The restaurant staff loves having Harper as a manager, and it’s a good thing because I can’t focus on my job. When a female customer walks in, I check to see if it’s Josie. When my cell rings, I hope to see her face on the caller ID.

I’m not usually so distracted.

I do a restaurant walk-through after the breakfast crowd thins and find Harper giving instructions to a deliveryman at the back door. “Got a second?” I ask.

She signs a ticket and hands it back to the worker. “Sure thing. What’s going on?”

We walk through the kitchen together and I pause. “Can you cover the noon crowd today? I may go out to lunch.”

“Yeah. No problem. Have you talked to Josie lately?”

It’s like the woman can read my mind. “Actually, that’s who I’d like to see at lunch.”

“Good. You need to do that,” she says as if she’s my boss.

I stride quickly to my office for some privacy while I write a text.

I refrain from mentioning that she’s eating for two. Babies are small, but they need to eat on the regular, right? I want to ask her how much weight she’s gained, but self-preservation screams to stop.

I rock back in my office chair and the springs protest with a squeak-squeak-squeak. In the days before we had our baby-producing night of stellar sex, Josie was a regular customer on Saturdays. She’d leave one of her two employees to cover the store and she’d walk the few blocks to Dastardly’s. Some days I had time to take a break and have a meal with her.

Other days, I’d wave a hand in her direction, too preoccupied with work to take the five seconds to say hello. She was—no, IS—my best friend. The realization knifes me in the chest. You don’t know what you’ve had until it’s missing, leaving a ragged hole in your life that can’t be filled by anyone else.

Apparently, she’s having a silent argument with me in her head. If only she’d tell me what to do to fix this rift.

I check the time on the television mounted high in one corner above the bar and groan. It’s going to be a long day. Like a Rubik’s cube, I turn over and over with more frustration, I can’t solve the puzzle of exactly what I’ve done wrong in the past couple of weeks. She slips further away with every day of distance between us.

I catch Harper looking at me several times. It’s a covert glance from the bar or while taking a customer’s orders. In the late afternoon, I wave her into the alcove at the front of the bar.

“Got a few minutes? Can we talk about Josie?” I rub my hand over my chin and study her. She and Josie are tight. Maybe too tight to tell me the things I want to know.

“Sure.” Harper tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and leans against the wall. “What about her?”

“Is she okay?”

Her eyes widen. “You should be asking her this. What is going on with you guys?”

“I don’t know. It’s like she wants me to leave her alone.”

Harper sighs. “Well, you’d better not do that.”

“Tell me what I need to do. The girl has shut the door on me and I can’t get in, no matter what I say. I text. I call. I’m all out of game plans. If I continue at this pace, she’ll have a good case against me for stalking. But she’s going to have my baby. Mine. And I’m on the outside looking in.”

“She can have a baby without you. If it’s all about the baby, she can be a one-woman show.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means…you’re dense.” She rolls her eyes at me and every man throughout history.

“No need to get hostile. Remember that I’m the one trying to do whatever necessary to make this right.” I rake fingers through my hair and rest my hand on the back of my head. “Explain it to me. Have mercy on a desperate, stupid man.”

“Why didn’t you guys ever date?”

“What?”

“You know. Dating. That thing where a guy calls a girl and says, ‘Hey, would you go to dinner with me?’”

“We had meals together all the time. Well, not dating per se, but—”

“Oh come on. If you mean when Josie came in here and you comp’d her meals, I should give up.”

“We didn’t date because she was my best friend. I spent all my time with her.”

“Not the same thing and not an excuse. Really. You’re being an idiot. You’ve chased women, dated them, slept with them. I bet you did more than hang out together and split a check. You didn’t treat them like buddies.” She steps in closer and whispers. “She told me about your offer to be friends with benefits. She deserves better. Don’t you know that?”

Everything in my body freezes—my lungs, my brain, my heart. How could I have said those humiliating words to Josie? “I wasn’t thinking straight,” I say in a whisper. “You know how it is in the heat of the moment when you say stuff.”

“Actually, I don’t.”

“I would never say that under normal circumstances. I was thinking with my….”

“And now that you’re not thinking with that head, maybe you can think with the one containing an actual brain. Prove to Josie that you care about her deeply.”

I’m too stunned to say anything, which is fine because Harper spins on her heel and walks away. Josie must have a sour taste in her mouth when it comes to me. I’ve completely failed her. I can do better.

It’s at this moment I see Ellen standing a few feet away. Unease ramps up my pulse. She’s only been here once when I brought her out for lunch. Why is she here today?

I examine the way her hair looks flat on one side as if she’s rolled straight out of bed to come visit me. Hygiene and appearances are not her strong suit.

It’s amazing how I possess zero resemblance to her. My hair is dark. Hers is bleached from some unknown color. I’m tall; she’s barely five foot. All physical attributes came from my anonymous father—the one she either wants to forget or has forgotten.

I favor my adoptive parents more than my biological mother. People who weren’t close to my parents always remarked on it. “Oh you have your father’s eyes and smile.” Or “You have dimples just like your mother.”

I glance at Harper’s back as she walks across the restaurant and back to Ellen. “Everything okay?”

“I missed my baby boy,” she says and stares at Harper. “Is that your girlfriend?”

“No. She works here. Why don’t you come to my office so we can talk?” I lead the way toward the back and hope she follows. Something has to be wrong for her to come all the way across town to see me.

“I brought you some cookies I made,” she says as we walk down the back hall. “Your favorite. Those sugar cookies from the plastic tube.”

Last time I visited her, I ate two for the sake of being polite. I don’t have the heart to tell her they taste like day-old bread. “Thanks.”

