Page 58 of Leave Before I Love You

“This one will work,” Molly responds with confidence that is truly mind-blowing after the serious fuckup she’s still trying to clean up. “Just close your eyes and try to relax. This will all be over soon.”

“I just have one request.”

“And what’s that, sweetie?”

“Please don’t kill me.”

Both nurses chortle like I’m joking, but I’m not.

Seriously, God, please don’t let them kill me.

“Time to wake up, Maybe,” someone whispers into my ear, but they sound like they are talking underwater.

I open my eyes, and everything is blurry and fogged.

I take several blinks, but nothing clears up.

Am I alive?

“Hello?” I ask into the blurred void of my surroundings. “Is anyone there?”

“I’m here. You’re going to be okay.”

I try to figure out where the voice is coming from, but all I can see is a dark blob with blond hair. And Good Lord, it’s terrifying.

“It’s time to go home,” the voice says again, but this time, the blob is gone and a bright white light fills my view.

Oh shit. Is that the light?

The “you just kicked the bucket, and now it’s time to cross over to the other side” light?

Ah, fuck. I knew it! I knew this shit was going to go sideways!

Those damn nurses killed me, and I’ll never even get the chance to yell at them for it! It’s not like they’ll get punished. Bruce is way too cheap to hire a lawyer to initiate a medical malpractice lawsuit. Plus, there’s probably some fine print in that Groupon that prevents it.

“Here’s your phone and your belongings,” the voice says and sets a bag in my lap.

As if I need my phone now.

I mean, AT&T has always given me pretty great service, but I doubt their cellular networks are good enough that I’m able to browse Instagram in the afterlife.

“He’s going to be here any minute. You can just relax your eyes for a bit, okay?”

He? As in God? God is coming to get me now?

Who would’ve thought He even has the time to meet and greet every new arrival?

Consider me impressed.

Also, though, slightly panicked too. I know He created me, but I would prefer to meet Him when I’ve had time to put on some damn makeup or fix my hair.

But the fatigue that apparently comes with death keeps my ass firmly planted in whatever place it currently resides. So, I just let my eyes fall closed and wait for God to come pick me up.

Surely, he’ll understand that death by Groupon surgery isn’t the easiest to bounce back from.

Something vibrates in my hands, and I pry my eyes open to find a plastic bag in my lap and a cell phone flashing with something on the screen.

Whose phone is this?

Is this my phone?

Or, like, my heaven-allocated phone?

I inspect it with clumsy fingers, but eventually, I figure out it’s mine.

Is this like prison? I get one phone call or text message before God gets here?

I shrug and figure it’s worth a shot.

It takes a serious effort to see past the light— which, by the way, is even brighter than I imagined —and takes forever for me to unlock the damn thing. But once I do, I start scrolling through my missed text messages while a Neil Diamond revival concert starts to filter into my ears.

If I didn’t know better, I’d think I was alive and my dear old dad was playing DJ, but like the voice said, God is coming and momma is about to head to her final home.

When I tap to open the text message inbox, I find a few missed text messages from my mom and another one from Evan.

Man, they’re going to be so sad when they find out the news.

Evan: I hope you don’t lose too much blood today. LOL. But seriously, let me know how everything goes.

Looks like that rat bastard will be eating his words when he finds out I lost a death-worthy amount of blood…

I somehow manage to pull up my contacts and try to figure out who my last and final text message should go to.

I scroll through the list, but when I reach one name in particular, I stop.

Holy hot fudge, Milo Ives.

I want to fuck him. Well, wanted to fuck him.

This dead-ass virgin can’t fuck no more.

I wish I could’ve touched his penis, though.

I bet it’s a beautiful penis. Like a beautiful painting of a penis, but without the paint. Just the penis. The whole penis. Not just the tip of it.

If I’d known I was going to take my last breath in a dentist chair during a minor surgery, I wouldn’t have been such a chickenshit the other day at the shop.

I would’ve told him who I was, and then said something smooth like, “I got the feels for you, baby.”

Well, smooth but classy and sophisticated too.

Like, Shakespeare kind of words…

“Good day, dear sir gentleman. It is I, Maybe. Doth thou enjoying the day?”

Yes, something exactly like that for sure, but even gooder.

More gooder?

Betterer?

More better?

Meh. Tomato, tomahto.

These are my final words ever , and I majored in books. No doubt, I’ll come up with something grand.

Milo

My Tuesday started at the crack of dawn.

