13. Joseph
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
JOSEPH
I've been thinking about this for three days, and I'm going to do it before I talk myself out of it.
The thing is, Millie's had it easy so far, pregnancy-wise.
Some fatigue, food aversions that come and go, but no real morning sickness yet.
The ginger candies have been more of a snack than a remedy.
Her ribs have been the bigger battle, and even those are finally easing up.
She's moving better. Breathing deeper. She tried playing her violin the other day and had to stop, but the fact that she tried tells me she's getting there.
And I keep looking at her and thinking about how we skipped everything.
We went from first date to parenthood without stopping at any of the normal places in between.
We live together. We're having a baby. We've seen each other's worst mornings and most tired evenings.
But I've never taken her to a nice dinner. Not since the first one, anyway.
I want to impress her. That's the embarrassing truth.
I admitted to Connor and Sarah that I like her, and I meant it, and now my brain won't let it go.
So I want to take her somewhere that isn't my kitchen or an OB exam room and show her a good time.
Like a normal person would. Like two people who met and liked each other and decided to try.
She's on the couch with Tofu and her laptop when I get home from my shift.
She looks up when I walk in, and I've been rehearsing this since Tuesday, which is a problem because I don't rehearse.
I'm a talk-first-think-later kind of guy.
Seventy-two hours of mental drafts is not normal behavior for me.
"So," I say, dropping onto the other end of the couch.
I'm going for casual but probably landing somewhere around transparent.
"I was thinking. We've been living together for a while now, and the nicest place I've taken you is the OB's office.
Which, for the record, has terrible lighting and the magazines are from 2019. "
She watches me, waiting. Her face gives nothing away.
"I want to take you somewhere. A real dinner. Somewhere with actual atmosphere and food that isn't my questionable cooking."
She types: Your cooking isn't questionable.
"That's the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. So. Is that a yes?"
She looks at me for a second. Then types: Are you asking me on a date?
"I'm asking you on a date."
We live together, and I'm carrying your baby.
"Yes, and we've never been on a proper second date. Which I think is a failure on my part. I'm trying to woo my baby mama. Let me woo."
She stares at me. The corner of her mouth twitches and she types: Woo is such a funny word.
"It is. Woo."
Okay. I'll go. But only if you stop saying that.
"Deal."
The next evening, I'm standing in the hallway waiting. I'm in a button-down I actually ironed, sleeves rolled to the elbow, and I've checked my hair twice, which is two more times than I usually check it.
Her door opens. She steps out, and my mind goes blank.
She's in a long dress that hugs her waist but flows loosely at the bottom.
It has puffy sleeves and little flowers on it.
A headband pushing her hair back, the rest down past her shoulders.
She's wearing a little more makeup than usual, just enough that her eyes look bigger and her freckles are still visible.
She looks like something I'd remember for a long time.
"You look..." I start.
She raises an eyebrow, waiting.
"Really beautiful."
She looks down. A flush creeps up her neck. She types: You clean up okay.
"Okay? Just okay? I put effort into this, Millie. Real effort."
She breathes a laugh, types: Fine. You look very handsome. But I'm sure you hear that all the time so I didn't want to inflate your ego any more than it already is.
"I do hear it all the time, actually. But it's never mattered until right now."
She looks up at me. Her cheeks go pink. She types: You're smooth.
"Like butter, Mills." I wink.
She shakes her head like she doesn't know what to do with me.
Good. That makes two of us.
We leave. She types something on the way and holds it up at a red light: Where are we going?
"It's a surprise."
Thrilling.
I park. I come around and open her door, which I've never done before and which feels both old-fashioned and exactly right. She looks at me as she gets out, amused, like she's deciding whether this is charming or ridiculous. I'll take either.
The restaurant is small—rooftop terrace, string lights, a view of the river below.
I picked it specifically. Called ahead, asked the hostess about noise levels, table spacing, whether the seating was private enough for someone who communicates by phone screen.
She probably thought I was insane. I didn't care.
The tables are spaced far enough apart that it feels like just us—no loud music, no crowd, just the sky turning colors and the city lights catching on the water below.
We sit outside. She looks out at the water and her whole face opens up.
I don't see this often. In public, she's measured, careful.
She reads rooms before she enters them, maps her way through spaces that weren't built for her.
But here, with the quiet and the space and nobody watching, she lets something go.
Her shoulders drop. Her breathing changes.
She's just a woman enjoying a view. I want to keep that look on her face.
"Do you like it?" I ask.
She nods. Types: It's perfect, Jo.
Two words. They shouldn't do what they do to me. But they do.
We order. We talk. The conversation moves differently here than it does at home. At home we orbit around safe things, the daily stuff, the routines. Here, with the sky going dark and the candles on the table and the sparkling water she orders instead of wine, we go somewhere else.
She tells me about the first time she performed solo.
Sixteen years old. Terrified. She played the entire piece staring at the bridge of her violin because she couldn't look at the audience.
When she finished, there was silence. Three seconds.
She thought she'd failed. She almost walked off stage.
Then the applause started and she cried right there with the bow still in her hand.
I tell her about the first surgery I ever assisted on.
ACL repair. My hands were shaking so bad the attending told me to go get water.
I went to the scrub room and ran cold water over my hands until they stopped.
Came back. Didn't shake for the rest of the procedure.
I still run cold water over my hands before a tough surgery. Twelve years and I still do it.
She smiles when I tell her that. Not a polite one—the whole face, eyes and all.
She asks me about growing up. I tell her I was a chubby kid. Round face, glasses, the whole package. Very nerdy. Got bullied for it too. She looks at me like she doesn't believe me, and I tell her it's true, I have the school photos to prove it.
