Mindy Lahiri

Overwhelmed doesn't quite sum up how Mindy feels right now.

She can't quite wrap her head around the fact that Danny is gone, because he's the person she wants to be speaking to now most of all. He basically raised his brother, or whatever, she's sure he'd know what to do right now. Mindy's perfectly fine at delivering babies, actually pretty damn good at it, but she's not sure what to do with a five month old.

Thankfully, he seems pretty content sucking on the edge of his blanket, not yet crying in hunger.

Which is awesome, because Mindy has never been pregnant and so her boobs are completely useless to this guy. She needs to go and get formula or a wet nurse or something, but it's so hard to move when she feels all pins and needles, all numb, stuck on the floor of the damn storage closet.

The storage closet. In an OB/GYN clinic. Of course.

She feels really fucking dumb as she starts digging around, searching through boxes of pharmaceutical samples until she comes across a few small tins of formula and nearly cries in relief. How she doesn't cry at this point is honestly a goddamn miracle, but she's suddenly driven by necessity to get this guy somewhere warm and safe and home.

She's not prepared to be a mom, but apparently she is one, so an awkward discussion with Amelia and she's done for the day, headed back to her apartment with her not-so-new son in arms.

He's still napping in a damn printer box when Mindy sends out a mass text to the people who matter to her most (the people who are still in the city, who haven't disappeared in the past handful of days), practically begging.

Danny's gone. Can u come over? There's something else.

Mindy's pretty sure that the fine line between friends with benefits and an actual relationship lies somewhere in spending the night, something she's found herself doing a little more often than not after hooking up with Luke, and something she can't help but think about a lot.

With Brendan, it was much easier. Largely because she'd followed Jeremy's rule of the guy she was having sex with being someone she could barely respect. Sure, she came around to liking him a hell of a lot more when he saved Morgan's life and all, but Luke might just be one of the nicest guys she's ever dated. Or, not dated. Slept with. A lot. And spent the night with. A lot. 

And for a while, it was fine. The sex was amazing – still is amazing, honestly, what would be the point of a casual turned non!casual hookup if the guy was average in bed – and Mindy could delude herself into thinking it was a relationship once in a while. Until, of course, she remembers why she fell into all of this to begin with. Danny, of course, and the plane and the kiss and his refusal to be anything but friends when it was so hard to even get him to be her friend to begin with. It's easy enough to dismiss that, to know he'll never want her like that, but then the letters.

Letters that have come to nothing but leaving her cold and sad on Valentine's Day, feeling like a fucking idiot in her hot, red dress on a boardwalk and basically getting kicked out of a magic show. Still, all of it is so romantic, and so what Mindy's wanted her entire life. It's the escape and excuse she needs, because it would be so easy to be with Luke and she'll never have Danny, maybe this is the bonus option behind door number three: the easiest one, of course, when they've yet to meet.

But nothing is ever that simple, and Mindy's pretty used to being the one that's let down easily instead of it being her job. Casey might have been the only exception, save for dick sports lawyers with coke addictions and five girlfriends in four different cities at the time – beside the point. The thing is, she's still sleeping with Luke and she's still thinking about her secret admirer and it's just not right. But it is easy. And while she's worked her ass off to get to where she is professionally, she's more than a little guilty of taking the easy path when it comes to romance – or not!romance – and never letting things end when they should.

In another world, she's totally married to Tom with his eight babies, she's pretty sure.

But here, she's in Luke's bed all over again, morning light shining in and drenching her in a reality that's conveniently easy to forget at night when it's all skin on skin. Luke's not even around when she turns over and for a moment all Mindy can do is stare at the ceiling, wondering why she couldn't stick to bad relationships with bad men.