The party was at Luigi’s, under the stars. We had the entire outdoor patio of Sloan and Brandon’s favorite Italian restaurant for our night of activities. First we’d do dinner followed by a few hours of stuffing wedding invites into envelopes and putting together the favors—a hundred and fifty small jasmine-scented votive candles. Each one needed a label, a box, tissue paper, a hangtag, and a ribbon.
The caprese salad, chicken marsala, and penne pasta were served buffet style beneath a white lattice dripping with grapevines and fairy lights. Frank Sinatra crooned over the speakers.
The whole thing was so Sloan. She was doing her Pinterest obsession proud.
We were all seated at a long wooden farm table with fresh flowers and flickering votive candles every few feet. Sloan and Brandon’s mom and his sister, Claudia, took the end of the table. Sloan’s cousin Hannah got stuck next to Shawn, where he’d probably hit on her the whole night. Josh sat by Brandon, and I ended up next to Sloan, across from the two of them.
It was a perfect March night. The air was fragrant and warm.
And the spot on my neck where Josh’s fingers touched me—that was still warm too.
God, he looked incredible tonight. It took everything in me not to stare at him. The second I saw him, I think an entire ovary detached and floated down into my useless uterus to wait.
I was done lying to myself. Over the last week I’d come to terms with the fact that I was more attracted to Josh than I was to Tyler. By a landslide. By a tsunami. And that was saying a lot because Tyler and I didn’t exactly lack chemistry.
And it wasn’t just Josh’s body. It was him. There wasn’t anything about him I didn’t like. I wished there were.
He was easygoing and funny. My moods didn’t scare him. He just kind of shrugged them off. He was down for anything. We hated all the same stuff—artsy indie movies with endings that didn’t have any closure, pineapple on pizza, daylight savings time. Sometimes he said something right as I was going to say it, like our brains worked on the same wavelength.
Every day I searched for some fatal flaw so I could stop having these feelings. Sometimes I purposely grilled him on things, just to see if his answers would irritate me.
It never worked.
I felt good today. I wasn’t cramping or bleeding for once. My nineteen- day period was finally gone, and I’d spent the afternoon getting waxed and polished at the salon. I did it because I knew I was going to this thing with Josh tonight. I was supposed to be dressed up, and for once looking half- decent wouldn’t betray my feelings for him. I wanted him to think I was beautiful, just one time.
Even if I was just teasing him, just to see if I could.
Josh and Brandon were deep in conversation across the table, going on about duck hunting, and Sloan leaned in and whispered over her tiramisu. “Josh has been looking at you all night.”
I picked up my sangria and took a sip. As if he intended to prove her claims, Josh glanced at me and smiled.
If I was a woman who blushed, I would have.
I hadn’t talked to Tyler in days. He’d called yesterday and I didn’t answer because I was watching Casino with Josh and didn’t want to stop hanging out with him to talk to the man I should be talking to.
It was shameful.
But I only had two more days until Tyler came home. That was it. And then Josh would vanish back into the garage. An imaginary clock had been ticking in my mind for days, and I was panicking again that Tyler was
moving in. Only this time it had more to do with losing Josh than worrying Tyler and I wouldn’t work out.
I nudged Sloan. “Bathroom.” I slid my chair out and set down my wineglass. Sloan got up and followed, the red petticoat swishing under her polka-dot dress.
Once in the safety of the ladies’ room, she cornered me in front of the sink, grinning. “That guy is so into you.”
Her pause dared me to deny it. Maybe he was a little into me. It didn’t matter though.
Unchallenged, she went on, her eyes twinkling. “And you know what else? Brandon won’t talk about it. You know what that means? It means Josh is saying stuff to him that he doesn’t want to tell me.” She looked positively thrilled at this bit of information.
I couldn’t look her in the eye. I stared at the colorful collection of tattoos on her arm. “I like him, Sloan. Like, a lot. I haven’t felt this way in a really long time.” Maybe ever. I glanced back to her.
She broke into one of her dazzling beauty-queen smiles. “Are you going to break up with Tyler?”
And there it was.
