Josh and Gemma Make a Baby
Two weeks before New Year’s Day
Two years ago…
Josh
Think, Josh, think. What does he do? What happens next? You know. You know.
I blow out a frustrated breath. Correction, I don’t know. I’ve been wrestling with this question for the past week. But I’ll work it out. I just have to think.
“What’s up? You’ve been staring at that pad of paper for the past fifteen minutes.” Dylan, my best friend since age eight, frowns at the paper I’m drumming my pen against. “I thought you wanted to watch this.”
He gestures at the flat screen, and I notice it’s already the second half. There’s nothing of inspiration on the TV screen. I go back to staring at the blank piece of paper. I think it’s mocking me.
The sheet is as white as the cold snow piling up outside, covering up every idea and every thought of what happens next.
I have no idea.
“I’m on a deadline.” I shrug and start tapping my pen again, feeling the vibration of the drawing pad in my hand.
Dylan grunts and leans back on the couch, then takes a sip of his beer. “You realize you make your own deadlines. Just change it. My mom’s making pork chops and brownies, the game is on. Enjoy the day.”
He tilts his beer toward the TV and turns up the volume. The crowd in the stadium roars and Dylan grabs a handful of popcorn, the salty buttery smell churning around.
I sink back into the living room couch and frown at the wind pushing snow drifts across the road and the bare tree branches shivering in the cold.
I should head out.
It’s a week before Christmas. My dad’s at home, he claimed he was going to take a nap, but I bet he’s sitting in the living room staring at the old homemade ornaments on the tree.
He never says anything, but I know Christmas is hard on him.
Whenever we pull out the dusty cardboard boxes full of ornaments and tangled lights, he gets an expression that I’ve come to associate with my mom. It’s a sad, regretful look. Like if he holds onto the old clay ornament with my handprint in hers for long enough, he’ll be able to travel back in time, grab her hand, and pull her forward, to spend Christmas day with us. I think he’s regretting that he can’t. Or that he didn’t when he had the chance.
I don’t know. He stopped talking about her twenty years ago. And I learned to stop asking.
Dylan frowns at me still tapping my pen and I give him a carefree smile.
He shakes his head, he knows me too well to fall for that. “Whatever, man. This is why I work nights. I put in my shift, then when I leave, I leave work behind. My home time is my time.”
He stares at the paper. “You making a profit yet?”
“I’m doing okay.”
“Yeah. Well. You’ll make it work.”
He says this with utter confidence. Dylan doesn’t get why I left my cushy office job five years ago and he doesn’t get comics. He’s into sports, craft beer, and even though he claims otherwise, his job in tech support. But ever since we met at age eight, and he gave me a black eye and I gave him a busted lip, then I swapped him a Toho Godzilla hologram trading card for a Michael Jordan baseball rookie card, we’ve stuck together. We knew we were as different as two kids could be, but it didn’t matter.
So even though not many people, including Dylan understand why I’m doing this, he still has utter confidence that I’ll succeed. And he’ll invite me over for his mom’s cooking while I’m at it.
Speaking of, the smell of brownies, melted chocolate with marshmallows and toasted coconut, a Jacob’s family specialty drifts into the living room. Mrs. Jacobs and Leah are talking in the kitchen, making dinner, talking about Leah’s kids, Mr. Jacob’s retirement, and the upcoming New Year’s party. The smell of the brownies, the pork chops, the mashed potatoes and glazed carrots, feels warm and comfortable and familiar. This house feels almost as much like home as my dad’s. Sometimes more. I spent nearly as much time here growing up.
I smile, lean back into the couch, tune out the announcers shouting about a hole in the defense, and stare at the blank paper.
Grim.
What are you doing?
The scent of brownies rides into the living room again on a cold gust of wind as the kitchen door slams shut.
Gemma’s here.
I smile down at my paper. I haven’t seen her in months. I wonder what she’s been doing. It’s kind of strange, we’re both living in the city, we’re both frequently here, but we never see each other. It’s like we’re on two parallel tracks, never intersecting.
I shrug. That’s life.
“Gemma’s here,” I tell Dylan offhandedly. Maybe he didn’t hear her come in.
He perks up. “Maybe she brought cookies from that bakery near her place.”
“Your mom’s making brownies.”
He grins at me. “Cookie sandwich, instead of ice cream in the middle, it’s brownie.”
I flinch and shake my head. “No.”
Leah’s shouting hello to Gemma, asking about the train up, then Mrs. Jacob’s starts in, asking Gemma if she’s found a date for the New Year’s party. I start sketching a horizon line on the paper, a bunch of hatch marks trailing across the page. There’s a formless image hiding under the white of the paper, I just have to brush it aside to see what it is.
“Man, I’m going to hate the day Gemma gets married again.”
