Life's Too Short
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Synopsis
A brilliant and touching romantic comedy from the USA Today bestselling author of The Friend Zone and The Happy Ever After Playlist.
When Vanessa Price quit her job to pursue her dream of traveling the globe, she wasn't expecting to gain millions of YouTube followers who shared her joy of seizing every moment. For her, living each day to its fullest isn't just a motto. Her mother and sister never saw the age of 30, and Vanessa doesn't want to take anything for granted.
But after her half sister suddenly leaves Vanessa in custody of her baby daughter, life goes from "daily adventure" to "next-level bad" (now with bonus baby vomit in hair). The last person Vanessa expects to show up offering help is the hot lawyer next door, Adrian Copeland. After all, she barely knows him. No one warned her that he was the Secret Baby Tamer or that she'd be spending a whole lot of time with him and his geriatric Chihuahua.
Now she's feeling things she's vowed not to feel. Because the only thing worse than falling for Adrian is finding a little hope for a future she may never see.
Release date: April 6, 2021
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Print pages: 384
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Life's Too Short
Abby Jimenez
CHAPTER 1
ADRIAN
Wailing.
Banshee, demon-baby wailing from the apartment next to mine for the millionth hour straight. I lay in bed, looking at the ceiling in the dark.
Rachel groaned from beside me. “You have to do something. Go over there.”
I scoffed. “I’m not going over there. I don’t know her.”
I think I’d seen my neighbor in the lobby getting her mail once, but she was on the phone and she didn’t make eye contact with me, so I didn’t say hi. Now I wished I’d at least gotten to know her well enough to be able to text her and ask her to please move to a room that didn’t share a wall with my bedroom.
Rachel let out a frustrated breath, and I rolled over and hugged her back to my chest.
She tensed up. She’d been tensing up since she got here three days ago, actually.
“What’s wrong?”
She spoke over her shoulder at me. “Nothing. I’m just tired. I’m two seconds from getting a hotel room so I can sleep. Without you,” she teased.
I chuckled tiredly. She knew how to poke me, that was for damn sure.
I only got one weekend a month with my girlfriend. Losing the last night with her to a hotel before she went back to Seattle was a price I was not willing to pay for my neighbor or her baby.
Fuck.
I begrudgingly climbed out of bed, put on a T-shirt and slippers, and let myself out into the hallway of my apartment building.
No idea if she’d answer the door. It was 4:00 in the morning, and I was a stranger. Rachel probably would have called the police if she’d seen a man she didn’t know knocking on her apartment in the middle of the night.
“Who is it?” a woman’s voice called over the wailing.
“Your neighbor.”
The chain raked from the other side and the door opened.
Yup, the woman from the mailbox. She looked like hell. Baggy faded black T-shirt with a hole at a seam on the shoulder and some drawstring sweatpants with stains on them. Dark circles under her eyes, wild frizzy hair.
“What?” she said, looking at me over the tiny, loud bundle she had pressed to her chest.
I’d never seen a baby that small. I had bricks of cheese in my fridge bigger than this kid. It didn’t even look real.
It sounded real though.
She eyeballed me impatiently. “Yeah?”
“I have a deposition in four hours. Is there any way you can—”
“Any way I can what?” She glared at me.
“Any way you could maybe move to another side of the apartment? So I might be able to sleep?”
“There is no other side of this apartment. It’s a studio.”
Right. I knew that. “Okay…Well, can you—”
“Can I what? Make it stop?” She cocked her head. “Maybe put her in a closet? Because I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t considered it.”
“I—”
“This isn’t a trumpet I’m playing in here. It’s not a TV I have turned up too loud. It’s a tiny human being. It can’t be reasoned with, and it’s not responding to negotiation attempts so I don’t know what to tell you.” She bounced the shrieking infant, and it cried on. “She’s fed, and clean, and dry. She doesn’t have a fever. She’s too young for teething. I’ve given her Tylenol and gas drops for colic. I’ve bounced her and rocked her and I’m coming to the conclusion that she’s simply playing out some cosmic karma-based retribution for crimes I committed in a past life because I cannot for the life of me understand what I’m doing wrong.” Her chin started to quiver. “So no, I can’t make it stop. I can’t help you, or me or her, and I am truly sorry if my own personal hell is inconvenient for you. Get earplugs.”
She slammed the door in my face.
I stood there, blinking at her peephole.
Great. Now I was the asshole.
I dragged a hand down my beard and let out a long, tired breath and knocked again. I knew she was peeking through the peephole because the wailing was pressed right to the door. She opened it. “What?” She had tears running down her face.
I made a give-it-here motion with my hand. “Give me the baby.”
She stared at me.
“Go take a shower. I’ll hold her.”
She blinked at me. “Are you kidding me?”
“No, I’m not. You obviously need a break. Maybe it will help.”
Continuing to do the same thing was going to yield the same results. What she was doing wasn’t working, and it was clear that this situation wasn’t going to resolve itself without outside intervention.
She looked at me like I’d gone mad. “I’m not giving you my baby.”
“Why? Are you afraid I might piss her off?” As if she intended to illustrate my point, the wails went up an octave. “I’m going to hold her until you’re done. If neither of us are sleeping, it makes no sense for both of us to suffer. And you have vomit in your hair.”
