The Complete Series Boxed Set (2 page)

“Same back at you,” Josie jumped in. “Fatherhood has not aged you well.” Alex shoved his ass against her hip, buying real estate in the booth. She squeezed a butt cheek through his scrubs. “You smell like blood,” she commented absently.

“I’ll smell like you soon enough,” he said cheerfully.

Mike groaned. “Braggart.”

“Just stating the facts, man.”

Dylan snorted. “I remember when I had
facts
that often. Lately, though,
facts
elude us.
Facts
, in fact, are hard to remember.”

“You mean
sex
,” Alex said. It wasn’t a question.

Laura’s guys sighed. So that was what this meeting was about. Josie’s protective senses went into overdrive. Laura was her bestie. This could get...
complicated
.

“Do I really need to know this much about your sex lives? Seriously?” Josie whined.

“Do you guys
ever
keep it in your pants?” a gravelly voice added. Madge, the eighty-something waitress and, it so happened, Alex’s grandfather’s girlfriend, skittered by. Her nurse’s shoes squeaked on the faded—but clean—linoleum at the stalwart diner.

“Only when you’re around, Madge,” Dylan shot back. She pointed her stylus at him and winked. He slumped back in the booth and grimaced, making Josie snicker.

“That’s because you couldn’t handle all of me, Pretty Boy.”

Alex looked green suddenly. “Uh, Madge, do you mind?” His grandfather, Ed, had Alzheimer’s, though a recent med change had given Ed a much better prognosis and a better memory overall. His filter about his sex life had faded, though, and Alex couldn’t handle the truth.

Especially when it turned out Madge and Ed used Dan Savage’s column as a bucket list.

That they were rapidly making their way through.

Madge opened her puckered smoker’s mouth to say something else to Dylan, shot Alex a sidelong glance, and then snapped her lips shut. “You want one of everything?” she asked the group. “All the new specials?”

Everyone groaned.

“What’s with the menu?” Mike asked. “This is amazing.”

“My grandson, Caleb,” Madge answered, puffing up her chest like a silver-back gorilla after eviscerating another alpha. The effect drained a little of Josie’s appetite. “He’s come to Boston to help out more, and look at the difference.”

“You really think we should get one of
everything
?” The specials page looked like it held at least fifteen different dishes. Josie would need to be hauled out in a wheelbarrow if she ate as much as she wanted.

“How about you pick for us, Madge?” Alex asked affably, his face friendly with a smile. “You know better than anyone how to please the crowd.”

Her tight prune face lit up and she patted Alex on the cheek. “You’re just like your grandfather. You always know how to butter up an old lady.” She zipped off, clicking on her electronic order pad.

“I’d hate to know how those two use butter these days,” Josie muttered.

“I’m going to be sick,” Alex mumbled, picking at a napkin.

Everyone laughed. Mike and Dylan sounded sick, too.

“While we all make jokes and pretend you didn’t invite us here to talk about your non-existent sex life, let’s just get it out in the open. Why do you have a non-existent sex life?” Josie asked.

“Ask your best friend,” Dylan muttered.

Mike shook his head, giving Dylan a look of disappointment. “It’s not that simple. Something’s wrong with Laura. And it goes deeper than sex.”

“Like what?” Josie had just seen her a few days ago. Laura was exhausted and harried and smelled like baby shampoo and milk. Wasn’t that how all new mothers were for the first year? Josie had held Jillian for twenty minutes or so here and there, letting Laura shower and go to the bathroom alone. Then again…from Laura’s effusive praise and thanks—more than Josie had heard out of her own mother’s mouth in twenty years—she should probably have assumed Laura was especially overwhelmed.

“All she does is sit on the couch, nurse Jillian, and read.”

“What else can a breastfeeding mom do? She’s attached at the nipple,” Alex interjected. Madge appeared with two plates of fried pickles, a pitcher of water, and glasses for everyone.

“Coffee?”

“Yes!” they all hissed. Dylan shoved a pickle in his mouth and promptly spat it out, raking his palm across the table to grab the water pitcher. Frantic hands poured ice water and he shoved the glass to his mouth.

“Do I really have to tell a grown man who has been coming to this diner for nearly a decade that a plate of fried food straight from the kitchen is hot?” Madge said in a disgusted tone.

“Ad dow by tug id bunt,” Dylan whined.

