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“We’re new and—”
“Win,” I interrupted, and she leaned it to listen. “I knew you might say no, but I had to ask anyway.”
“Why?”
I shrugged helplessly. “How else are you supposed to say yes?”
She smiled then. Raised a hand to cup my jaw.
“Wes.”
“Yeah?”
“I wasn’t going to say no. I was going to ask if we could maybe have the conversation when your come wasn’t running down my leg, but I wasn’t going to say no.”
“So, yes?” I asked hopefully, and she laughed.
“Maybe. The answer is maybe.”
“Okay, Fred. Maybe it is.”
“Fred?”
“Short for Winifred,” I explained with a smirk. “That is your name, isn’t it?”
“Who told you?”
I shook my head; she poked me in the chest. “You better tell me. I’ve got a stake all carved for their heart.”
She wheezed as I laughed and tightened my arms around her.
“Sorry, Fred. Not gonna happen.”
“God.” She cringed and shook her head in distaste. “At least use the whole thing if you have to use it at all.”
“No,” I disagreed and touched my lips to hers. “I’m saving the ‘Win’ for the day your maybe becomes a yes.”
New York was freakishly warm for the day after Thanksgiving, and as a result, I’d decided to turn the heat off and open the windows.
Lounging on the couch, me watching Golden Girls and Lexi nose-deep in her iPad, watching videos about dominos and then running to play with her own set, we were enjoying the soft sun and warm breeze flitting through the house and some quiet time together when my phone rang.
Incoming Call Wes…
Since the Mavericks had played their game yesterday, and I’d spent the day working instead of having Thanksgiving dinner with my family, Lex and I had decided to make today all about each other. This was the easy part, lazing my way through mindless TV, one show at a time, while Lex did her own thing close by. But tonight, I’d planned to make the big, special dinner. And I wasn’t sure I had the time to open my mind up to all the things going on with Wes.
The lovemaking. The feelings. The offer to chain ourselves together every morning and every night for the commute to and from the stadium. I hadn’t even had to ask to know who told him I was thinking about moving. Fuck, with Georgia and her meddling, Cassie and her lack of filter, and Dean with his boner for all things Billionaire Bad Boys, I figured it had been all three.
Still, I picked up pretty eagerly on the second ring.
“Fred,” he greeted. I scowled and did my best to make my voice sound cool.
“Wes.”
The sound of his chuckle was coarse against my ear.
“What are you up to?”
I sighed and dropped the attitude. His laughter made it really fucking hard to maintain anyway. “Oh, not much, just sitting here and enjoying not having to be anywhere,” I answered, and Lexi snuggled closer to me, nuzzling her head against my shoulder. I glanced down at her and smiled and started to run my fingers softly through her hair.
“Sounds perfect. Mind if I join you?”
Before I could even respond to his question, I noticed something in her hair.
Something moving in her hair.
What in the ever-loving hell is that?
The tail end of Wes’s question almost registered. “—you still there?”
“Uh-huh…” I replied, but everything in me was focused on Lexi’s scalp.
And that’s when I figured it out. Three tiny little bugs scattering across her scalp every time I ran my fingers through her hair.
Oh. My. God.
Lice.
My daughter had lice.
The fight-or-flight instinct was strong, and an honest to God twitch took up residence in my upper thigh as I struggled to decide. Physician or not, the flight side wanted to hop off the couch and run the fuck out of my house. And the fighter…well, she wanted to burn my entire motherfucking house down.
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
“Oh, no,” I muttered and scooted almost violently away from my own daughter.
I was really trying to pull myself together and be a good mom who didn’t have the urge to shave her daughter’s head and then set fire to all bedding, linens, pillows, and clothing, in the front yard, but the human survival instinct was tugging pretty fiercely on the other end of my rope.
Lexi’s eyes moved off her iPad and met mine, and I tried to turn my oh-holy-shit face into a smile. “Mommy?”
“Fred?” Wes demanded into my ear. “Are you okay?”