She looked down on the hair gathered over her shoulder and saw the white goop. She rolled her eyes like it didn’t surprise her and came back up to me. “Look, I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but this isn’t your problem.”
I rubbed my forehead tiredly. “Well, I beg to differ. As long as we’re sharing a wall, we’re in this together. Sometimes a change of circumstances can change behavior. Someone new to hold her while you go and lower your anxiety might make the difference.”
She bounced the baby uselessly and it kept crying. I could see the frustration around the woman’s eyes. She looked exhausted. “I don’t know you,” she said.
“My name is Adrian Copeland. I live in apartment 307, next door to you, and I own this building. I’m thirty-two years old, no criminal history, I’m a partner at Beaker and Copeland in St. Paul. I’m harmless and I’m standing here in the hallway at”—I looked at my watch—“4:07 in the morning, trying to help you. Let me in and let me hold her.”
I watched the deliberation on her face. She was going to crack. I could read people. She was that deadlocked juror who was going to fold—and she did.
She pulled open the door and let me in. I stepped inside.
Fuck, her apartment was a disaster.
It looked like the place used to be nice. It had that Pottery Barn thing going on. But the studio was small and completely cluttered with baby paraphernalia. A car seat, a crib by the king-size bed at the back of the apartment, a swing. Bottles were piled on the kitchen countertops and the place smelled faintly like shit. Actual shit. Dirty-diaper shit.
She eyed me. “Just so you know, I have my little stabby thingy so don’t try anything stupid.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Your stabby thingy?”
She jutted her chin up. “Yeah. You know, the keychain thingy? I’ve got cameras too. Tons of them. And a gun,” she added. “I also have a gun.”
I crossed my arms. “Okay. And do you know how to use this gun you have?”
“No,” she said matter-of-factly. “Which makes me more dangerous.”
I snorted.
She stood there, still holding the baby like she’d decided to let me in but hadn’t yet committed to actually letting me help her. I put my hands out, but she shook her head. “You need to wash your hands first.”
Right. I’d heard that before. Babies had weaker immune systems. I went to her kitchen and washed my hands over the stack of dirty dishes. “You weren’t pregnant,” I said, over my shoulder, raising my voice so she could hear me above the screaming. “Where’d you get her?”
“Target,” she deadpanned. “She was on sale and you know how you can never leave with just one thing,” she mumbled.
The corners of my lips quirked.
The paper towel roll was empty and based on the state of the rest of the place, I didn’t trust the towel hanging off the stove. There was a rogue Chipotle napkin by an empty fruit bowl, so I dried my hands with that. It disintegrated into spitballs, and I dropped them into the overflowing trash can.
“I’m fostering her,” she said over the crying, answering my question. She eyeballed me as I cleared the space between us and put my hands out again to take the baby. She turned her body sideways away from me. “Have you ever held a baby before?”
“No. But I can’t imagine there’s much to it.”
“You have to support her neck. Like this.” She showed me her hand on the back of the little kiwi-looking head.
“Okay. Got it.”
“And you need to bounce her. She likes that.”
“As evidenced by the earth-shattering wailing,” I said dryly.
She narrowed her brown eyes at me.
“I’m kidding. I’m very capable of this, I promise you.”
She still didn’t move. I waited patiently.
She finally nodded. “Okay.” She got closer to hand the baby over. Close enough that I could smell her hair as she leaned in to put the baby in my arms. Vanilla—and a touch of spoiled milk.
I cradled the tiny angry bundle. She was red faced and furious. She couldn’t be more than ten, eleven pounds, tops.
“Are you sure about this?” she asked, eyeing me.
“Go. I got this. And take your time.”
She paused for another moment. “I’ll be right on the other side of that door if you need anything.”
“Okay.”
“That’s Grace. My name is Vanessa.”
“Nice to meet you, Vanessa. Now go. Take. A shower.”
She stood another few beats, then finally turned and rummaged clothes from the dresser and headed to the bathroom. She closed the door slowly, looking at me through the crack until it shut.
A higher-pitched cry came from the wiggling pink blanket in my arms. I peered down again at the baby.
Not much made me nervous. Actually, outside of flying, nothing made me nervous. I was a criminal defense attorney. I looked pure evil in the eye daily. But it surprised me when a sudden sense of—I don’t know what it was. Anxiety?—overcame me looking down at that little person. She was so fragile. Thinner than the forearm she nestled in.
It felt safer to sit than stand, so I moved to the couch.
The screaming continued as the water turned on in the shower. It was amazing how long something so small could cry.
“What’s wrong with you?” I mumbled.
I tried to think of what might be causing this distress. There was a finite number of issues that could be bothering someone who didn’t yet know about things like taxes and existential dread.
Vanessa had said she’d fed her, so she wasn’t hungry. She was dry. No gas, no pain. She had to be tired, but something was keeping her from sleeping.
What kept me from sleeping?
And then I had a thought.
I laid her down on the couch cushion, opened the blanket, and started to feel around her little footie pajamas. I ran my fingers along the seams and about mid-belly I found it. A clear T-shaped plastic tag fastener, still stuck to the outfit. Totally invisible.
