Page 55 of Anatomy of a Meet Cute
“And it isn’t that much work when you have such wonderful friends to help,” Sam said, picking up her glass and moving it out of Travis’s reach before she suffered the same tragedy as Duke.
“Really, it’s good to put my skills to use, and you have been such a help with this wedding stuff.” Jehan smiled and took a sip of her own sweet wine.
“Did she pick this restaurant, because this cake is dry as—”
“Travis, can you please stop complaining?” Jehan said, her tone quiet but firm.
For a moment everyone at the table was silent as some sort of unspoken showdown between the engaged couple took place. With each passing second, Jehan’s eyes seemed to get wider while Travis’s face got redder until he finally said, “I don’t understand why we can’t do this in DC. You say you are going to come back, but when? You’re building entire programs at the hospital with your new friends. That doesn’t sound like you are coming back. Our whole lives are there, and—”
“Travis, please. I think you have had one too many. Let’s talk about this—”
“I don’t think you’re even serious about us.” Travis’s voice almost echoed off the blue walls, and Sam was sure the entire staff of Dorothy’s could hear their fight.
“Not serious? We are literally in the middle of a catering tasting for an engagement party that is extremely important to my entire family.” Jehan gestured to herself but didn’t raise her voice. If she weren’t inthe middle of an argument, Sam would have given her a high five for standing her ground.
“If the party is so important, why haven’t you sent out the save-the-dates?” Travis growled. “My mom said she still hasn’t gotten hers.”
That made Sam’s ears perk up. She had sent those out weeks ago, and she knew that for a fact.
“Your mother is so rigid. Are you sure she didn’t just receive it on a day that she doesn’t check the mail?” Jehan rolled her eyes as Travis’s face turned beet red.
“My mother—”
“You know, I think we could all use a walk right now.” This came from Duke, who still had a bite of cake sitting on his fork. He didn’t yell, but his usually joyful demeanor was dead serious, and he was sitting at his full height. “Travis, why don’t you go one way. Jehan, you go another, and once cooler heads have prevailed, you two can talk this out.”
Travis glared at the table for a second before standing abruptly. His chair scraped across the tile as he said, “I think that is a good idea. Jehan, I hope you’ll give some thought to what I’ve said.” With that, he huffed out of the room. His slightly wobbly walk would have been funny if he hadn’t been actively stomping to try to create resonance with his footsteps.
The three of them waited until the restaurant door slammed before making eye contact. For a moment they were all silent, until Jehan exhaled, dropping her head into her hands and mumbling, “I’m so embarrassed.”
“Oh, don’t be. Lots of couples fight before big things like weddings,” Duke said, standing up to come around the table. “You want a hug?”
“Yes, please,” Jehan said, her voice pitiful and shaky.
“If you want, I’ll take the cards over to Stephanie and the team so they can finalize the menu,” Sam said, looking at her small friend as she buried her face in Duke’s sweater.
“Thank you both. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“You did just fine, and you’d do just fine,” Duke said, nodding at Sam to indicate that he would smooth things over while she handled the caterer.
“All right. Be right back. Then we can all hug while we wait for a car,” Sam said, eliciting a weak laugh from her friend. Collecting the cards from the table, she began the walk to where she assumed the kitchen was, trying all the while not to mumble curses at Travis. It was one thing to say she’d lied about sending out the invites. It was another to ruin a perfectly good meal and her friend’s day while he did it.
Sam’s palms felt sweaty as she looked around the new SF Central Community Birthing Center, a mixture of pride and terror working her stomach into the kind of knots sailors would be proud of. The walls had been painted a bright, clean white, and with the combination of the chaplain’s encouraging posters, baby charts, and some quilts that Kaiya had brought in, Sam had to admit that it didn’t look too shabby.
Any moment now, Kaiya’s doulas would come in for their orientation; then she and the rest of the clinical team at the hospital would spend time going over each patient’s file so that the doulas knew what concerns each doctor had.
“There,” Grant said, lightly placing the last of the tablets on each of the six desks. “These should be all charged and ready for everyone to log in.”
The knot in Sam’s stomach flipped over as Grant walked toward her. Since the last time they’d been in this room, she hadn’t found herself alone with him. Not that she was avoiding him. It had just been an eventful few days. And once she thought about it more, she was almost convinced that nothing truly significant had happened. Otherwise,Grant would’ve been acting strange around her. As it was, he was acting no odder than usual.
“Thank you for doing that,” Sam said.
“Theo did most of the work. Pretty sure he hogged every plug in the nurses’ station and then some,” Grant laughed. Taking a deep breath, he rolled his shoulders forward a fraction of an inch and said, “So I wanted to talk to you about—”
“Hello, hello, hello, lovely people! Look who I found in the parking lot.” Kaiya’s voice boomed down the hall as she walked toward them, a gaggle of people behind her. “It’s our prime cohort of doulas.”
“Hello,” Grant said, giving everyone a short wave, his demeanor shifting as he set aside whatever he’d been about to say to her.
“Welcome,” Sam said as the gears in her mind whirled with the details for today.