I shook my head. “No. Josh and I are never going to be a thing.”
She wrinkled her brow. “Why not? It would be awesome. Me and Brandon, you and Josh. The Ramirezes and Copelands could buy houses next door to each other, raise our kids together…”
I scoffed. “Well, that escalated quickly.”
As if I hadn’t thought about how easy it would be. How perfect. But it was impossible because I was no different than his last girlfriend.
I needed to tell her. I couldn’t keep this from her anymore. Not now that Josh played into it.
I should have told her weeks ago, but Sloan couldn’t compartmentalize like I could. It would upset her. I mean, it upset me too, but I was able to accept it as one of the shitty things that happens in life that you can’t change, and go on with my day. But I couldn’t explain why I couldn’t be with Josh without coming clean. And I really needed to be able to talk to her about this.
“Sloan, there’s something I need to tell you.”
Her beautiful expression fell. She knew my tone. She knew this was bad.
I tucked my hair behind my ear. “You know I’ve had to give up a lot because of my periods.”
She knew. We’d been friends since the sixth grade. She was well aware of my three-week-long menstruation nightmares. I got an ulcer junior year from taking too much ibuprofen for the pain. I’d missed prom because my cramps were so bad I couldn’t even stand up. She’d driven me to the ER more times than I could count.
“I didn’t want to drop this on you before the wedding, and I’m sorry if it messes with you.”
I rallied myself to just say it, to tell her what I’d been dealing with for the last six weeks on my own.
“I’m having a hysterectomy.”
Sloan’s face broke instantly. Her hand flew to her mouth. “What?”
I’d finally gone for the nuclear option. I was done hemorrhaging for weeks at a time, suffering needlessly, not living my life. Enough was enough.
“They don’t normally recommend one for women my age. It’s elective. But the fibroids are severe and affecting my quality of life. The chance I’ll ever be able to actually carry a baby is almost nonexistent.”
“How did it get so bad?” she asked, almost in a whisper. “Sloan, it’s always been this bad.”
She looked away from me, her eyes searching the floor. “Oh my God, Kristen. Oh my God. Why didn’t you tell me? I…I would have gone with you to the doctor. I would have…” Then her mouth opened and her eyes came back up. “You’ll never have a baby,” she breathed.
I shrugged. “I’d never have one anyway.”
She looked stricken. “But there is a chance you could get pregnant someday, right? Even if it’s a small one, there’s still the chance. If you do this—”
“Sloan, my uterus is a wasteland. It always has been. It’s been one thing after another since my very first period, and now it’s a fibroid-riddled holocaust too. I have the womb of a fifty-year-old and I’ve tried everything
—you know I have. I spent the better part of the last six months bleeding myself into anemia again. The IUD I got as a last resort hasn’t done a thing. I still have bleeding and cramps almost all the time. The birth control pills that were supposed to help made the tumors get bigger. That’s it. I’m out of
options.”
The defeat moved across her face as the reality of what I was saying settled in. This wasn’t some spontaneous thing I’d decided to do on a whim, and she knew it. I’d weighed my options. I’d seen multiple specialists. I’d read the “grieving my uterus” brochures. I’d talked with other women who were having the same issues and had gone through it.
“I’m not going to get better, Sloan.”
I looked down at my stomach and smoothed my dress over the small, firm, distended mound that was my abdomen. I looked three months pregnant. That had been the final straw. The thing that tipped the scales. The tumors had begun to distend my uterus.
Google searches had shown me women with my condition with stomachs so full of growths they looked six months pregnant. That was it for me. The final insult to my injury. I couldn’t let this continue until it got that bad. I’d given up enough dignity already.
“The doctor said they could get so big they’d make it hard to breathe.
Push my other organs around. Look. Look at my stomach, Sloan.”
She stared at the triangle between my fingers. “When?” Her brown eyes blinked back tears.
“April. I scheduled it for the Thursday after your wedding. I’ll still have my ovaries so I don’t go into menopause. I can do a surrogate pregnancy if I can ever afford it. So there’s that.”
She sniffled. “I’d carry a baby for you.” “And you think Brandon would go for that?”