I shut my eyes and tried to take deep breaths. I was Dr. Winslow. I had handled some of the worst trauma injuries ever to walk through St. Luke’s ED doors. I could do this. I could handle these little lice fuckers without losing my cool.
I could.
I could do it.
Before I tell you the next events, just remember, lice.
LICE. In my daughter’s hair.
If you’ve never had to experience lice in your lifetime,
get on your hands and knees now and tell God you love him.
When I opened my eyes, I glanced down at my shirt and that was when everything took a turn from internally freaking out to externally losing my ever-loving shit—a little bug crawling around the sleeve of my T-shirt, mere millimeters from my skin.
“Holy fucking shit!” I shouted, too freaked out to think about the age-inappropriate words coming out of my mouth and my daughter’s propensity for repeating things, and jumped off the couch so high, if my living room had been a sanctioned venue, I could have qualified for the Olympics. Catapulting myself over the coffee table, I hopped around maniacally from foot to foot and smacked my hand against my shirt to rid myself of the demonic, disgusting parasite.
I honestly had no idea where the phone went at that point, and I didn’t fucking care. All I wanted was the ability to set myself on fire without suffering life-threatening burns.
“Mommy?” Lexi repeated with her little head tilted to the side. “Mommy, what’s wrong?”
The worry in her voice was the only thing powerful enough to pull me out of my plans for self-detonation. When I looked down at her, her bottom lip was pushed out and slightly quivering.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
If that wasn’t a mom fail, I didn’t know what was.
I scurried back over toward her and kneeled at her feet, both hands gently gripping her cheeks. “It’s okay, baby. Everything is okay. I promise.”
“But why was Mommy shouting?” she asked as her little hand reached up to scratch at her scalp.
Because you have an infestation of lice on your head and now I probably have lice and we’re going to have to shave both of our heads and I haven’t studied up on how to get away with arson…
I fought the urge to grimace and tried to ignore how incessantly my scalp—my whole body—was now starting to itch. I felt like I had bugs crawling all over me.
“Mommy was just playing around a little. Just dancing,” I bullshitted, hoping she’d buy it.
Her nose scrunched up, and she squinted one eye. “Scared dancing?”
God, I felt like the worst mom ever. I would’ve thought my years in the medical industry would have prepared me for handling a mild case of lice, but obviously, they didn’t.
But the time to freak out was over. Now I had to deal with it.
“Hey, I need to run to the store real quick. If you promise to be a good girl, I’ll let you pick out a toy. Sound good?”
“A calculator?”
“You want another calculator?”
She grinned and nodded her head.
I shrugged. At this point, I didn’t care if we were a forty-calculator household if it kept her happy and agreeable. “If you’re good, sweetie, you can pick out anything you want.”
Lexi’s grin turned wide and excited as she jumped into my arms and buried her face between my neck and shoulder.
I wish I could say I wasn’t internally cringing, but when I felt her hair brush across my arm, I very nearly lost my shit all over again.
Somehow, the mom inside me won out over the lunatic this time around, though. I stood up and set her on her feet. “I’ve got an idea. Let’s see who can get their shoes on and be at the front door the fastest. Sound good?”
She nodded again. “Twelve…nine…six…three…zero… Go! Go! Go!” And then she sprinted toward her room as fast as her little feet could take her.
Only my daughter would count down in multiples of three.
Twenty minutes later, we were walking—more like speed walking—back to our home, lice talk with Lexi officially complete, my wallet one hundred dollars lighter, and a bag full of every lice treatment known to man. Apparently, facing my one true weakness, I still wasn’t over the lice. Constantly glancing down at my shirt or Lexi’s hair and mentally freaking the fuck out, this was, quite literally, hell.
Again, I considered the consequences of setting my home on fire with all of the things we loved inside it, or you know, moving out until the infestation died, but that still left me fucked. The lice were on Lexi, and she was the one thing I couldn’t stomach burning to the ground.
As we rounded the last corner and solidly set foot on our block, Wes appeared, pacing in front of my front door, phone pressed to his ear and face set with worry and concern. He glanced up from watching his angry feet grind each step into the sidewalk and, when his eyes met mine, relief consumed his face.