“No wonder you’re pissed. I’d be pissed too,” I said. I looked around for scissors. Didn’t see any. So I leaned down and pulled the thing off with my teeth. Then I unzipped her little pj’s and took out the rest of the offending object and rubbed the red spot on her belly with a knuckle. “Shhhhhhh…”
She stopped crying almost immediately.
CHAPTER 2
VANESSA
I wasn’t entirely truthful when I said I didn’t know him. Adrian Copeland was the hottest guy in my building, so of course I knew him. Or, rather, I knew of him. Everyone did. He was sort of this bachelor legend around here.
He probably didn’t know me. And when I finally met him, it was 4:00 in the morning, my poor parenting skills had woken him up, and I had barf in my hair—because of course I did.
I was honestly too tired to care. This had been the worst night of the worst two weeks of my entire year. I’d been thrust into instant motherhood, I’d gotten into a huge fight with my sister, and now Grace was having some sort of epic meltdown that I couldn’t figure out.
I just didn’t understand it. Grace was a mythically good baby. Like, ridiculously good. If I was going to have a surprise infant dropped on my doorstep, I couldn’t have asked for an easier one. She wasn’t a crier, she slept well, we’d gotten our routine down over the last two weeks—and then all of a sudden right after her bath she lost her ever-loving shit.
I’d tried it all. I even did a video call with her pediatrician who seemed wholly unconcerned and suggested I bring her in tomorrow if she was still “fussy.”
Adrian’s offer was too good to refuse.
One, his reasoning made sense. What I was doing—or not doing—was not working. And I was extremely open to suggestions at this point. I would have tried an exorcism if the person who had knocked had been a priest instead of a hotshot attorney.
Two, the man had too much to lose to do something stupid.
This was a guy who made it into the Star Tribune at least once a month for his legal prowess. I knew this because every time he did, Yoga Lady in 303 sent me a link along with twenty heart-eye emojis. I think she had a Google Alert set up. She was practically his stalker.
Adrian was like me. He had a reputation and a public persona to safeguard. Murdering Grace and me would be highly out of character and really bad for business. Plus, he thought he was in an apartment full of cameras—which he wasn’t—but he didn’t know that.
And lastly? Nobody was coming to rescue me. No one else was banging my door down to help me in my seventh level of hell. And I needed that shower. Bad. I just needed to wash off the barf and the sweat and change out of pants that didn’t have baby pee on them. And Grace needed someone to hold her while I did it. Every time I tried putting her down she started crying so hard she looked like she was going to explode.
All I needed was five minutes. Just five short minutes. Maybe it would help—and if it didn’t, at least I’d be in a better headspace to keep dealing with the screaming because as it stood, I was two seconds away from a complete mental breakdown.
I stripped and washed myself like I was being timed for speed. Approximately four minutes after I’d gotten in the shower—which was by far the best, if not the shortest, one of my life—I turned off the water to get out, and I was met by eerie, cold silence.
My heart plummeted.
Oh my God.
Something was wrong.
I wrapped a towel around me so fast I almost slid on the tile.
What had I been thinking? I didn’t know this man. I mean I did, but I didn’t. What if he kidnapped her? Dropped her off the balcony? What if he was a perfectly normal guy who had been on the verge of a psychotic break and the crying had pushed him over the edge and now he’d shaken her to death? I was so stupid!
I threw the bathroom door open, braced for Lord knows what, and froze.
Adrian was lying across the sofa in my dim living room, head on a throw pillow with a finger pressed to his lips. Grace was nestled in the crook of his arm on her back, and she was sleeping.
I just stood there gawking at him. I couldn’t even believe it. I had to tiptoe over to them dripping wet to see it close up.
What was this sorcery? How did he do it? The man was like a baby whisperer or something. Grace cooed softly in her sleep, and I had to clutch a hand over my heart.
There must be a primal internal switch that flips when you see a man take care of a child, because I swear I fell a little bit in love right there. I mean, the guy was gorgeous without this witchcraft, but now? Holy shit.
I was sopping wet, just staring at him. When I didn’t move to go, he blinked at me and made a small shooing motion. I blushed, forcing myself to go back to the bathroom to get dressed.
When I returned, working my hair into a damp braid, Grace hadn’t moved. I stood next to the sofa twisting an elastic around my hair.
“All done?” he whispered.
I nodded and leaned down to pick her up.
God, he smelled good. Something sleepy and warm and masculine rolled off him. Clean cotton and testosterone.
I lifted Grace into my arms and prayed that she wouldn’t wake up and start crying again when I put her in her crib.
She didn’t.
When I turned back to Adrian to thank him, he was already walking to the door. He stopped and wrestled my garbage from the kitchen trash can, carried it with him, and without another word, he was gone.
I pushed the bangs off my forehead with a palm. Oh. My. God.
I needed to make a video. Now.
The last two weeks had been a content desert. My YouTube channel had gone completely dark. I’d had to lay off my entire production team for this hiatus. Only my cameraman, Malcolm, was still on the payroll. Not only was I not making any money, I was also letting down my subscribers on top of it all. But I’d had nothing to talk about.
Being a stay-at-home mommy isn’t exactly exciting. I’d had a video chat with Malcolm yesterday to discuss segments I could do from home. They were all pretty lame. Mostly beauty tutorials. Me trying crazy mud masks and dying my hair random colors. A vlog of me opening fan mail. Boring.