She pulled a paper towel from the dispenser and pressed it under her eyes. “I’m sure he’d be okay with it.”
I doubted that. Brandon was a good guy, but I didn’t picture him being cool with his wife carrying another man’s baby or loaning her body to something so serious for so long. It wasn’t entirely her choice to make.
I’d already looked into it. It was no small thing in gesture, cost, or practice.
A professional surrogate would run me around fifteen to twenty thousand dollars and the in vitro another twelve grand. The success rate for IVF was only 40 percent, and my insurance wouldn’t cover a dime. So basically, barring a lottery win and a lot of luck, my rust bucket of a womb was going to leave me barren and childless. I’d probably end up being that
crazy aunt who wore veiled hats and smelled like mothballs with ten small dogs.
I smiled at Sloan, even though I knew it didn’t reach my eyes. “Well, let’s cross that bridge when we come to it. Tyler doesn’t even want kids. But I appreciate the offer.”
“Tyler doesn’t want kids?” she asked, furrowing her brow. I shook my head.
She blinked at me. “Are you serious? Why are you with him, then? You want kids, Kristen.”
I looked away from her. “Kristen!”
“Sloan, stop.”
“What the hell are you doing? Why are you settling?”
The bathroom door opened, and some lady came in. She smiled at us, and Sloan and I stood there awkwardly while she went into a stall.
“I’m not settling, Sloan,” I whispered. “The man is a ten. He’s driven and ambitious. He’s smart. He makes good money. We have things in common. And let’s be honest here—I have to choose a man that doesn’t want kids. That’s just the reality of my situation. Josh wants kids. He broke up with Celeste because she didn’t want them. And in the best possible case, if all the stars align, maybe I might have one. One baby, if I’m rich and lucky. Tyler and I are just more compatible.”
She stared at me. “Oh my God, you’re doing the thing. The spreadsheet thing that you always do. You don’t pick a boyfriend like you pick what car to buy, Kristen.” She crossed her arms. “You don’t love Tyler, do you?” she hissed quietly. “You’re not even remotely in love with that man. I knew it. I knew it when I saw you guys together the last time he came out.”
“I do love him,” I insisted.
Was it some head-over-heels, sappy Sloan-and-Brandon thing? No. Was it what I felt brewing for Josh? Definitely not. But it was love. It felt a little faded at the moment, sure. But that’s because he’d been gone so long. It would come back into focus. It always did. I was mostly sure.
She shook her head. “Love is not a checklist of pros versus cons. It’s a
feeling. What are you doing, Kristen?”
What I was doing was being smart. Tyler made sense for me. He was the path of least resistance. He was exactly the kind of man I needed.
“And what if I am being a little rational about Tyler? More people should be rational about their relationships. If they were, we wouldn’t have so many single moms with deadbeat baby daddies and cheating spouses who destroy their families. What the hell is wrong with being practical and looking at things logically?”
“Break up with him.” She pressed her mouth into a line. “Break up with him before he moves in.”
The woman came out of the stall, washed her hands, and Sloan and I stood glaring at each other in silence. The lady tore off a towel, dried her hands, and left.
“Why?” I asked once the door was closed. “What is the point in breaking off a perfectly good relationship with a decent man I care about whose lifestyle fits my own?”
“Uh, happiness? So you can maybe have a shot with Josh? Or someone like him who wants kids? How can you act like this isn’t something you want?”
“Who cares if it’s something I want?” I threw up my hands. “It’s completely irrelevant. I can’t have it.”
She glared at me.
“So I move on Josh. And then what? We fall in love? Why? So he can maybe decide to settle? So he can date me for a few years until he feels resentful enough to leave me? After wasting a few good years when he could be with someone who can give him a family? Or worse, he stays and always wonders what if? Gives up on what he wants? That’s assuming he’d even look at me twice after he finds out I don’t have a fucking uterus.”
She shook her head. “At least give him the chance to make the decision himself. What if he’s okay with adopting?”
I blew out a slow breath. “He did make the decision, with the last one, who he loved and was already living with. And that man doesn’t want to adopt—he wants his own kids. I asked.”