"One time, these kids wouldn't stop messing with me.
Shoving me around after school, hiding my bag, the usual stuff.
My mom found out." I pause for effect. "She showed up at school the next day.
And I don't mean she called the principal.
I mean she walked into that building and found those kids and gave them the full speech.
Expected better from young men. How dare they. The whole thing."
She types: That's amazing! Did they apologize?
"They cried. Two of them actually cried. One of them apologized to me in front of the whole class. Nobody touched me again."
She's shaking with laughter across the table.
"My mom is five foot two, and she made three twelve-year-olds cry. That's power."
She types: Your mom sounds incredible.
"She is. She can be dramatic, though. She texts me about her cat like it's a medical emergency. The cat's name is Christopher."
Christopher?
"She said it was a distinguished name for a distinguished cat."
I already love your mother.
"You two would get along. She'd probably adopt you within five minutes."
She asks me what made me want to become a doctor.
I tell her the truth. Watching my mom struggle.
Seeing people around me who needed help and couldn't get it.
The first time I watched a surgeon work in a documentary, when I was fourteen, and something in me just locked into place.
That's what I'm supposed to do with my hands.
She types: And the jokes? Were you always this funny?
"Oh yeah. Came out my mother's womb, cracking jokes already. The doctors and nurses were laughing and horrified."
She laughs. That silent, breathy laugh she does where her shoulders shake, and her nose scrunches, and this soft rush of air slips out.
I keep trying not to stare when she does it, but I can't help it.
It's the sound of almost. Almost a voice.
And somehow that almost is better than any full laugh I've ever heard.
Somewhere during the main course, I put my fork down. This has been in my head for days and I need to say it now, or I'll chicken out.
"I know basic ASL," I say. "I picked some up over the years for patients. Enough to get by. Hello, thank you, how are you. The survival stuff." I look at her. "I want to learn more. I want to learn your language properly. So you don't always have to type. So you can just talk to me."
She stops chewing. Puts her fork down slowly.
She's looking at me, and something shifts behind her eyes.
Her brows pull together slightly, then release.
She grabs her phone and types for a long time.
Longer than usual. Her thumbs move and pause and move again, and I wait because I've learned that when Millie types for this long, whatever comes out is going to matter.
She turns the phone toward me.
You're the first person outside my family who's ever said they wanted to learn my language. Not just the basics. Actually learn it. So they could really talk to me. You have no idea what that means.
I read it twice. Something catches in my throat that I wasn't ready for. I nod.
"I mean it. Teach me. Every night if you want. I'll be a terrible student, but I'll try."
She types: You won't be terrible.
"I've actually been practicing on my own. I watched some videos online. Thought I was getting pretty good."
I know. I saw you practicing in the kitchen last Tuesday when you thought I was in my room.
"You saw that?"
You were signing to Tofu.
"I was practicing! She was my audience!"
You kept signing 'bad girl' to her. Over and over. Very confidently.
"What? No, I was signing 'good girl.'"
Those are similar but you had the motion wrong. You were telling your cat she's bad. With full eye contact. For about five minutes.
"Is that why she looks at me like I'm a disappointment?!"
To be fair, she looks at everyone like that.
"That doesn't make me feel better."
Actually, she looks quite fondly at you. More than most people.
"You're just saying that to make me feel better."
No, really. I'm a cat whisperer. I know these things.
"Okay. I trust you."
You should. I'm never wrong about cats.
I drop my head into my hands. She's shaking across the table. Her whole body. Hands pressed against her mouth, eyes shut, rocking forward, and I'm watching her and I think, this is the funniest, most beautiful person I've ever met.
We leave the restaurant. The street has gone quiet, quiet enough that the city feels like it's emptied out for the two of us. Our walk takes us along the river, the lights laid out on the water in long, broken ribbons of gold.
She's walking close. Closer than usual. Our arms brush every few steps and neither of us moves to fix it, and I become aware of her the way you become aware of weather—the warmth of her arm a breath from mine, the soft scuff of her flats on the pavement, the faint floral something I've never caught from this far before.
I keep waiting for her to drift back to her usual distance. She doesn't.
She stops walking, and I stop with her. She's looking out at the river, and the light from a streetlamp catches the side of her face, the headband in her hair, the curve of her cheek, and I forget whatever I was about to say.
My hands flex at my sides. I catch it a second too late to stop it—that pull to reach for her, with nothing to do about it but stand here and feel it.
She turns to me, types something, and holds it up.
Thank you for tonight. I needed this more than you know.
I read it. I look at her. "Anytime. I mean that."
She puts her phone away. We keep walking. And the distance between our arms gets smaller until there's no distance at all, and her shoulder is against my arm. I don't move away, and she doesn't move away, and neither of us says anything about it.
We get home. I open the door. She steps past me into the hallway and turns around to face me. The apartment is dark behind her. Just the low glow from the kitchen light I left on.
She's close. Closer than she usually stands. She's looking up at me, and I'm looking down at her, and the hallway feels very small suddenly.
"I had a really good time tonight," I say. My voice comes out quieter than I planned.
She nods. She's still looking at me.
I lean in. Slowly. Her eyes go wide, but she doesn't step back. She doesn't move at all. She just watches me come closer, and I can feel the warmth of the space between us shrinking.
I should stop. We've already rushed everything. One date, one night, a baby, a shared apartment. This is our second date. I should be careful. I should give her space. I should be the gentleman who kisses her cheek and says goodnight and proves that this is more than just physical.
My body keeps leaning forward, and I can't stop it.