But this…
I grabbed my laptop and tiptoed to the bathroom. I sat on the toilet seat and titled the video “Hot Guy Tames My Baby.” I didn’t bother to blow out my hair or do my makeup. I liked my content to be authentic. I took a deep breath and hit Record.
“Hi, all! Look, I’m alive!” I gave the screen a wave. “Well, it’s been an interesting two weeks here. I’ve been getting your concerned emails. Thank you for worrying about me, guys. And yes, I bailed on the L.A. conference last week. I know a lot of you were disappointed and I’m so, so sorry. If you bought a ticket to see me, send a picture of it and your address to Malcolm at the email here.” I put my finger up above my head where Malcolm would make an email address pop up. “And I’ll have him send you a signed picture of me. I know it’s not quite as good as the real thing, but I promise you I had a good reason.
“I’m sure you’re all wondering where I went. As you can see from the title of my entry, I have a baby! Surprise! Are you surprised? Because I know I was.” I tilted my head and gave the camera crazy eyes.
“Somebody I care about was expecting. Three weeks ago, she had a healthy baby girl. Then two weeks ago she dropped the baby off with me so she could run to the store for something, and she never came back.
“Grace’s mom is unfortunately not in the best place right now. Grace’s dad isn’t in the picture, so I am now the temporary guardian of a newborn I have no idea how to take care of. Needless to say, the trip I planned to Mexico for my Christmas segment in three weeks is now canceled and instead we’ll all be exploring the exciting eight hundred square feet of my studio apartment for a while.”
I sat there for a heartbeat before continuing to let this all settle in.
“Now, I’m sure you’re all wondering how the hot guy comes into it. So it’s just after four in the morning here and I was up with my little angel. We were on about a million hours straight of unabridged crying. Both of us,” I added. “And my next-door neighbor knocked on my door to ask if I needed help.
“Let me tell you a little about my next-door neighbor. This is the hottest guy in my building. Maybe the hottest guy on my block. He is so attractive that if he rolled up on me in an alley in a windowless white van, wearing rubber gloves and waving duct tape, claiming he has candy—I’d get in. Not only is he a prominent, single professional, but he also pulls off a really magnificent beard. When I moved in here back in September, he was going for all these runs with his shirt off and the man has Jesus’s abs. In fact, that’s what we’re gonna call him. Jesus’s Abs.
“So he comes in like some kind of knight in shining pajama bottoms. I have barf in my hair, and not in a fun, too-many-tequilas-in-Cancun kind of way. In a tiny-human-vomited-in-my-hair kind of way. He offers to hold the baby while I go take a shower. I let him. Please don’t judge me. It was a very quick shower. And when I come out, he has baby whispered this child. They’re both lying on my sofa together. It was quite honestly the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. He looked like one of those staged photos Instagram models post of themselves doing casual stuff around the house while looking effortlessly sexy. Nobody looks this good lounging in real life. Seriously.
“As you guys know, I’m a sucker for hot bearded men. It’s my weakness. But honestly, after this last week? I’m starting to find dad bods attractive. Like, I’m at the point where I see a man at Target with a beer belly, a receding hairline, and a kid strapped to him in a BabyBjörn and I’m checking him out like ‘I bet that guy could change diapers allllll night.’ So seeing this man with my cranky baby on his chest—I maybe fell in love just a little bit.
“‘Are you ready for love?’ you ask.” I cocked my head to the side and let my braid fall over my shoulder. “No. My position on dating has not changed, Jesus’s Abs aside. So don’t get excited. Also, even if the attraction was mutual and this is a guy willing to overlook my many, major shortcomings—oh, and this—” I got up, opened my bathroom door, and turned the camera to scan the disaster that was my apartment. I shut the door and came back to me. “Yes, those are actual diapers full of human waste, on my coffee table. This is what it looked like when he came over. How could he not fall in love, right? Anyway, I am still not on the market for the foreseeable future, for reasons previously and frequently discussed. But a girl can still window-shop.”
I yawned into the back of my hand. “Time for bed. A couple of things before I go. If you enjoyed this video, make sure you subscribe to my channel. And, as always, any donations to my favorite charity are deeply appreciated. Together we can find a cure.”
I ended the video and sent it to Malcolm. He would insert links, add hashtags, and within the next two hours have the video uploaded to my YouTube channel, where my subscribers, who probably thought I was dead after not posting anything for almost two weeks, would likely descend on it like rabid bears.
From there I had only a rough idea how this would all go. I was a travel vlogger. My videos were almost always filmed on location. I had never made a video from inside my apartment. This was a far cry from my norm, and I might even lose subscribers for this. I honestly didn’t know.
I had loyal fans who would stick with me no matter what. But most of the Internet had very short attention spans. If I wasn’t consistently giving them something entertaining, they’d leave.
If I lost my ability to make money…
I tried not to think about it.
I mean, I sorta knew what would happen with the video. All the usual stuff would go down in the comments. Some people would be supportive, some people would not, and the supportive ones would attack those hating on me. Probably more than a few would harp on my judgment for letting a stranger hold my baby. A few others would shit-talk the state of my living space. There would be the standard hateful comments about my appearance.