“Why’s that?” I ask distractedly. I’m on to something, there’s a niggle in the back of my mind, making my hand itch to sketch it out.
“Don’t you hear them? My mom is like a bloodhound trying to hook Gemma up. It terrifies me to think she could send that my way. If you see the guys she tries to ply off on Gemma, I can’t even imagine what she’d do-” Dylan keeps talking about the nightmare of his mom turning her matchmaking eye on him.
I nod, but don’t focus on what he’s saying.
Think, Josh, think.
There’s something here.
Gemma came in, and then…what?
Something.
I hold my pen still and listen.
Leah murmurs and then Gemma laughs.
It’s full, happy, round like a ripe peach, and delighted, like a child spinning in circles their arms thrown wide, their face up to the falling snow.
The air whooshes out of my lungs, and I’m out of breath and off-balance, like I’m the one who’s spinning.
The world tilts, shifts.
Years ago, when I was a kid, there was an ice storm, I ran outside to see the ice crystals on the trees and the icicles hanging from the eaves. I didn’t expect that as soon as my boots hit the sidewalk, my feet would leave the ground, I’d fly into the air, and land flat on my back, the breath knocked out of me. That’s what I feel like right now.
Dizzy.
Stunned.
Unexpectedly flat on my back, without any breath, looking up into the sun, blinded by the realization that I had no idea.
None.
Gemma laughs again and I’m yanked back into the world.
I drag in a breath and press a hand to my chest.
She…
She.
She…she and I…we’re…I’m…
My mind is grappling to make words for what the rest of me realized the second I heard Gemma’s joy-filled laugh.
My world just crashed, spun, and flipped upside down and it’s taking a minute for me to come to terms with it righting itself.
Because…I just fell in love with Gemma Jacobs.
And falling hurts. Dang it hurts. I rub my chest again. It hurts worse than that time I broke my arm. Because, what have I been doing all these years?
Me and Gemma?
Me and Gemma.
Gemma.
I have the strongest urge to stand, walk to the kitchen, take her in my arms and say hello. Just like any other hello, and any other day, but not.
There’s a memory now. I’m ten, she’s nine. She’d been following Dylan and me around for the past few months, trailing us everywhere we went, trying to keep up with us on bike rides, popping into our lean-to forts, sneaking in to listen to ghost stories during my and Dylan’s sleepovers. According to Dylan she was the epitome of a nuisance little sister.
We avoided her as best we could.
She found me one Saturday evening in late October sitting in their backyard. I hadn’t come by to play. I hadn’t even told anyone I was there. I didn’t want to be at home, and the only other place I knew to go was Dylan’s house. I snuck around the side of their house and went and hid behind the old gnarled tree. I still remember the smell of the leaf pile around me, and the scratching of the bark on my back.
Gemma sat down next to me. “Why are you crying?” She asked, curious but not judging.
I kept my head down on my arms, my knees pulled against my chest. I didn’t want to look at her, didn’t want her to see how red my eyes were. Overhead, there was a bird chirping and Gemma pretended to echo its call.
After a minute more of silence she shrugged. “That’s okay. You don’t have to tell me. I cry sometimes too.”
Then she sat down next to me and I could see through my arms that she was wearing a lacy pink dress, so I knew her mom was going to be upset she was getting it dirty in the leaf pile. Her pigtails swished across her face as she studied me patiently.
Finally, I raised my head and lifted my chin. “I wasn’t crying.” I sniffed and then a last tear fell, which ruined the older tough kid look I was going for.
“Did you get in trouble? Dylan got in trouble for hiding his lima beans in his pocket. He had to go to his room without dessert.”
I wished this were about lima beans. I shook my head. Then I decided to tell Gemma. I couldn’t tell Dylan. It wasn’t something you say. But Gemma, she’s just Gemma.
“She’s not coming back,” I said, fighting the stinging in my eyes.
“Who?” Gemma’s pig tails swung as she shook her head, looking behind the tree at her house.
“My mom,” I said, my heart feeling like it was shrinking, cracking like the veiny leaves crunching into tiny pieces under our feet.
It’d been two years. I’d always thought…but that day my dad told me, she was never coming back.
Gemma made a noise. A small exclamation, or an exhalation of air, like a balloon popping. “Oh.”
I nodded in agreement. “Yeah.”
Then Gemma does something entirely unexpected. She reached over and took my hand. I remember her hand was warm, even though the air was cold. She held onto me loosely, I could have pulled away at any time. But I didn’t. We sat there in the leaf pile behind the old tree, holding hands, smelling the crisp leafy fall air, watching the clouds speed by in the wind, and slowly the painful pressure at the back of my eyes and the ache in my throat disappeared.