“Whatever. Your tongue will recover. Here’s the dipping sauce.” Madge set down two cruets. “The.Sauce.Is.Cold,” she said slowly to Dylan, then rolled her eyes, marching off.

“Her compathun ith udduhwhemming,” Dylan sputtered.

“Dat waskly wabbit went dataway!” Josie answered, pointing at Madge’s rapidly moving form, now filling another table’s coffee mugs.

Alex elbowed her. “Milk,” he said to Dylan. “Some milk will help.” Pushing the cream pitcher to the poor suffering guy, Alex looked at Josie and said, “Speaking of compassion...”

“It’s his own fault!” She pulled the platter of fried pickles closer. “Besides, more for me.”

“Ad least I don’t need a fully-functioning tug these days,” Dylan said after cooling it off with water and milk. “Nod in bed.”

Josie pushed the platter back to the center of the table. “C’mon. That was just mean,” she said, deflated.

“I know.” Dylan’s evil grin made her grab the plate back. No way he was winning this one.

“If you’re having problems in bed,” Alex said, carefully dipping one pickle chip in the sauce, holding it in his hand to cool off, “maybe Laura needs to see her gynecologist in case she’s having pain or dryness issues.”

Josie stuck her fingers in her ears. “
Lalalalala
can’t hear you talking about my friend’s vagina like it’s a motor on a car.”

“If it were, the engine would be seized,” Mike said quietly.

“LALALALALALALA!”

Dylan took the mature route, surprising Josie. “Laura already went. Everything is fine. Lube isn’t an issue; we bought practically a 55-gallon drum of it a few months ago.”

“There’s a visual,” Alex said, dropping his chip.

“See? You’ve grossed out an OB-GYN, guys. Congratulations. That takes some effort.” Josie dipped a now-cooler fried pickle into the creamy green sauce in front of her. The taste was exactly as she imagined, only a thousandfold better. Who knew you could combine avocado and horseradish and produce
this
?

“I never said I was grossed out,” Alex protested. Josie was too involved in the savory delight assaulting her tongue to argue.

“Is this just something we have to suffer through?” Mike asked Alex. Sad puppy-dog eyes made her heart go out to him.

Her hand, on the other hand, reached greedily for another piece of pickle.

“Six months postpartum? For some women, yeah—they’re still not that interested. Especially if she’s exclusively breastfeeding.”

“She is,” sighed Mike.

“What are we talking about in terms of lack of interest here?” Alex asked.

Josie gagged audibly.

“Once a week?” Alex continued.

Dylan snorted.

“A...month?”

Mike cleared his throat. “We’ve had sex twice since Jillian was born.”

“HOLY SWEET JESUS!” Josie shouted. Thank goodness she’d finished swallowing, because the shock of that little detail would have required Alex to perform the Heimlich if she’d still been chewing. “What on earth is wrong?”

“That’s not quite true,” Dylan said, turning to Mike. “There were a few blow jobs—”

“STOP!” Josie ordered, just as Madge delivered plates filled with cannoli, a crock pot of what must be the mac ’n cheese, and an array of delights.

“Blow jobs, huh?” the waitress cracked. Alex turned beet red. So cute he could blush under circumstances like this. Josie wasn’t sure if he could get any sweeter.

But right now she wanted to kill him as he so dryly talked about Mike and Dylan’s penises as if they were commodities. And Laura’s vagina were a department store shelf.

An empty one.

“TWICE?” Josie couldn’t get over that one. Sure, she’d had dry spells herself. But not while living with Thor and a guy who looked like a romance novel cover model.

“Nothing wrong with two blow jobs,” Madge muttered as she walked away.

“See why we called you?” Dylan said plaintively. He reached for the ice cream sundae and stuffed a spoonful of creamy cold sweetness in his mouth, closing his eyes. Josie imagined it was the closest to sex he’d come in, well...a lot longer than she’d imagined.

“Poor Laura.”

Alex looked at her like she had two heads. “Poor
Laura
?” He gestured to Mike and Dylan. “How about poor
them
?”

“Poor
everyone
,” she conceded.

“Not poor me,” Alex whispered, his hand snaking around her waist, sliding up her ribcage to—

“Hey!” Dylan snapped. “No PDAs.”