“Okay, well maybe you can get pregnant. You’ve never tried. You can’t know if you don’t try, and you can’t try if you don’t have a uterus,” she snapped.
I cocked my head. “I never used protection with Tyler. Not once. Not with any of my serious boyfriends going back to junior year. I’ve been playing baby Russian roulette for eight years, and I don’t see any kids
running around.” I threw my arms out and looked around the bathroom. “And it’s worse than it’s ever been.”
The puff of air she let out told me she knew she was losing the argument. “Just…have an honest conversation with Josh. Maybe—”
“No.” For the first time since we’d started talking about it, anger bubbled inside of me. “Do you think discussing my deficiencies as a woman with a man that I’m half in love with is something I want to put myself through?”
My voice cracked at my admission, and I needed a moment to regain my composure. I bit my lips together until the tightness in my throat went away. “Why would I tell him, Sloan? To humiliate myself? To have him look at me with pity? Or worse, to get rejected? There’s not going to be any rejection, because I won’t be making an offer. There’s no point. I’d like to
spare myself this one indignity, if that’s okay with you.”
We stood in silence—her looking wounded and me trying to understand why something so rational felt so shitty.
I let out a long breath. “Do I have feelings for Josh? Yeah. I do, okay? He’s fucking wonderful and I fucking hate that I can’t pursue it. But I can’t. I can never guarantee that I can give him kids. In fact, I can almost guarantee that I can’t. I know how this goes and I’m not going there.”
My pause let the words settle. When I continued speaking, my voice had gone so weary I didn’t even recognize it as my own. “This isn’t a man who wants one or two kids, Sloan. He came from a huge family. You know what he told me the other day?” Bitterness rose in my chest. “He said he wants a whole baseball team of kids. It’s all he wants. And it’s the one thing I can’t give him. Not really. Not in any way that’s close to what he has planned for himself.”
I bit the inside of my cheek until it hurt and I looked away from her. “He couldn’t sit with me in the bathroom and watch the little pink line show up on the stick or put his hand to my belly and feel his baby kicking. He wouldn’t be able to come with me to ultrasounds or hold my hand while I push. This is a man who wants to be a daddy, Sloan. And I’m never going to be a mommy. It just is what it is.”
Her bottom lip trembled and she looked like she might start sobbing.
Sloan was always the emotional one. This was why I didn’t want to tell her about it. Now it was going to cast a shadow on what should have been a carefree time for her before her wedding. I should have never said anything.
It was selfish of me.
I sighed. “Sloan, you’re a romantic. You have some vision in your head of us being pregnant together and the four of us going on vacations and pushing jogging strollers around the block. You’ll just have to adjust.”
She swiped at her eyes with her thumb. “I hate this. I hate that you have to give up so much.”
“I’m not. Don’t think about what I’m giving up. Think about what I’m getting back. The thought of never having to have another period for the rest of my life makes me want to fucking cry from happiness. I’m so ready to be done.”
She looked so miserable you’d think she was having the hysterectomy. I hated it and I loved her for it.
I put my hands on her arms. “You know what I really need? I just need you to listen and support me. That’s it. Tell me you can do that.”
Please. Be my friend. I need you.
She nodded, closed the space between us, and hugged me. The familiar smell of her honeysuckle perfume—of my best friend—grounded me, and I realized how hard it had been not being able to talk to her about it, or tell her how Josh made me feel.
“Sloan?” I said after a moment, my chin over her shoulder. “Yeah?”
“I TP’d your house with Josh.” She sniffled. “I know.”
I laughed a little and squeezed my eyes shut.
“The Josh thing would have been so cool,” she whispered into my ear.
It would have been cool. But men like Josh weren’t for me anymore. They’d never be for me again. Men who wanted pregnant wives and big families, sons that looked like their dads—these men weren’t the ones I could choose from. I could have Tylers. I could have more dogs. A bigger career without kids to distract me. I could have more disposable income and a clean house without crayon on the walls and dirty diapers to change. I could be the cool aunt.
But I couldn’t have children.
And I could never, ever, have Josh.