Most of it would roll off my back. After being the focus of this type of attention for more than two years now, nothing could hurt me. Also, I had a little thing called perspective, in higher doses than most people, and I don’t sweat the small stuff.
Ever.
And most things were, in the grand scheme of things, very, very small…
Especially when you might only have a year left to live.
CHAPTER 3
ADRIAN
I ran the trash from Vanessa’s down to the dumpster. When I got back to my apartment, the light was on in my room. Rachel was out of bed and whirling around the bedroom, tossing things into her carry-on.
I stood blinking at her in the doorway. “What are you doing?”
“Pack. . .
ADRIAN
Wailing.
Banshee, demon-baby wailing from the apartment next to mine for the millionth hour straight. I lay in bed, looking at the ceiling in the dark.
Rachel groaned from beside me. “You have to do something. Go over there.”
I scoffed. “I’m not going over there. I don’t know her.”
I think I’d seen my neighbor in the lobby getting her mail once, but she was on the phone and she didn’t make eye contact with me, so I didn’t say hi. Now I wished I’d at least gotten to know her well enough to be able to text her and ask her to please move to a room that didn’t share a wall with my bedroom.
Rachel let out a frustrated breath, and I rolled over and hugged her back to my chest.
She tensed up. She’d been tensing up since she got here three days ago, actually.
“What’s wrong?”
She spoke over her shoulder at me. “Nothing. I’m just tired. I’m two seconds from getting a hotel room so I can sleep. Without you,” she teased.
I chuckled tiredly. She knew how to poke me, that was for damn sure.
I only got one weekend a month with my girlfriend. Losing the last night with her to a hotel before she went back to Seattle was a price I was not willing to pay for my neighbor or her baby.
Fuck.
I begrudgingly climbed out of bed, put on a T-shirt and slippers, and let myself out into the hallway of my apartment building.
No idea if she’d answer the door. It was 4:00 in the morning, and I was a stranger. Rachel probably would have called the police if she’d seen a man she didn’t know knocking on her apartment in the middle of the night.
“Who is it?” a woman’s voice called over the wailing.
“Your neighbor.”
The chain raked from the other side and the door opened.
Yup, the woman from the mailbox. She looked like hell. Baggy faded black T-shirt with a hole at a seam on the shoulder and some drawstring sweatpants with stains on them. Dark circles under her eyes, wild frizzy hair.
“What?” she said, looking at me over the tiny, loud bundle she had pressed to her chest.
I’d never seen a baby that small. I had bricks of cheese in my fridge bigger than this kid. It didn’t even look real.
It sounded real though.
She eyeballed me impatiently. “Yeah?”
“I have a deposition in four hours. Is there any way you can—”
“Any way I can what?” She glared at me.
“Any way you could maybe move to another side of the apartment? So I might be able to sleep?”
“There is no other side of this apartment. It’s a studio.”
Right. I knew that. “Okay…Well, can you—”
“Can I what? Make it stop?” She cocked her head. “Maybe put her in a closet? Because I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t considered it.”
“I—”
“This isn’t a trumpet I’m playing in here. It’s not a TV I have turned up too loud. It’s a tiny human being. It can’t be reasoned with, and it’s not responding to negotiation attempts so I don’t know what to tell you.” She bounced the shrieking infant, and it cried on. “She’s fed, and clean, and dry. She doesn’t have a fever. She’s too young for teething. I’ve given her Tylenol and gas drops for colic. I’ve bounced her and rocked her and I’m coming to the conclusion that she’s simply playing out some cosmic karma-based retribution for crimes I committed in a past life because I cannot for the life of me understand what I’m doing wrong.” Her chin started to quiver. “So no, I can’t make it stop. I can’t help you, or me or her, and I am truly sorry if my own personal hell is inconvenient for you. Get earplugs.”
She slammed the door in my face.
I stood there, blinking at her peephole.
Great. Now I was the asshole.
I dragged a hand down my beard and let out a long, tired breath and knocked again. I knew she was peeking through the peephole because the wailing was pressed right to the door. She opened it. “What?” She had tears running down her face.
I made a give-it-here motion with my hand. “Give me the baby.”
She stared at me.
“Go take a shower. I’ll hold her.”
She blinked at me. “Are you kidding me?”
“No, I’m not. You obviously need a break. Maybe it will help.”
Continuing to do the same thing was going to yield the same results. What she was doing wasn’t working, and it was clear that this situation wasn’t going to resolve itself without outside intervention.
She looked at me like I’d gone mad. “I’m not giving you my baby.”
“Why? Are you afraid I might piss her off?” As if she intended to illustrate my point, the wails went up an octave. “I’m going to hold her until you’re done. If neither of us are sleeping, it makes no sense for both of us to suffer. And you have vomit in your hair.”
She looked down on the hair gathered over her shoulder and saw the white goop. She rolled her eyes like it didn’t surprise her and came back up to me. “Look, I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but this isn’t your problem.”
I rubbed my forehead tiredly. “Well, I beg to differ. As long as we’re sharing a wall, we’re in this together. Sometimes a change of circumstances can change behavior. Someone new to hold her while you go and lower your anxiety might make the difference.”
She bounced the baby uselessly and it kept crying. I could see the frustration around the woman’s eyes. She looked exhausted. “I don’t know you,” she said.
