4. Josh
Chapter four
Josh
“I’m going to the twenty-four-hour pharmacy on the corner.”
I don’t look at her when I say it. I’m already moving into my kitchen.
I set the bucket seat down just inside the entryway of my apartment and shrug the canvas bag off my shoulder. It hits the floor beside the console table, landing on top of the stack of medical journals that’s been sliding off the edge for three days. I’ve been meaning to deal with that stack.
“You can go back to your place,” I tell Liv, already scanning the counter for my keys. “Sleep a few hours before your flight. I’ll get formula and whatever else she needs.”
Liv doesn’t answer. She steps around the car seat and looks at the microwave clock. 11:04.
“It’s a ten-minute walk,” I say.
It’s thirty-eight degrees.” She pulls her sweater tighter across her silk camisole, still fixed on the clock. “You have one fleece blanket.”
“I can layer her.”
“Josh.” She says it the way she says things in a courtroom. Final. No room for rebuttal. “You are not taking a four-month-old out in that wind.”
I open my mouth. She raises one hand.
“And you are not leaving… wait… what is her name?”
“Iris.”
“And you are not leaving Iris here alone.”
I close my mouth.
The kitchen counter is covered — takeout menus, a medical journal I actually need, two weeks of mail that’s been migrating between surfaces.
I reach past the journal and grab the edge of the stack to shove it aside.
My hand catches the corner wrong. The whole pile slides off the granite and fans out across the hardwood in a wide arc of white envelopes.
I stand over them.
I don’t bend down to pick a single one up. I can navigate the chaos of a Level One trauma bay without breaking a sweat, but one four-month-old squirming bundle has completely dismantled me.
The apartment is quiet except for Iris’s even breathing from the bucket seat. I don’t even hear Liv move toward the kitchen until the cabinet under the sink clicks open. She finds what she needs on the first try.
I’ve lived here for seven years, and I still open the wrong drawer for silverware.
She pulls out the antibacterial spray, sets a roll of paper towels on the counter, and wipes down the granite twice in rapid succession. She pauses, eyes fixed on the stone. Then she wipes it a third time.
“I’m not moving in,” she says.
She says it to the counter. Not to me.
“I know that.”
“Then stop looking at me like I am.”
I shift my focus to the counter. I pick up the mail from the floor and stack it on top of the refrigerator to get it out of her line of sight.
Liv reaches into the canvas bag and pulls out the single remaining diaper and the flat package of wipes — nearly empty, maybe ten left — and lines them up on the clean granite with her fingertips, corners squared to the edge of the counter.
She takes out her phone and opens a blank note.
Her thumbs start moving before I can say anything.
“Formula,” she says aloud, typing it. “Size one diapers.”
“You don’t need to do that.”
“Sensitive skin wipes.” Her thumbs don’t stop. “Two swaddle blankets.”
“Liv.”
“Another bottle brush. This one is on its last legs.”
I step toward her and reach for the phone. She raises her left forearm, blocking my wrist mid-air. She doesn’t even look up from the screen.
“Do not touch my phone,” she says.
Her thumbs keep moving.
I pull my hand back and catch her profile.
Her hair is still smooth from work, except for one loose piece near her cheek. Her mouth has the same stubborn set I used to love to kiss. When she shifts her weight, I catch it. Vanilla, citrus and bergamot. Her perfume. Still the same one. My hand tightens around the empty bottle.
The last time she was in this apartment was fourteen months ago. A group dinner. Six people. Noise and an easy excuse not to look directly at each other across the table.
I turn to the sink. The bottle is safer. I fill it with hot water and soap.
Liv stands beside me, close enough for her sleeve to brush mine if either of us breathes wrong.
Three inches.
That is all the room between us.
I scrub the cylinder and keep my eyes on my hands.
I keep my eyes on my hands because looking at Liv would be worse.
Looking at Liv would make this feel like every night we used to stand at this sink, not saying much, fitting around each other.
The soap froths over my knuckles, spills down the sides.
I rinse until the water runs clear and set it on the drying rack.
Liv reaches past my shoulder without a word and presses the bottle brush into my palm.
The handle is still warm from her grip.
I start on the bottle again. It is already clean. I know it is already clean. I keep scrubbing anyway, because the alternative is turning my head and finding out whether she is as aware of the six inches as I am.
The bristles squeak against the plastic. Liv stays beside me.
I rinse the bottle. And rinse it again.
Finally, I turn the tap off. I set the clean bottle on the rack.
Liv moves to the far end of the counter, pulling the pajamas and assorted clothes from the canvas bag and sorting them into two piles by size.
Her hands move through the stack without hesitating — a quick check of the snaps, a fold, a placement — the same decisive efficiency she applies to everything she touches.
I watch her fold a tiny yellow onesie in thirds. She is standing at the edge of my disaster, trying to carve out one square inch of order.
At the far end of the counter, my usual pile waits for me. A silver pen. An old parking ticket. A surgical journal I have not opened since October.
I sweep all of it against the wall.
Two feet of clean granite appears.
I stand there, looking at it.
Liv looks too.
She does not ask what I’m doing, which is good, because I am not really sure why.
After a second, she crosses the kitchen and sets her phone in the open space. The supply list is still bright on the screen.
Seventeen items long. She steps back and picks up the next onesie.
“Your car service comes at four,” I say, after a moment.
“I’m aware of my schedule.”
“You need at least three hours before security.”
She smooths a onesie flat against the granite and doesn’t look up. “I’m building a system,” she says, “to get you through the next eight hours.” She sets it on the pile. Picks up the next one. “Then I’ll reassess.”
She doesn’t look up from the folding.
I don’t argue. I pull the parking ticket off the top of the pile I just swept to the wall, fold it in half, and put it in my jacket pocket. It is the smallest possible act of order I can contribute to this situation.
From the entryway, Iris pulls in a sharp, birdlike breath — the brief warning sound, the one that comes exactly two seconds before the real cry. I go still.
Iris kicks her legs out straight, fighting the thick nylon straps holding her down, her face turning bright red.
The cry arrives on schedule.
I’m already moving. Liv is already moving. We cross the apartment from opposite sides, her path from the kitchen and mine from the wall, and we arrive at the car seat at the same moment — shoulders level, both of us leaning in over the harness.
She reaches for the buckle. I reach for the buckle.
Our hands land on the buckle together.
For half a second, Iris is crying, the harness is still locked, and Liv’s hand is under mine.
Neither of us moves.