After a lengthy interview with Rosemary, and an even lengthier phone call with my mother, I didn’t have the brain power left last night to prepare for the list of meetings I have today.

But I couldn’t go into them unprepared, and thus, the necessity to be an early riser was born.

I’ve never seen a more hideous baby.

But despite the exhaustion and the insanity that is my busy-as-fuck day, I carve out time around ten a.m. to head to St. Luke’s Hospital to meet my cousin Emory’s brand-new baby girl—who I’m absolutely positive will be a whole lot prettier than her metaphorical relative.

My mom texted a few pictures of Hudson Blair Black as soon as she was born a few hours ago, but it’s so hard to see any real distinguishing features in the shaky pictures of joy that come immediately following the miracle of new life.

I’m hoping to take a few of my own that don’t look like they’ve been shot mid-parajump from a 747.

The elevator dings its arrival on the fourth-floor maternity ward, and a herd of excited family members with balloons and stuffed animals and flowers steps out in front of me.

I wonder briefly if I should have stopped in the gift shop to get something for Emory and the baby, but then I remember who I’m dealing with.

Emory is a good person, but she’s also snooty as all hell. If I was going to get her a gift she’d appreciate, I should have done it well outside the walls of this hospital.

Crying babies and busy medical staff create a chaotic background melody as I get buzzed through the secure doors that provide a layer of protection against babynapping, and a swirling mix of bleach and sterile medical equipment rounds out the olfactory element of the ambiance.

“Excuse me,” I say, stepping up to the nurses station right inside the doors.

The obviously busy brunette nurse at the computer keeps typing but looks up at me at the same time. “Yes?”

“I’m looking for Emory Black’s room. Room 407?”

She nods and gestures to the right with just her head. “It’s right down the hall there. It’ll be on your left.”

I smile as I say “Thanks,” but I’m already nothing but a memory. She’s got shit to do, and it’s all a whole lot more important than dealing with me.

I head the direction she instructed, and after a short walk down a long hallway lined with black-and-white photos of newborn babies, the room is there, on the left, just as she said it’d be.

The door is cracked a tiny bit, so I push it open slowly, knocking lightly at the same time. I feel like I have to announce my arrival somehow, but being the asshole who wakes up a sleeping newborn doesn’t seem like the kind of thing I want to add to my resume.

Emory’s best friend, Greer, is the first to notice me from her spot next to Emory’s bed on the other side of the large room, and she waves me in with a friendly hand.

She’s been in Emory’s life almost as long as I have and has spent more than her fair share of holidays with our family. Up until two or three years ago, she was always a part of Christmas Day.

I smile, jerking up my chin in greeting, and walk slowly through the crowd of people toward the bed.

“Well, well, well…look what the fucking cat dragged in,” Caplin Hawkins says loudly from the corner I couldn’t see when I came in. He is way less concerned with the consequences of waking a sleeping baby than I am, apparently. “If it isn’t Mr. Forbes Billionaire.”

As a reflex, I give him the finger. As my company’s lawyer, Cap’s been a part of my life since I was twenty-three. He has a brilliant mind and a real knack for corporate law, but he’s also a pain in the ass. Which is probably why he’s morphed so easily from the role of lawyer only to my friend.

“It’s hard, isn’t it?” I tease back. “Always having to compare yourself to me? Do I need to arrange a strategy with your assistant for hiding articles when they come out about me?”

Cap laughs in a way only Caplin Hawkins can— maniacal and calculating and a sure sign I should expect some form of ridiculous payback —but I refocus on the reason I’m here.

My cousin and the beautiful baby she created.

“Congratulations, guys,” I say, stepping toward the hospital bed. One peek at a now-sleeping Hudson in her father Quincy’s arms, and I grin. “Goddamn, what a beauty.”

Perfect, angelic skin, full pink lips, jet-black hair, and long dark lashes, this little lady makes the Gerber baby look average.

“Obviously, she gets her looks from me,” Emory says, but her best friend Greer is more than ready to offer a sarcastic retort.

“Honestly, it’s hard to tell with all that makeup you’ve got caked on your face.”

Emory’s responding look is a glare that could penetrate walls. “At least I met my daughter without looking like I just rolled out of bed.”

“You and I both know that is exactly how I will meet my future daughter.” Greer laughs. “And you know I’m just kidding, Em. You look gorgeous. Kim Kardashian’s glam squad fucking wishes they could make her look that good post-birth.”

I roll my eyes. This is a typical Emory and Greer snark-war. I’ve been witness to it more times than I can count.