“My name is Adrian Copeland. I live in apartment 307, next door to you, and I own this building. I’m thirty-two years old, no criminal history, I’m a partner at Beaker and Copeland in St. Paul. I’m harmless and I’m standing here in the hallway at”—I looked at my watch—“4:07 in the morning, trying to help you. Let me in and let me hold her.”
I watched the deliberation on her face. She was going to crack. I could read people. She was that deadlocked juror who was going to fold—and she did.
She pulled open the door and let me in. I stepped inside.
Fuck, her apartment was a disaster.
It looked like the place used to be nice. It had that Pottery Barn thing going on. But the studio was small and completely cluttered with baby paraphernalia. A car seat, a crib by the king-size bed at the back of the apartment, a swing. Bottles were piled on the kitchen countertops and the place smelled faintly like shit. Actual shit. Dirty-diaper shit.
She eyed me. “Just so you know, I have my little stabby thingy so don’t try anything stupid.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Your stabby thingy?”
She jutted her chin up. “Yeah. You know, the keychain thingy? I’ve got cameras too. Tons of them. And a gun,” she added. “I also have a gun.”
I crossed my arms. “Okay. And do you know how to use this gun you have?”
“No,” she said matter-of-factly. “Which makes me more dangerous.”
I snorted.
She stood there, still holding the baby like she’d decided to let me in but hadn’t yet committed to actually letting me help her. I put my hands out, but she shook her head. “You need to wash your hands first.”
Right. I’d heard that before. Babies had weaker immune systems. I went to her kitchen and washed my hands over the stack of dirty dishes. “You weren’t pregnant,” I said, over my shoulder, raising my voice so she could hear me above the screaming. “Where’d you get her?”
“Target,” she deadpanned. “She was on sale and you know how you can never leave with just one thing,” she mumbled.
The corners of my lips quirked.
The paper towel roll was empty and based on the state of the rest of the place, I didn’t trust the towel hanging off the stove. There was a rogue Chipotle napkin by an empty fruit bowl, so I dried my hands with that. It disintegrated into spitballs, and I dropped them into the overflowing trash can.
“I’m fostering her,” she said over the crying, answering my question. She eyeballed me as I cleared the space between us and put my hands out again to take the baby. She turned her body sideways away from me. “Have you ever held a baby before?”
“No. But I can’t imagine there’s much to it.”
“You have to support her neck. Like this.” She showed me her hand on the back of the little kiwi-looking head.
“Okay. Got it.”
“And you need to bounce her. She likes that.”
“As evidenced by the earth-shattering wailing,” I said dryly.
She narrowed her brown eyes at me.
“I’m kidding. I’m very capable of this, I promise you.”
She still didn’t move. I waited patiently.
She finally nodded. “Okay.” She got closer to hand the baby over. Close enough that I could smell her hair as she leaned in to put the baby in my arms. Vanilla—and a touch of spoiled milk.
I cradled the tiny angry bundle. She was red faced and furious. She couldn’t be more than ten, eleven pounds, tops.
“Are you sure about this?” she asked, eyeing me.
“Go. I got this. And take your time.”
She paused for another moment. “I’ll be right on the other side of that door if you need anything.”
“Okay.”
“That’s Grace. My name is Vanessa.”
“Nice to meet you, Vanessa. Now go. Take. A shower.”
She stood another few beats, then finally turned and rummaged clothes from the dresser and headed to the bathroom. She closed the door slowly, looking at me through the crack until it shut.
A higher-pitched cry came from the wiggling pink blanket in my arms. I peered down again at the baby.
Not much made me nervous. Actually, outside of flying, nothing made me nervous. I was a criminal defense attorney. I looked pure evil in the eye daily. But it surprised me when a sudden sense of—I don’t know what it was. Anxiety?—overcame me looking down at that little person. She was so fragile. Thinner than the forearm she nestled in.
It felt safer to sit than stand, so I moved to the couch.
The screaming continued as the water turned on in the shower. It was amazing how long something so small could cry.
“What’s wrong with you?” I mumbled.
I tried to think of what might be causing this distress. There was a finite number of issues that could be bothering someone who didn’t yet know about things like taxes and existential dread.
Vanessa had said she’d fed her, so she wasn’t hungry. She was dry. No gas, no pain. She had to be tired, but something was keeping her from sleeping.
What kept me from sleeping?
And then I had a thought.
I laid her down on the couch cushion, opened the blanket, and started to feel around her little footie pajamas. I ran my fingers along the seams and about mid-belly I found it. A clear T-shaped plastic tag fastener, still stuck to the outfit. Totally invisible.
“No wonder you’re pissed. I’d be pissed too,” I said. I looked around for scissors. Didn’t see any. So I leaned down and pulled the thing off with my teeth. Then I unzipped her little pj’s and took out the rest of the offending object and rubbed the red spot on her belly with a knuckle. “Shhhhhhh…”
She stopped crying almost immediately.
CHAPTER 2
VANESSA
I wasn’t entirely truthful when I said I didn’t know him. Adrian Copeland was the hottest guy in my building, so of course I knew him. Or, rather, I knew of him. Everyone did. He was sort of this bachelor legend around here.
