32. Graham
JULY
“C an we eat out?” she asks when she walks in the door Thursday night. Her eyes are dreamy. “Dinner out. In a restaurant. Steak, maybe. Or, no, wait…chicken tikka. God, I want chicken tikka so bad.”
Porn stars wish they could moan as convincingly as Keeley does at the idea of chicken tikka. I have my most important meeting of the week early tomorrow morning, but I can’t seem to say no to her.
“Then come on,” I say, rising. “Let’s go.”
Her eyes are wide, as if I’ve told her a Birkin bag is being delivered, made especially for her, which is definitely something I will never tell her, having learned what they cost.
“I’ve got to get dressed!” she shouts. “Ten minutes. No! Twenty!”
She runs toward her room faster than I realized she could move. A man would wind up paying for a whole lot of shit if he was with Keeley, because pleasing her has the strangest rebound effect. I feel something open inside me every time I manage to make her smile.
Thirty minutes later, I’m about to start growling when she emerges from her room in a bright red dress and lips to match.
It’s not a maternity dress, but stretchy enough to contain her…
barely. The creamy swell of her breasts threatens to overwhelm the low-cut neck.
I’m going to have a really hard time not staring all night.
Every other man we pass is going to stare as well, which is the part I have a bigger problem with.
Her hand rests on her stomach. “Is it okay? I…don’t have much I can get into anymore.”
“Maybe it’s time you bought some more maternity clothes.”
Her face falls. “So that’s a no , then.”
“You look fine.” Which is the vastest of understatements.
Keeley doesn’t look fine . She looks like the kind of woman you’d see on a billboard and find yourself stopping in place to gawk at.
The kind of woman you’d never fucking move on from if you had her once. “People might stare at your breasts.”
She cups them with a grin. “Are you saying you want to stare, Graham? Stare away! They’re not gonna last forever so someone ought to get some enjoyment from them.”
I swallow, heading for the door. “I don’t need to stare at your breasts, Keeley.” They’re already burned into my brain.
“Don’t worry,” she says cheerfully as she searches her purse for her keys. “I’ve taken so many photos of them. Maybe I’ll give you one as a birthday present.”
I choke a little at the idea. “You give away photos of your breasts as a gift ?”
“Just to friends. You, Paul downstairs, Mike the UPS guy—”
I come to a dead stop and she laughs.
“No, I don’t give away pictures of my breasts. But to be fair, they only turned into showstoppers this year. I bet I could make more on Only Fans right now than I do as a doctor.”
I just keep walking toward the elevator. But Jesus Christ, a daughter like Keeley will put me in an early grave.
We arrive at Keeley’s favorite Indian restaurant.
She doesn’t seem to notice the way the host’s eyes slide over her, the way the kitchen staff look up and lean over. She’s too busy trying to convince me she needs two orders of chicken tikka.
“Just for me. If you want some, too, we’ll need three orders. But you have to order all of it so I can continue to look like a delicate flower who’s only here because you wanted Indian food.”
The waiter takes our order. Our meal should be free in exchange for the amount of time he’s spending looking at Keeley’s cleavage.
“You know what we should do?” she asks once he’s gone. “We should get to know each other.”
“Haven’t we been doing that all along?”
She gives me one of her baleful looks, the kind that says, “stop being a buzzkill, Graham . ” They used to annoy me. Now they make me laugh.
“Fine,” I concede. “You can have dinner with any person, past or present. Who do you choose?”
“Can it be a person made of chocolate?”
“I’m referring to a dining companion you do not intend to eat , Keeley.” She really must be starving if that’s the first place her mind went.
“Gandhi,” she replies. “Or Khloe Kardashian.”
“Gandhi is rolling in his grave right now.”
“Gandhi was cremated, so I doubt he’s doing much rolling . And Khloe is cheerful in the face of adversity and nice to everyone she meets. You could learn something from her.” Keeley looks toward the kitchen. She’s been watching every tray that emerges, hoping one is ours. “Who would you have over?”
“John Locke or Paul Krugman, this economist from—”
“Oh my God. Really? Trust you to find the one person more boring than yourself to invite over for dinner.” As soon as the word boring comes out, she blushes, and I know she’s remembering what I said.
I still can’t believe I said it, though it was entirely true.
“What’s your obsession with economics, anyway?” she asks. “No one else in your family seems into that kind of stuff.”
I shrug. I never gave it much thought before. Maybe it’s just that bad things happen to people without the resources to fight back when they’re under siege, and I never want to be among them again. “I like knowing I’m financially secure. I want other people to be in the same position.”
“You sound like such a dad when you say things like that.”
I think she intends it as an insult, but her eyes are shining and her smile is soft. She likes it, even if she’ll never admit as much.
Our tray approaches at last and her excitement is palpable. She claps her hands together and squirms in her seat like a kid who has to pee.
“Are you like this on dates ?” I ask, mildly horrified.
“Whatever. I’m adorable. You love my childlike appreciation of the world.”
A bowl of basmati rice is placed between us, and through the steam I take in Keeley’s wide eyes, her unrepentant grin. The last time I ate out with Anna, we were at a Michelin-starred restaurant, and she spent the whole meal finding small flaws in the food and the service.
Yeah. I guess Keeley’s childlike appreciation of things isn’t all bad.