“What is this? Catholic school?” Josie snuggled up against Alex’s warm form. Scrubs were thin enough to show that he was pretty warm for her form, too. She patted Alex’s hand. He took hers and put it on his thigh. Nice and high. Then squeezed. Twice in six months? Try six times in one week. Even that wasn’t enough these days, with Alex’s crazy work schedule. Mike and Dylan had every right to look so sad, but now Josie was on high alert about her best friend. Time for an intervention of some sort.

“Might as well be,” Mike grunted. “We’re celibate.”

“And not by choice,” Dylan added, now halfway through the sundae.

“What are you doing about it?” Josie demanded. “Do you give her breaks? Compliment her? Take her out for nice dinners? Give her massages?”

“Buy her a nice new sex toy?” Alex added.

Josie’s turn to blush. “That doesn’t work for everyone.”

“Works for you!” he said. “Snaps you right out of a bad mood. That fourteen inch—”

Mike put both palms out flat in a gesture of
halt
! “We get it. And yes—we tried that. No go. We’ve sent flowers. Chocolates. Gotten extra cleaning and errand help. You name it. All she wants to do is play with the baby, nurse, and read.”

The group went silent as they ate their way through two continents’ worth of plates filled with amazing culinary feats.

As they picked at the remainders of the desserts, Josie had an idea. “You said she just reads all day, right?”

“Yep.”
Unison
. The frequency with which those two answered the same word or phrase was eerie.

“What’s she reading?”

Mike’s face folded into an expression of consternation. “No idea.”

Dylan shrugged, eyebrows coming together as he frowned, near-perfect muscles attuned and thinking, all focused on her question. He might be an arrogant ass but he was a damn attractive one. Shaking his head he looked at Mike. “Me too. I can’t say.”

Josie chuckled. “I think,” she said, scooping the last dregs of truffle shavings out of a tall sundae glass, “you might find some answers on her eReader.”

Alex crossed his arms over his chest, then groaned, removing his arms and placing a flat palm on his full stomach. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t you think that knowing what she’s doing for most of her waking hours could help Mike and Dylan to understand what she’s feeling?”

All three men bent in, leaning toward her, as if she were divulging the secrets of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

“Seriously, guys? The woman spends eight or ten hours a day reading and living in a fantasy land in her head and you didn’t even think to
ask
her what she’s reading?”

Mike blinked rapidly, his strong, Nordic jaw set in concentration. Piercing blue eyes met hers, buried under a brow furrowed in understanding. “She is living in that little machine. And in her head. I never thought to ask what she’s reading, frankly. I just ask about her and the baby.”

Dylan sighed, his face so different from Mike’s, dark and swarthy, yet no less concerned. He was also the scruffier of the two, with a torn t-shirt from some ’80s band covering his toned body, and a face that hadn’t been shaved in a good three weeks. “Beard” wasn’t quite the word for the train wreck of whiskers that covered his face and neck.

“No, I didn’t ask either.” He ran a frustrated hand over his face. “Jesus. How could we miss
that
?”

“Because you’re men,” Josie declared.

Six eyes stared at her, gone to stone.

“It’s true!”

“You’re saying women are smarter than men about relationships?” Alex asked, his voice fighting to stay neutral. Her heart soared. She loved a challenge.

“Do you have a penis?”

“You know damn well I do.”

“Then yes.”

“You realize that you’re the one who was so terrified of my monster of a mother that you—”

“HEY!” Mike growled. “This is our relationship mess we’re deconstructing. Not yours. Go book a slot on Dr. Phil if you want to untangle your mess.”

“We’re the ones who should be on that show,” Dylan grumbled.

“You’re better suited for Maury,” Josie said.

“Who?”

“Nevermind.”

“Nice diversion,” Alex cracked, elbowing her in the rib, “but let’s get back to the point. Go read her eReader. See what she’s been reading. Maybe it will give you some ideas and you can go from there.”

“I can already guess,” Dylan groaned. “Breastfeeding books and baby signs and how to make homemade baby food. Sew your own cloth diapers. How to make a Maya wrap from leftover moss and shredded placenta. Shit like that.”

“It’s not shit!” Mike retorted. “It’s a perfectly valuable way to bond with your kid.”

Dylan rolled his eyes. “Co-sleeping and breastfeeding is fine. But she’s going on about sherpa fleece and buying a sewing machine to make more absorbent cloth diapers and my mind goes
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
. And now she’s asking about ‘elimination communication.’”

“What’s that?” Josie was almost afraid to ask. “Like, announcing when you have to pee?”