I can’t wait to meet my baby.
24
I call Josh as soon as I leave my office building. I barely feel the winter wind or the cold air. In fact, I can barely feel my feet hitting the sidewalk. I’m floating on a surge of pure happiness.
Like Ian （ugh） says, focus on the positive and life will bring you endless amounts of joy.
He may be a douche, but he has a way with words.
I let the phone ring and ring. I think Josh’s voicemail is about to come on when he picks up.
“Hello?” His voice is thick and sleep-filled.
“Hey.” I grin like a loon, even though he can’t see me. A woman walking a pair of dogs sees my grin, frowns, and crosses to the other side of the sidewalk. Apparently, undiluted happiness is scary.
“Did I wake you?”
“Mmm. I worked late.” I like the sound of his morning voice. It’s deep and gravelly, sort of intimate. A picture of him shirtless, lying in bed, his hair messy and his jaw unshaven flashes through my mind.
Wow. I stop walking, and a heated flush rushes over me. It’s freezing out, but I don’t feel it.
I clear my throat.
“You okay? What’s up?”
Right. Amazing, amazing things are happening. I start hurrying toward my apartment again.
“I puked on Ian.”
I hear a sharp surprised laugh, then a cough, and then Josh drops his phone. I hear the rustling of his sheets, him jumping out of bed, and then putting the phone up to his ear. “Gemma? Did you just say you puked on Ian?”
“Yeah?” Maybe I shouldn’t have started with that.
“Huh. Not what I was expecting.” There’s rustling and then his voice is muffled when he says, “Hang on. I’m throwing on some clothes.”
I try to block my imagination from running rampant with that visual. It already ran wild with Josh’s gravelly morning voice. But I can hear the cotton whoosh of a t-shirt and the zipping up of jeans and it’s hard not to think what’s happening on the other side of the phone line.
“I’m back. Are you alright? You sick?”
“No, no, I feel great.” I’m a little surprised at that, but I feel completely fine. I haven’t actually spoken to Josh since Valentine’s Day, and before anything else is said, I need to clear the air. “Look, I don’t know why you went all Hulk on Ian, but I trust you had a good reason.”
He doesn’t say anything, so I continue, “When we went back to his place there was another woman. She was naked and, well, I left. I won’t be going out with him again.”
There’s a whole lot more pain behind last weekend than those three sentences can convey, but I try to keep it short and light.
He’s quiet for a moment, and then he says in a low voice, “I’m sorry, Gem. You okay?”
It’s funny. I realize that he could’ve said, “I told you so,” or “I could’ve told you he was an ass.” In fact, Leah probably will say that. Brook too.
But Josh doesn’t. He just asks if I’m okay.
And him asking me if I’m okay rather than telling me I should’ve known better is enough to make me wipe at my eyes. “I’m alright. You know me, I’m a true believer that there’s always a bright side, always something positive in every situation.”
That’s been my core belief, the mantra that has kept me afloat for years. It was the first quote I found on Ian’s website all those years ago. I believe it with all my heart.
“That’s true, but I do have one question,” Josh says.
Oh. Here it comes, the “why couldn’t you see Ian was a poser?” question.
“Yeah? What is it?”
I hold my breath as a city bus passes and kicks up a cloud of feather-light snow and city dirt.
Then Josh says with a smile in his voice, “I’m glad you’re okay. But where in the heck does the puke come in?”
I let out my breath in a laugh, “Let’s just say it was my form of a sucker punch.”
I don’t know how I can tell, but I know that on the other end of the line Josh is grinning. “The universe has a way of giving us exactly what we need.”
I chuckle and then look both ways before hurrying across the street. That’s one of Ian’s most famous sayings. So much so that even Josh knows it.
I’m halfway to my apartment, passing one of my favorite bagel shops. Somedays I stop and grab a cinnamon and raisin bagel slathered with butter, but today, I just want to get back to my place and wait for the phone call that’ll be coming anytime.