Page 19 of Venus
The fluorescent lights in the labor and delivery ward buzz overhead like always.
Too bright, too loud, and too sterile. I step off the elevator and into the usual chaos.
Soft beeping monitors. A nurse laughing down the hall.
Someone crying behind a closed curtain. All of it familiar, all of it steady.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. I don’t need to look to know who it is. There’s only one person it could be and it’s the same person I don’t want to hear from this morning, the rest of the day, or maybe even the rest of forever.
Carter: I’m really sorry about earlier. I didn’t mean to overstep. Hope work goes okay today.
I stare at the message for a beat too long, then lock my phone and shove it back into my pocket without responding.
It isn’t that I’m mad .
Okay—maybe I’m a little mad.
But mostly, I don’t know what there is to say. I’ve been crystal clear from the beginning. No expectations. No mess. Just sex when there’s time in our busy lives. Just something that doesn’t ask too much of me and has even fewer expectations.
Lately though, everything between us has started to shift. Lines are more blurry, gestures are more meaningful, and things started getting a little too fluffy to be purely casual.
That kiss on the forehead was too much. Too close for comfort. Too natural for him to just do without even thinking.
I roll my shoulders back and walk to the nurses’ station, already scanning the board—two scheduled inductions, an emergency C-section pending, and a first-time mom having a slow panic attack in triage. Perfect . A full slate.
Work is the only place where everything makes sense right now. Where I’m in control and no one tries to make me feel more than I want to.
Somehow, between the running back and forth and the changing into a fresh pair of scrubs because a newborn peed all over me, Callie catches me.
“You okay?” she asks, eying me over like she’s checking for injuries.
“Yeah?” I say, losing myself in a chart. She gives me an unconvinced look, but moves on. If she knows one thing about me, it’s not to push. She knows I’ll talk about things when I’m ready to, and not a second sooner .
By noon, I’ve helped deliver twins and scrubbed in on a C-section. After that, I guide a woman through a Pitocin contraction that makes her scream like she’s being split in half. There’s no room for thinking about firefighters on this shift, which is exactly what I needed.
Callie and I meet after our shift at the hotel room she’s been staying at after the fire alarm in our apartment building. There was no way I was going back to Carter’s, but I know that her letting me crash here comes with a steep payment of spilling the beans.
“You look like shit,” Callie says, stepping out of the steamy bathroom with a towel on top of her head.
“You look like you need a knuckle sandwich.”
She snorts. “Are you five?”
I roll my eyes. “Shut up and get to it already.”
She smiles, jumps on the bed, and pulls a blanket on top of her legs like she’s getting ready for story time. “I want to know everything.”
I sigh. “It’s Carter.”
She looks at me like I’ve just insulted her. “Duh. No one else would have you moping around all day like this. What happened?”
“He caught feelings. Strong ones, even though I told him from the beginning and about a dozen times after that I don’t want serious. The last time I saw him…he kissed me on the forehead.”
Callie gives me a look of complete disbelief. “You’re shitting your pants over a kiss? ”
“It’s not just the kiss!” I say defensively. “It was what was behind the kiss. I felt it. We were watching a sad news story that was really getting to me and—”
“And…he comforted you in a totally normal way?”
“Kissing your bootycall on the forehead is not normal. And that’s not even the point. The point is, he felt that things were casual enough between us to do it in the first place.”
Callie waves her hands to get me to stop talking.
“So let me get this straight. You’re at his house more than your own apartment.
You go out all the time. He brings you coffee and lunch randomly.
He bought a loofah for you to keep in his shower, and last week I found his shirt in our washing machine…
but a kiss on the forehead was too casual for you? ”
“Yes,” I say absolutely, though it does sound incredibly ridiculous when she says it out loud. I rub my temples. “None of that stuff gives him the right to start acting like we have something when I’ve told him I don’t want that.”
“V,” she says gently. “Don’t you think this was kinda inevitable? Anyone with eyes can see how good you two are for each other. It was inevitable someone was going to catch feelings, it just happened to be him because you’re emotionally constipated.”
I feel something twist in my heart. “I told him my boundaries.”
“Uh-huh. And every time you assert them, does he respect it?”
“Yes, but— ”
“And what did he do when you told him the kiss made you uncomfortable?”
“He apologized, but—”
Callie snaps to get me to shut up again. “Wake up , girl. What else could you want from that man? Space? He’s giving it to you right now.”
I don’t answer.
“You’re not in the wrong for being scared.
I get it. You have your reasons. But Carter…
he’s different. I see it, and I know you see it even if you won’t admit it to yourself.
The guy is crazy about you and he’s not going to stop feeling that way.
And feeling something back isn’t going to kill you, V.
It might be scary, and yeah, maybe it doesn’t work out in the end.
But that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth trying.
You deserve your own happily ever after. ”
I pull out my phone again, open the messaging app, and stare at the message from this morning.
Carter: I’m really sorry about earlier. I didn’t mean to overstep. Hope work goes okay today.
I think about it, long and hard. His message isn’t clingy or loaded. It’s…thoughtful and careful. He knew he needed to say something, but still gave me the room I needed to work out these confusing feelings.
I still don’t reply. Not because I don’t want to, but because when I do, I think Carter deserves to know where we stand, and I’m still trying to figure that out myself.