He probably didn’t know me. And when I finally met him, it was 4:00 in the morning, my poor parenting skills had woken him up, and I had barf in my hair—because of course I did.
I was honestly too tired to care. This had been the worst night of the worst two weeks of my entire year. I’d been thrust into instant motherhood, I’d gotten into a huge fight with my sister, and now Grace was having some sort of epic meltdown that I couldn’t figure out.
I just didn’t understand it. Grace was a mythically good baby. Like, ridiculously good. If I was going to have a surprise infant dropped on my doorstep, I couldn’t have asked for an easier one. She wasn’t a crier, she slept well, we’d gotten our routine down over the last two weeks—and then all of a sudden right after her bath she lost her ever-loving shit.
I’d tried it all. I even did a video call with her pediatrician who seemed wholly unconcerned and suggested I bring her in tomorrow if she was still “fussy.”
Adrian’s offer was too good to refuse.
One, his reasoning made sense. What I was doing—or not doing—was not working. And I was extremely open to suggestions at this point. I would have tried an exorcism if the person who had knocked had been a priest instead of a hotshot attorney.
Two, the man had too much to lose to do something stupid.
This was a guy who made it into the Star Tribune at least once a month for his legal prowess. I knew this because every time he did, Yoga Lady in 303 sent me a link along with twenty heart-eye emojis. I think she had a Google Alert set up. She was practically his stalker.
Adrian was like me. He had a reputation and a public persona to safeguard. Murdering Grace and me would be highly out of character and really bad for business. Plus, he thought he was in an apartment full of cameras—which he wasn’t—but he didn’t know that.
And lastly? Nobody was coming to rescue me. No one else was banging my door down to help me in my seventh level of hell. And I needed that shower. Bad. I just needed to wash off the barf and the sweat and change out of pants that didn’t have baby pee on them. And Grace needed someone to hold her while I did it. Every time I tried putting her down she started crying so hard she looked like she was going to explode.
All I needed was five minutes. Just five short minutes. Maybe it would help—and if it didn’t, at least I’d be in a better headspace to keep dealing with the screaming because as it stood, I was two seconds away from a complete mental breakdown.
I stripped and washed myself like I was being timed for speed. Approximately four minutes after I’d gotten in the shower—which was by far the best, if not the shortest, one of my life—I turned off the water to get out, and I was met by eerie, cold silence.
My heart plummeted.
Oh my God.
Something was wrong.
I wrapped a towel around me so fast I almost slid on the tile.
What had I been thinking? I didn’t know this man. I mean I did, but I didn’t. What if he kidnapped her? Dropped her off the balcony? What if he was a perfectly normal guy who had been on the verge of a psychotic break and the crying had pushed him over the edge and now he’d shaken her to death? I was so stupid!
I threw the bathroom door open, braced for Lord knows what, and froze.
Adrian was lying across the sofa in my dim living room, head on a throw pillow with a finger pressed to his lips. Grace was nestled in the crook of his arm on her back, and she was sleeping.
I just stood there gawking at him. I couldn’t even believe it. I had to tiptoe over to them dripping wet to see it close up.
What was this sorcery? How did he do it? The man was like a baby whisperer or something. Grace cooed softly in her sleep, and I had to clutch a hand over my heart.
There must be a primal internal switch that flips when you see a man take care of a child, because I swear I fell a little bit in love right there. I mean, the guy was gorgeous without this witchcraft, but now? Holy shit.
I was sopping wet, just staring at him. When I didn’t move to go, he blinked at me and made a small shooing motion. I blushed, forcing myself to go back to the bathroom to get dressed.
When I returned, working my hair into a damp braid, Grace hadn’t moved. I stood next to the sofa twisting an elastic around my hair.
“All done?” he whispered.
I nodded and leaned down to pick her up.
God, he smelled good. Something sleepy and warm and masculine rolled off him. Clean cotton and testosterone.
I lifted Grace into my arms and prayed that she wouldn’t wake up and start crying again when I put her in her crib.
She didn’t.
When I turned back to Adrian to thank him, he was already walking to the door. He stopped and wrestled my garbage from the kitchen trash can, carried it with him, and without another word, he was gone.
I pushed the bangs off my forehead with a palm. Oh. My. God.
I needed to make a video. Now.
The last two weeks had been a content desert. My YouTube channel had gone completely dark. I’d had to lay off my entire production team for this hiatus. Only my cameraman, Malcolm, was still on the payroll. Not only was I not making any money, I was also letting down my subscribers on top of it all. But I’d had nothing to talk about.
Being a stay-at-home mommy isn’t exactly exciting. I’d had a video chat with Malcolm yesterday to discuss segments I could do from home. They were all pretty lame. Mostly beauty tutorials. Me trying crazy mud masks and dying my hair random colors. A vlog of me opening fan mail. Boring.
But this…
I grabbed my laptop and tiptoed to the bathroom. I sat on the toilet seat and titled the video “Hot Guy Tames My Baby.” I didn’t bother to blow out my hair or do my makeup. I liked my content to be authentic. I took a deep breath and hit Record.