She serves herself a steaming plate of rice and inhales, her eyes closed as if this is the most erotic dream she’s ever had. Then she opens the first bowl of chicken tikka and groans low, in a way that cuts straight to my groin.
She spoons the chunks of chicken and sauce into her bowl, and just as she picks up her fork with a blissful sigh of anticipation…shouting begins.
A chef comes out of the kitchen at a run. “Is there a doctor here?”
I look at Keeley. The fork is still in her hand, poised to begin.
She frowns. “I doubt they need a dermatologist .”
“Keeley, you went to medical school. You theoretically know about other things.”
“Goddammit,” she says with a sigh, pushing away from the table. “I really wanted that chicken tikka. And this is sexist. They wouldn’t ask a man to give up his chicken tikka.”
“I’m fairly certain they would, under the circumstances.” I rise with her. “And it’ll still be here when you get back.”
“I wanted hot chicken tikka,” she replies, stomping across the room toward the chef. “Is it so much to ask that I get hot chicken tikka to make up for all the vegetable eating and not-sex-having I’ve endured?”
I’m praying she doesn’t ask the chef this. He stares at the two of us as we approach, and then looks at me, with relief. “Thank God,” he says. “You’re a doctor?”
Keeley groans audibly. “Because any emergency would be handled better by a man, right? No, I’m the doctor. He’s just here to hold my healing crystals. What’s going on?”
The chef’s eyes widen a little. He looks at me as if to say, “Is she serious?”
I shake my head, though you can never be too sure with Keeley. “Graciela, one of our line cooks, went into labor,” he says, still addressing me. “It’s bad. I think the baby’s coming out. We can…see it.”
Keeley stiffens. “Did you call an ambulance?”
“We did but they said it’ll be a while and—” He flinches as a female scream cuts through the air.
“Jesus Fucking Christ,” Keeley says, pushing past him like she owns the place. “You guys owe me some fresh chicken tikka.”
“Is she really a doctor?” he asks me as we follow.
“It shocks me too.”
The kitchen is at a standstill and most of the cooks have abandoned their posts to stare with horror at the woman now lying on a tablecloth on the kitchen floor.
Her legs are spread, and the top of a human head is visible between them.
That’s terrifying enough, but it’s the bloody fluid beneath her that makes my pulse rise.
Maybe it’s standard, but it has me remembering that first episode of Bridgerton , the one where a woman died in childbirth.
Yes, it was a couple of centuries ago, but is this any different?
With no ambulance coming, is there a single tool at Keeley’s disposal that wasn’t available three hundred years ago?
And if this woman dies…what happens then?
Keeley skates through life as if nothing matters to her all that much, but if this goes badly, it will weigh on her every fucking day. She wept because she made the dog throw up. What would something like this do to her?
The woman cries out, and her pain sends a chill up my spine.
“Sink,” barks Keeley at the manager, who looks taken aback.
She kicks off her heels and her precious Birkin is thrown to the ground as she crosses the kitchen while tying her hair back.
She washes her arms all the way to her elbows, her brow furrowed…
someone else entirely. Someone serious, focused.
She dries her hands with paper towels and sinks to the floor between the woman’s legs.
“I’m Dr. Connolly,” she says. “Looks like you’re having a baby in a kitchen.”
The woman replies in rapid Spanish, and Keeley replies in kind. Again, I’m surprised. I pictured her as the sort to learn something like French simply because Paris has a better Fashion Week.
Keeley sounds…different, speaking Spanish. Assured, authoritative. I don’t even know what she’s saying, but I believe her. I’d believe anything Keeley said to me right now.
“I need a knife,” Keeley tells the manager.
“The sharpest knife you have, and I need rubbing alcohol. It might not be necessary, but I want it here in case I do. And please, for the love of God, don’t come in here brandishing the knife so she can see it.
Wrap it in a towel or something. And find out where the fuck that ambulance is. ”
The woman screams as another contraction takes over. I flinch, but Keeley is steely-eyed, utterly calm, her voice alternately cajoling and forceful as she urges Graciela on.
Her hair is starting to escape the bun, clinging to the sweat on her forehead, which is the only signal I’ve got that Keeley isn’t completely relaxed.
Well, that and her shoulders, which are tense as she reaches down to get a grip on the baby.
Someone deposits a pile of towels beside her—she doesn’t seem to notice.
“ él está casi aquí ,” Keeley says, her hands clasped on the baby’s shoulders. “ Una vez más .”
The woman pushes, wailing, and I flinch. One of the men across the kitchen quietly opens the back door and pukes in the alley.
The woman cries out and then…the head emerges fully.
Keeley works to get the top shoulder out, then the bottom and suddenly the baby just seems to slip free.
A boy, covered in blood, his cry a shrill little bleating sound.
A cheer echoes through the room but Keeley’s still focused, clearing his mouth and nose, checking his pulse, murmuring to herself, “Pink, one twenty, vigorous response, active.” Satisfied at last, she leans forward to hand the baby to his weeping mother.
Her expensive dress is ruined. The shoes she kicked off are sitting next to a mousetrap, and she’s smiling as if all is right with the world. There is so much more to her than she lets anyone see. There’s so much more to her than even she seems to see.
I just fell more in love with the mother of my child than I already was. Which is really inconvenient. I was already a little too far gone.