“Yep,” he says. “I can do whenever you can do. What about now? What are you doing now?”
“Now?”
“Yeah.”
“Nothing.”
“Will you go for a walk with me?”
“I would love that,” I tell him. I wipe the sugar off my hands and grab my cane. “I hope you don’t mind that I have to use my cane.”
“Are you kidding me?” he says. “I’ve been going to bakeries for months hoping to find you. Something as small as a cane isn’t going to put me off.”
I smile. “Plus, if I didn’t need this cane, I probably would never have met you. Although, who knows, maybe we could have met another way.”
“As a man who has been trying to run into you for months, let me assure you how rare it is that two specific people’s paths will cross.”
He takes my hand in his, and I have waited for it for so long, have believed so strongly that it may never happen, that it proves as intimate a gesture as any I have ever experienced.
“To car accidents, then,” I say.
He laughs. “To car accidents. And to everything that has led up to this.”
He kisses me then, and I realize I was wrong about the hand holding. It now feels teenager-ish and quaint. This is what I’d been waiting for.
And as I stand there, in the middle of the city, kissing my night nurse, I know, for the first time in my life, that I have done everything right.
After all, he tastes like a cinnamon roll, and I’ve never kissed anyone who tasted like a cinnamon roll.
THREE YEARS LATER
Gabby hates surprises, but Carl and Tina insisted that it had to be a surprise party. I told them I would go along with their plan, and then I spilled the beans to Gabby last week so she’d know what to expect. I just knew that if it were me, I’d want the heads-up. So here we are, at her thirty-second birthday, me, Ethan, and fifty of her closest friends, huddled in her parents’ living room, completely in the dark, waiting to surprise someone who won’t be surprised.
We hear her parents’ car pull into the driveway. I give one last warning to everyone to be quiet when I see their headlights go out.
We hear them walk up to the door.
We see the door open.
I turn on the lights, and the entire room of us yells, “Surprise!” just as we are supposed to.
Gabby’s eyes go wide. She’s a good faker. She looks genuinely terrified. And then she turns immediately into Jesse’s chest. He laughs, holding her.
“Happy birthday!” he says, and then he spins her back around to look at all of us.
Tina decorated the room tastefully. Champagne and a dessert bar. White and silver balloons.
Gabby makes her way to me first. “Thank God you told me,” she whispers. “I don’t know if I could have handled all of this without a warning.”
I laugh. “Happy birthday!” I tell her. “Surprise!”
We laugh.
“Where’s Gabriella?”
“I left her with Paula,” I say. Paula is our go-to babysitter, maybe more of a nanny. She’s an older woman I worked with in Carl’s office. She retired and then found herself really bored, so she looks after Gabriella during the day when I am at work or anytime Gabby, Ethan, and I aren’t around. Gabriella loves her. Ethan and I have always jokingly called Gabby the third parent, so it was only natural that we started calling Paula the fourth. For a woman who felt as if her parents weren’t around, I’ve certainly given my kid a plethora of them.
“Did you tell Paula yet?” Gabby asks in a clandestine whisper. “About the thing?” I can only assume that she’s referring to the fact that Ethan and I have, just this month, started trying to have a second child.
“No,” I whisper. “You’re still the only one who knows.”
“Seems better just to let everyone know once we’ve succeeded,” Ethan says. “But Hannah has forgotten to tell you the best part about tonight.”
“I have?”
“Paula said she’d spend the night, so it’s party time, as far as I’m concerned!” Ethan says, standing beside me. “And happy birthday! That, too.” He hands Gabby a bottle of wine that we picked up for her.
“Thank you!” she says. She gives him a big hug. “I love you guys. Thank you so much for all of this.”
“We love you, too,” I say. “Have you seen the Flints? They’re in the back.” I point, but she’s already moving toward them. I watch her as she hugs her soon-to-be in-laws. You can tell they love her.
“Nice try, kiddo,” Carl says, coming up to me. “You two almost fooled me.”
I act mock-confused. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“She knew. I know my daughter, and she knew. And I know Jesse didn’t tell her, because he’s still too scared of me. You’re the only one brave enough to defy me.”
I laugh. “She hates surprises,” I say in my own defense.
Carl shakes his head and then looks at Ethan. “Is this what serves as an apology with your wife?”
Ethan laughs and puts his hands up in surrender. “I’m staying out of it.”
“I’m sorry,” I say to Carl sincerely.
He waves me off. “I’m teasing. As long as she’s happy, I don’t care. And it appears she is.”
Tina fights her way through the crowd to talk to us. She gives me a big hug and then goes straight for the kill. “When are you leaving the office to start school full-time?”
“Next month,” I say. “But I’m still not sure about this.”
I look to Carl. So far, I have put myself through school by working just under full-time for him and taking advantage of his practice’s tuition-reimbursement program. It’s been an amazing opportunity, but with Gabriella and the possibility of a second child, I want to finish my certification faster. Ethan and I discussed it, and I’m leaving my job to go to school full-time. But if Carl wants me to stay longer, I’ll stay longer. I’d do anything for him. Without him, without the Hudsons in general, I don’t know where I’d be.
“Would you stop? Get your certification. And when you’re done, at least give me the first option to hire you. That’s all I can ask.”
“But you two have done so much for me. I don’t know how I could ever repay you.”
“You don’t repay us,” Tina says. “We’re your family.”
I smile and put my head on Carl’s shoulder.
“I do need a favor of you tonight, though,” Carl says. “If you’ll oblige me.”
“Of course,” I say.
“Yates has been on me to hire someone from his old office. A nurse, I guess, who’s here with him. I swear, Yates is like a dog with a bone. He just will not let up when he wants something.”
Dr. Yates is a new doctor at the practice. Carl and Dr. Yates don’t see eye to eye on a lot of stuff, but he’s a good guy. I invited him to the party even though Carl thought it wasn’t necessary. But Carl also wanted to invite the entire office except Yates. So . . . I think I was right about this.
“And you know me,” Carl continues. “I’m not good talking business at a party. Or, rather, I hate talking business at a party.” Carl is perfectly fine talking business anywhere. He just doesn’t want to talk to Yates.
“I’ll do a quick screening for you if I run into them,” I say.
“I’m going to go check on Gabriella,” Ethan says. He steps into the kitchen, and I watch as he calls Paula. He always does this. He talks a big game about leaving her for a night, and then he calls every two hours. He has to know how she is, what she’s eaten. For someone who didn’t know if he was ready to be a parent, he is the most conscientious parent I’ve ever seen.
He officially adopted Gabriella last year. Ethan wanted us all to have the same name. “We’re a family,” he says. “A team.” She is now Gabriella Martin Hanover. We are the Martin Hanovers.
And sure, maybe Gabriella and Ethan aren’t related by blood, but you’d never know it to look at them, to hear them talk to each other. They are family as much as any two people can be. The other day at the grocery store, the cashier said Gabriella and Ethan had the same eyes. He smiled and said thank you.