the toilet. My hands were shaking, I was sweating, I felt like I could hardly breath and yet I’d felt fine only a few minutes earlier.

“Everything okay in here?” I heard Taylor ask from the doorway.

When I came out of the stall it was clear that I was not okay. My breathing was rapid, I was having a full-blown panic attack. I’d had them before, not many over my life, but I knew what it was. Normally I was only panicked about things like the ten year lease I signed for my business or the tests I took in college. This was a whole new level of panic and over a woman, which I’d never had before.

“A panic attack, eh?” Taylor said as he got a paper towel wet and handed it to me. “On your neck. You know the drill.”

“Dude, I don’t know why I’m freaking out. She’s not my girlfriend or anything. She can date whoever she wants to.”

“Maybe you should figure that out sooner rather than later.”

“So Patrick is just dating her and doesn’t care that she’s pregnant?”

“Well, I don’t think he knows it’s your baby. He wouldn’t have been acting like that. But nowadays you have to hold onto a stable woman when you find one. I’ve dated women with kids before; it’s not a big deal.”

“But she’s still cooking her kid. Like she literally just got pregnant. You don’t think that’s weird that he’s dating her?”

“I think pregnant women are sexy as fuck. I can’t wait to be married and bone my wife all throughout her pregnancy.” Taylor wasn’t even the person I thought he was. I had no idea what was going on. My hard line friends were now pro-pregnancy and talking about their sexual fetishes with pregnant women.

“Go talk to her. Or talk to her tomorrow when she’s done with her date. Just clear whatever is going on between you. I’ve never seen you this crazy over a girl.”

“I know.” I didn’t actually know until that moment though.

“You need to ask her out. You can figure the rest out on the way. Don’t let her run to Patrick.”

“She might not say yes. Patrick didn’t dick her over like I did,” I shrugged.

“Trust me, I saw how she looked at you as you walked over. She would rather have you.”

I hoped Taylor was right about that. I really did. There was no possible way I could sit back and watch Patrick become the father to my baby. Was it my baby? No, not in the legal sense, but I felt responsible and I wanted to be in Julia’s life.

There was no way I knew what to do next. Nothing was certain. Nothing was planned. All I knew was that I had to let Julia know that I wanted to date her. Not like a casual thing where we were messing around and just being friends. I wanted to give it a go. A real try.

Taylor left me in the bathroom while I calmed down a little more. It was nearly fifteen minutes before I finally felt put together enough to head back out into the bar. When I finally came out and walked down the hallway, there was Julia waiting to talk to me.

She had her arms crossed and looked like she had been standing there for a long time. It was a little embarrassing how long I’d been in the bathroom; certainly she was thinking I was doing something on the toilet and not throwing up.

“Hey,” I managed to say as I leaned next to her on the wall. “So Patrick, he’s a nice guy.”

“He really is a nice guy.”

“How long have you two been going out?”

“This is our second date with Kendra and Devin. Sort of a double date thing we have going on. It’s nice. Takes the pressure off of the need for conversation and stuff like that. There is always someone who’s willing to talk if I don’t want to.”

She laughed nervously and that made me feel much better. But things between us were weird, off, or different from how they had been a few weeks before. It was all my fault and I knew it.

“I’m sorry I’ve been quiet lately,” I said trying not to totally admit to purposely not responding to her messages.

“Oh, is that what you call it? I just call you a jerk when I talk about you to Kendra,” she teased and elbowed me a little. “I know you’re just trying to figure things out. That’s what I’m doing to.”

“And dating Patrick,” I threw in there.

“Well I wouldn’t exactly call it dating. We have been on a couple of dates. But nothing serious,” she said sweetly as she leaned toward me.

Instantly relief washed over my body as I saw the expression on Julia’s face while she was looking at me. She clearly had feelings for me, or at the very least she liked me. I was such an idiot for pushing her away.

“Would you be interested in going on a date with me?” I asked, unsure of what her response would be and feeling less confident than I normally did when I asked a woman out.

“A real date?”

“Yeah, like one where I come pick you up. You wear a sexy dress like this. I buy you dinner, you know the kind,” I said and motioned with my head over to the table where Patrick was still sitting.

“Hmmm, I think I’ve vaguely heard of such things.”

“But yes, it would be a real date. I think we should give it a try. I mean we can always go back to ignoring each other if it doesn’t work out,” I laughed.

“Or you could go back to ignoring me?” She raised her eyebrows. “Because I wasn’t ignoring you at all.”

“Yes, or you could join in this time if you need to.”

“Yes, Mike, I would like to go on a real date with you. I would like to dress up and do my hair and have you pick me up and take me out. That sounds like a great idea.”

For a minute I thought Julia was going to lean in and kiss me. Her mouth was pouty as she licked her lips and leaned in closer to me. Patrick was only a few feet away. I couldn’t believe she would even consider kissing me like that. But she didn’t, instead she gave me a hug and motioned for the two of us to rejoin our group at the table.

As we slid back into the booth I immediately noticed that Julia was not flirting with Patrick nearly as much as she had been doing earlier. It dawned on me that she could have been flirting with him on purpose to make me a little jealous. Although, she had gone on two dates with the guy with no intention of making me jealous at all; she just was having a good time.

My heart skipped a little at the notion of Julia ‘having a good time’ with Patrick. Normally I wouldn’t have thought a girl like Julia would sleep with a guy on the first date. She seemed like the sort of girl who tested the waters a little before she ever considered sleeping with the guy. Maybe a couple of dates first or even a half dozen dates. But I knew she made exceptions to that rule because she had made one for me.

The entire rest of the evening I stared at the television screens in the bar and avoiding conversations among our group. I could hear them talking and I tried to keep up with what they were saying, but I couldn’t stand the thought of seeing Julia sitting there with Patrick. I kept wondering if they’d kissed yet. Or if they had gone to bed together. My mind was a horrible place to be when I was thinking about Julia, but then other times it was the best possible place in the world.

When the night wrapped up Patrick loaded Julia and Kendra into a car and went with them back to their place. Apparently Devin was going in an entirely different direction home and Patrick was going to have the Uber drop the girls off first and then go to his house. He was a good guy.

That was probably one of the reasons I worried so much about Julia being out with Patrick. Not because he was a terrible guy for her to go on a date with, but instead I worried because he wasn’t a terrible guy. I couldn’t help but think that Julia might actually like him and that just killed me to think of.