“Hi, all! Look, I’m alive!” I gave the screen a wave. “Well, it’s been an interesting two weeks here. I’ve been getting your concerned emails. Thank you for worrying about me, guys. And yes, I bailed on the L.A. conference last week. I know a lot of you were disappointed and I’m so, so sorry. If you bought a ticket to see me, send a picture of it and your address to Malcolm at the email here.” I put my finger up above my head where Malcolm would make an email address pop up. “And I’ll have him send you a signed picture of me. I know it’s not quite as good as the real thing, but I promise you I had a good reason.
“I’m sure you’re all wondering where I went. As you can see from the title of my entry, I have a baby! Surprise! Are you surprised? Because I know I was.” I tilted my head and gave the camera crazy eyes.
“Somebody I care about was expecting. Three weeks ago, she had a healthy baby girl. Then two weeks ago she dropped the baby off with me so she could run to the store for something, and she never came back.
“Grace’s mom is unfortunately not in the best place right now. Grace’s dad isn’t in the picture, so I am now the temporary guardian of a newborn I have no idea how to take care of. Needless to say, the trip I planned to Mexico for my Christmas segment in three weeks is now canceled and instead we’ll all be exploring the exciting eight hundred square feet of my studio apartment for a while.”
I sat there for a heartbeat before continuing to let this all settle in.
“Now, I’m sure you’re all wondering how the hot guy comes into it. So it’s just after four in the morning here and I was up with my little angel. We were on about a million hours straight of unabridged crying. Both of us,” I added. “And my next-door neighbor knocked on my door to ask if I needed help.
“Let me tell you a little about my next-door neighbor. This is the hottest guy in my building. Maybe the hottest guy on my block. He is so attractive that if he rolled up on me in an alley in a windowless white van, wearing rubber gloves and waving duct tape, claiming he has candy—I’d get in. Not only is he a prominent, single professional, but he also pulls off a really magnificent beard. When I moved in here back in September, he was going for all these runs with his shirt off and the man has Jesus’s abs. In fact, that’s what we’re gonna call him. Jesus’s Abs.
“So he comes in like some kind of knight in shining pajama bottoms. I have barf in my hair, and not in a fun, too-many-tequilas-in-Cancun kind of way. In a tiny-human-vomited-in-my-hair kind of way. He offers to hold the baby while I go take a shower. I let him. Please don’t judge me. It was a very quick shower. And when I come out, he has baby whispered this child. They’re both lying on my sofa together. It was quite honestly the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. He looked like one of those staged photos Instagram models post of themselves doing casual stuff around the house while looking effortlessly sexy. Nobody looks this good lounging in real life. Seriously.
“As you guys know, I’m a sucker for hot bearded men. It’s my weakness. But honestly, after this last week? I’m starting to find dad bods attractive. Like, I’m at the point where I see a man at Target with a beer belly, a receding hairline, and a kid strapped to him in a BabyBjörn and I’m checking him out like ‘I bet that guy could change diapers allllll night.’ So seeing this man with my cranky baby on his chest—I maybe fell in love just a little bit.
“‘Are you ready for love?’ you ask.” I cocked my head to the side and let my braid fall over my shoulder. “No. My position on dating has not changed, Jesus’s Abs aside. So don’t get excited. Also, even if the attraction was mutual and this is a guy willing to overlook my many, major shortcomings—oh, and this—” I got up, opened my bathroom door, and turned the camera to scan the disaster that was my apartment. I shut the door and came back to me. “Yes, those are actual diapers full of human waste, on my coffee table. This is what it looked like when he came over. How could he not fall in love, right? Anyway, I am still not on the market for the foreseeable future, for reasons previously and frequently discussed. But a girl can still window-shop.”
I yawned into the back of my hand. “Time for bed. A couple of things before I go. If you enjoyed this video, make sure you subscribe to my channel. And, as always, any donations to my favorite charity are deeply appreciated. Together we can find a cure.”
I ended the video and sent it to Malcolm. He would insert links, add hashtags, and within the next two hours have the video uploaded to my YouTube channel, where my subscribers, who probably thought I was dead after not posting anything for almost two weeks, would likely descend on it like rabid bears.
From there I had only a rough idea how this would all go. I was a travel vlogger. My videos were almost always filmed on location. I had never made a video from inside my apartment. This was a far cry from my norm, and I might even lose subscribers for this. I honestly didn’t know.
I had loyal fans who would stick with me no matter what. But most of the Internet had very short attention spans. If I wasn’t consistently giving them something entertaining, they’d leave.
If I lost my ability to make money…
I tried not to think about it.
I mean, I sorta knew what would happen with the video. All the usual stuff would go down in the comments. Some people would be supportive, some people would not, and the supportive ones would attack those hating on me. Probably more than a few would harp on my judgment for letting a stranger hold my baby. A few others would shit-talk the state of my living space. There would be the standard hateful comments about my appearance.
Most of it would roll off my back. After being the focus of this type of attention for more than two years now, nothing could hurt me. Also, I had a little thing called perspective, in higher doses than most people, and I don’t sweat the small stuff.
Ever.
And most things were, in the grand scheme of things, very, very small…
Especially when you might only have a year left to live.
CHAPTER 3
ADRIAN
I ran the trash from Vanessa’s down to the dumpster. When I got back to my apartment, the light was on in my room. Rachel was out of bed and whirling around the bedroom, tossing things into her carry-on.
I stood blinking at her in the doorway. “What are you doing?”
“Pack. . .
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