Page 26 of Baby By my Best Friend's Daddy

When I finally got it, I made my way to the coffee machine. In the process of finding filters and preparing the pot, I knocked over a couple of things and dropped the tin.

Rebecca giggled. “Here,” she said and came toward me.

“I’ve got it,” I said.

She put her hand on mine, and her skin was impossibly soft and so warm.

“Let me make it. Sit down before you break something. Right now, I’m not excluding your own bones from that statement.”

I wanted to argue with her, but she was right. Aside from being a hazard on these crutches, I was still groggy and clumsy.

“Thank you,” I said.

She smiled up at me, and I was aware of how close she stood to me. I looked down into her dark eyes, and I could fall into them. Fall and drown if I wasn’t careful.

Something passed between us—the kind of spark I’d felt before.

I cleared my throat and squashed it. She didn’t want me; she’d shown me that at the hospital. Of course she didn’t. We’d had a drunken one-night stand, but that wasn’t reality. Reality was I was at least twenty years older than she was, and she was my son’s best friend.

I hobbled to the breakfast nook and watched Rebecca move around my kitchen. I told her where she could find things like cups and spoons, and I loved having her here.

No one had looked after me like this in a long time. It filled me with warmth that she was here, making sure I was okay. She cared, even if she didn’t care about me in the way I wanted her to.

“Tell me about work,” I said. “You’re a nurse.”

She nodded and leaned her hip against the counter while she waited for the coffee machine to gurgle and percolate.

“Did you always want to be a nurse?”

“Ever since I can remember,” she said. “I love helping people. I just don’t have what it takes to be responsible for their lives the way doctors are.”

When I frowned, she added, “I know myself. I get so invested in people, and I feel so deeply, it would ruin me.”

“It takes a lot for someone to know themselves the way you know that about yourself. People don’t reach that kind of wisdom, most of the time.”

Rebecca shrugged. “My parents don’t agree that it’s wise.”

“What do they think?” I asked.

She sighed. “I feel like this is all I talk about lately…”

“Tell me,” I urged. I wanted to know her. Not only the things that made her happy but the things that upset her too. I wanted to know Rebecca in her entirety, not just her body or her jokes. I wanted her passion, her fire, her fears, and her tears. All of it.

Damn it, what was going on with me? If I wasn’t careful, I would fall for her, and then… then I’d be fucked five ways to Sunday.

“They think I should have been a doctor, that if I was going to put in all the hours and work as hard as I do, I might as well do it for a good salary and a better title. They don’t get that I don’t do this for the money. A big part of what I do is for others, but I need it to be for me, too. You know?”

I nodded. The more I got to know her, the more beautiful she became. Not just on the outside but on the inside, too.

“I understand it can be hard when your parents don’t approve,” I said. “They’re everything in your life for a big part of it, but that doesn’t mean they always know what’s best for you. It sounds like you’re the one who knows. Too many people don’t realize how much more there is to life until it’s too late.”

“Hmm,” Rebecca said. “It would be nice if I wasn’t always compared to…” She hesitated. “If my parents didn’t want me to be different.”

“I think you’re exquisite,” I blurted out.

Rebecca blinked at me, her cheeks reddening. “Exquisite?”

I nodded. “You have no idea.”

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