Eventually her mom called for her from the front porch. Gemma jumped up, dropping my hand. I gave her a hesitant smile and looked over the leaves and dirt on her dress. She eyed the stains, shrugged, then reached down and gave me a quick hug.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be here for you. Whenever you need me.”
Then, she ran back to the house and I headed home. We never talked about that day, I doubt she remembers it, I barely did. Until now.
I remember her hand in mine. I remember her running after Dylan and me, calling our names. I remember her at picnics in the park, laying in the grass, looking at me. I remember…I shift as I remember my high school graduation. I remember the feel of her. Running my hands down her back, resting in the dip at the base of her spine.
My mouth goes dry thinking about…
“Are you okay? Did you hear me?” Dylan glares at me from the entrance to the living room. “I’m getting some brownies. What’s wrong with you? You look like you were just kicked in the head.”
I give a smile. “That good huh?”
What I’m thinking about is not a conversation Dylan and I are going to have, or it’ll end in another black eye and a busted lip.
“Yeah. That good.”
He frowns and me, and is about to go when his mom says loudly, “Gemma, I just had the best idea. You should go to the New Year’s party with Josh.”
I never thought that the phrase my heart skipped a beat was a real thing.
It is. Because my heart just did.
Dylan’s lips twist and he lifts an eyebrow at me, conveying, can you believe this?
I don’t give a response. I’m too busy leaning forward, clenching my hands, repeating to myself, please say yes, please say yes, please say yes.
I’m thinking of New Year’s, of what it’ll be like to take Gemma’s hand again, to wrap my fingers around hers, to feel the warmth of her hand in mine, and if I’m lucky what it’ll be like to hold her, to lean down and kiss her.
The depth of longing that floods through me…it’s like a river carved into a canyon weathered over centuries.
That’s when I know. This feeling isn’t going away. I love Gemma. It’s for good. It’s for forever. I don’t need to kiss her on New Year’s as long as I kiss her someday, and then every day after that.
I know there’s a sappy smile on my face as I wait for her answer.
Please say yes.
If she says yes, then…
“Me and Josh Lewenthal? Are you kidding? He’s been with the entire female population of this town, he doesn’t have a career or direction, and he thinks life is a big joke. Why would I ever date Josh Lewenthal? I’d rather date Greg Butkis.” Gemma makes a noise of refusal and her mom says something in response. But I don’t hear it, because before, when I thought falling in love hurt…this hurts worse.
Because…
She’s right.
Hell.
She’s right.
My hand clenches and unclenches. My body goes cold then hot with embarrassment. I have…I can’t say anything, because I have done what she said, there’s a reason they called me the panty-dropper in high school and college. I didn’t realize that would come back to haunt me ten years later. Even now, I still have more one-and-done dates than not. And while I do have direction, I don’t make a living yet, I’m still dreaming, working toward my goal. I scrub a hand over my face.
I’ve fallen in love and I’m not…I’m not the person she deserves.
I know Gemma, I know what that a-hole Jeremy put her through, she deserves more than where I’m at right now.
“But Gemma, Josh is a nice boy!” Her mom cajoles.
“No mom. Love is the best gift I’ve ever had the privilege to give, and I won’t waste it on someone like Josh Lewenthal.”
I flinch. I can’t say that didn’t hurt. It’s ironic when you have your own words used as an argument against you. I never thought they’d come back someday to haunt me.
Dylan looks at me with pity and embarrassment. “Sorry.” He winces. “You know Gemma. She has a thing for that Ian guy. Nobody else will do. It’s nothing personal. Besides it’s not like you and Gemma, I mean…you okay? You really don’t look so good.”
Ian.
Right.
I stare at my paper, the white in my mind clearing away to show me the image that’s meant to be drawn. The future that’ll appear if I just find a way.
Think, Josh, think.
The conversation in the kitchen has moved on, the topic of Josh and Gemma forgotten. But…
I tap my pen on my paper.
I stand suddenly, ideas flooding through me, the drawing is as clear as if I’m looking at it in real life.
“I have to go.” I wave my paper and pen at Dylan and hurry to the front door.
“Oh. Good stuff. Good luck.” Dylan calls.
I grab my coat and rush out the front door. It’s all snapped into place, everything I have to do. I know what I’m going to draw, but more importantly, I know what I’m going to change. It might take some time, I don’t know how long, but someday soon, I’m going to be able to hold Gemma’s hand again, and when I reach out, she’ll see me, someone she wants to give her love to. And me, I’ll be a man deserving of her love.
It doesn’t matter how long it takes, or how difficult it is, I know, this love is for good.
Like Gemma said years ago, I’ll be here for you, whenever you need me.
And I can promise this, I’ll be there for her, whenever she needs me.
Starting now.