“So, the girl out front isn’t your girlfriend. You don’t have one?”

We walk into the office and I close the door. My shoulder blades pull together as my muscles tense. What can it hurt to tell Ellen now? I’m going to at some point. It might as well be today. “I actually do. Her name is Josie.”

“She work here?”

“No.”

“Oh. She’s that kind that don’t work. She’s hoping she can live off your money.” Ellen nods as if she hasn’t said something really insulting about Josie.

Josie busts her ass to run that store and I bite back a remark about Ellen’s lack of employment. I give a slow blink, breathing in and out. My irritation subsides. “She does work. She owns a bookstore.”

“Oh. I love books. My landlord gave me one of those adult coloring books with swear words. Do you think she has those?”

“Uh…maybe. I can ask her.” I walk around to the other side of my desk and sit. “Have a seat. What’s up?”

Ellen makes herself comfortable in a chair near the office door. “I just thought you’d like…” She hands across the plastic container of cookies. “…a treat. You work hard and you do nice things for me all the time.”

“You didn’t have to. You know I’ll be by your place on Sunday afternoon.”

“I’ll make your favorite—chicken and dumplings. Bring your girlfriend. I want to see who has stolen my little boy’s heart.”

Ellen keeps calling me her boy as if we are stuck in some alternate reality where she raised me. It’s weird and a new thing I wish she’d stop doing.

“We’ll see,” I answer.

“Dane?”

“Hmm?” I wait for her to ask something. There has to be another reason for her visit.

“I want you to know I am grateful for you. My life would be empty without you.” She gets to her feet and comes around to stand at the side of my desk.

I stand, not sure what she’s doing.

She steps forward and gives me a hug, resting her head against my chest. “God knew to bring you back to me. I wake up every day and think of how special you are.”

We’ve never hugged in the couple of years since I’ve known her. Why start now? Between this and her calling me her boy, my gut prickles with unease.

But she’s always been different.

I pat her awkwardly once on the back, ready for her to end the hug. “You’re special, too.”

“I can’t wait to meet your girlfriend.”

I imagine Ellen asking for coloring pages spelling out FUCK. Or maybe she’ll suggest they become best friends. There’s no way to know.

Trying to second-guess Ellen is more stressful than being head electrician of a nuclear plant. “Let me walk you out.”

* * *

The entire day passes by without a word from Josie. I check the time on my cell after the early diners have cleared. A band plays familiar old country tunes with a modern twist and the partiers will make an appearance soon enough. Twelve hour plus workdays aren’t unheard of in the bar business. But Dog Ears Bookstore closes at five, so she’s been home for several hours.

I picture her curled underneath her favorite blanket with a book in one hand and a mug of steaming cocoa in the other. Her feet might be clad in some long fuzzy socks that reach mid-thigh. The two times I saw her in them, I silently groaned in sexual frustration. Then I teased her about dressing like an anime character.

There will be a scented candle burning on the nightstand, making her place smell like a fireplace burning. Her hair will be in a messy bun, a style she never wears out in public and for that I’m grateful. Every man within eyesight would dream of having her in his bed.

Her entire bedtime ritual is the opposite of lace lingerie and spiked heels. And she has no idea that it’s ten times sexier than looking like she spent time preparing for a night of pleasure. Maybe I have a sex addiction when it comes to her. I’ve never been obsessed with any female like I am her. Tracing the bottom of my cell phone with my thumbs, I give in to my urge to send a text.

I wait with the phone in my hand so I don’t miss her response. The text alert dings within seconds.

I chuckle under my breath. The networks could make a fortune on a comedy sitcom about William Walters. I picture him hovering over a stack of books and driving her batty.

It takes a million years for her reply.

She loves a good conversation. So this brushoff disturbs me more than it should.

Night, babe, I whisper across the empty room and wish I could say it to her face-to-face. Mouth-to-mouth.

I place my cell phone on the dresser and try to shrug off all my thoughts of Josie. It doesn't seem right to have such carnal thoughts of her tonight. She’s not feeling warm toward me. Harper all but called me out on how I treated Josie in the past. But I can’t help the physical feelings she stirs in me.

I undress and stand in the shower, letting the hot water massage my back. My hand drops to stroke myself in an easy rhythm. Memories fuel my fantasy. Josie with her dark hair strewn across my white pillows. The way she looked the morning after we had our night together and the way she blinked lazily at me through sleepy eyes.

My mind skips further back on the playlist of our relationship. Summers at the lake. Josie biting into a slice of pink watermelon and juice dribbling down her chin, dropping to slide between her ample breasts. Falling onto her hot sweet summer skin.

I’m back again to that one night when every fantasy about my best friend came true. The desperation of that night in my apartment when we made our baby. I see something in Josie’s eyes that I've never clearly seen before. A look that tells me I am the center of her world right before I plunge deep inside her.

That night, I came so hard it should’ve blinded me. I swear the neurons in my brain exploded into fireworks that left me gasping at the intensity.

My hand pumps my dick in quick shaky movements as I remember how she felt underneath me. Her ecstatic cries that begged for more.

My release is sudden, forcing me to slam one hand against the shower stall. I’m breathing hard, and my heartbeat drums into my head. It takes several minutes to gain my composure. Has a man ever had heart failure from masturbation? Probably not.

I need Josie more than she needs me. Harper said as much.

My heart feels dark and blackened around the edges because I know how selfish I am. I should let Josie find someone else. What if I end up as crazy as Ellen? What if my kid inherits the gene that makes Ellen so unpredictable and erratic?

What if Josie ends up hating me?