When I come home from work, Sam greets me with dinner.
He comes out of the kitchen, his face pink from the heat of the stove, red wine staining his T-shirt, and somehow there’s white flour dotting his hair. So I have absolutely no idea what he’s made. Red wine biscuits?
I glance at the kitchen, flinching at the mess inside. At least I know he’ll clean it up himself—I can always count on him to clean up his own kitchen disasters without prompting. “Can I help with anything?”
“No way,” he says. “You’ve been hard at work all day. I want you to relax and have a delicious meal. Do you want any wine?”
I look at the splotches of wine on his T-shirt and grin. “Should I squeeze it out of your clothing?”
“Ho ho, very funny.”
He does pour me a glass of red wine, which is very nice indeed, because I did have a long day at work. Sam never complains about my hours—he always says he thinks it’s cool his wife is a high-power advertising exec. (I’m not exactly an exec, but I don’t correct him.) I’ve overheard him bragging about me, so I guess he means it.
A few minutes later, he emerges from the kitchen with two plates of food. He places one of them in front of me. “Ta da!” he says. “It’s chicken marsala with rice.”
I look down at the chicken on my plate. I chew on my lip. “Is the chicken supposed to be red?”
“Well, I used red wine.” “It’s just… it’s awfully red.”
He looks down at his own chicken thoughtfully. “Well, it’s not how it looks, right? It’s how it tastes.”
That’s what I’m afraid of.
He watches me as I slice a small piece of chicken off the end. Well, it least it appears to be cooked. Although judging how long it took me to slice through it, I’m worried it’s a bit overcooked.
“It’s not pink this time,” Sam points out. “Score.” I flash him a thin smile. “Wonderful.”
Okay, here goes nothing.
I say a quick prayer and stuff the piece of chicken in my mouth. The taste of red wine and burnt flour mixed with chicken assaults my taste buds. Sam is still watching me, an expectant look on his face. I want to swallow the damn thing down, but it’s so chewy, I can’t. I’ll be chewing this chicken for the rest of the night.
“Delicious,” I say around bites of chicken.
He frowns at me. “Then why are you making that face?” “I’m not making a face.”
Sam regards me for a moment. Finally, he slices off a piece of chicken and pops it in his mouth. He has it in there for about two seconds before he starts coughing and spits it out into a napkin.
“Oh, Christ!” he says. “That’s awful! Why didn’t you tell me?” I shrug. “I was just happy it wasn’t raw again.”
He smiles crookedly. “Thank you for pretending to like it.” “Thank you for not making me eat it.”
He leans in to kiss me. “Thank you for being understanding that I’m still learning.”
“And thank you in advance for cleaning up the kitchen.”
He laughs and kisses me again. He probably meant it to just be another peck on the lips, but it turns into something more intense than that. He puts his hand on my back and pulls me closer to him until I start to get all tingly. He really is quite a good kisser. Back when we were dating, it used to make my knees weak every time he kissed me. I know that’s cliché, but it really did.
Now we’ve been married a while so I don’t get weak in the knees on a daily basis, but I still think our kisses are far sexier than average. They’re still better than any kiss I’d had before Sam came along.
“I’m not that hungry anyway,” he breathes in my ear. “Me either.”
And then he’s pulling me to my feet, and at first we’re stumbling in the direction of the bedroom, but as it turns out, we only make it as far as the couch.
That’s one nice thing about not having kids. Sex on the couch.
It’s only when it’s over and we’re lying half-naked together (okay, mostly naked), entwined on the sofa, my mind wanders to Monica’s offer. I
have interviewed everyone on my list and found absolutely nothing concerning about Monica Johnson. There’s absolutely no reason not to power through with this.
Sam toys with a lock of my black hair while I snuggle into his bare chest. Sam got a membership at his university gym a few years ago because “it lowers the health insurance premiums,” but he actually started using it. He goes to the gym nearly every day to run, and I think he hits the weights twice a week. I’m proud of his determination to take better care of himself, but also, I love what lifting those weights has done for the muscles in his upper body.
“How do you get your hair so soft?” he asks me. “Is it soft?”
“Yes. It’s freakishly soft, actually.” “I’m glad you like it.”
“I didn’t say I liked it. I was just commenting on its physical properties.”
I smack him in the arm. He laughs and hugs me closer to him. Maybe my ovaries betrayed me, but I’ve been lucky in love, at least. There’s no better guy out there.
“I love you, Abby,” he murmurs into my hair. I grin up at him. “I love you too.”
“I was just thinking…” He toys with my hair again, his brown eyes on mine. “I think we should ask for a toddler.”
Mood: killed.
I lift my head off his chest and stare at him. “What?”
He props himself up on the couch. “Look, Abby, I said I’d think about the… surrogate thing and… I’m not comfortable with it. I want to adopt.”
I don’t know how I can go from post-coital bliss to tears in five seconds, but somehow I make it happen. I can’t stop it. All the pain I had pushed aside after that day Sam burst into my baby shower and told me Janelle had backed out on us comes rushing back to me. Even though Sam has stuffed the bassinet into the closet and shut the door to the would-be nursery, the pain is still there. The baby we almost had. We were so close.
And now it’s never seemed farther away.
“Abby?” Sam wrinkles his brow, plainly shocked by my tears. “Why are you crying?”
“Why am I crying?” Why does he ask me stupid questions? “I’m crying because…” I wipe saltwater from my face. “This is never going to happen for us, Sam. I feel it. The next adoption is going to take forever and then something will go wrong, and… and… by the time we get a kid, we’ll be fifty!”
I can’t talk anymore because I’m crying too hard. A bubble of snot blows out of my left nostril and I don’t even bother to wipe it away.
“Abby,” he says gently, “you know I want this as much as you do…”
“You obviously don’t.” I glare at him. “Because if you did, you’d be willing to take this opportunity right in front of us. Not turn it down because it makes you ‘uncomfortable.’”
He stares down at his hands. It probably wasn’t fair of me to say that. I know how badly Sam wants to be a father. He wants it badly enough that sometimes I’m surprised he hasn’t left me for a woman with two working ovaries. Yes, I know he’s not that kind of man, but he’s got to at least sometimes be tempted.
“I’m sorry,” I mumble. “I just… I got upset. You’re allowed to veto something you don’t feel comfortable with.” I wipe my swollen eyes and put my hand on his. “We’ll try for the adoption again. It’s fine.”
Sam is still looking down at his hands, his brows working together. “Sam?” I say.
He doesn’t answer me right away. I don’t know what that means. He sometimes gets quiet like this, and I usually assume it’s because he’s thinking about something math-related. That’s not what he’s thinking about now. Well, I suppose he could be. But probably not.
“I think we should use Monica as our surrogate,” he finally says. I suck in a breath. “Sam, you don’t have to—”
“I know I don’t.” He lifts his eyes. “But you’re right. We’ve wanted this for so long. I hate that we can’t open up the door to the second bedroom because it’s too goddamn painful. I can’t even watch a diaper commercial anymore without feeling like shit—I can’t imagine what it’s like for you to have to pitch them.” He sighs. “Maybe it’s not ideal, but I want to be a dad. And I want you to be a mom. We’re ready now.”
He reaches out and gives my hand a squeeze. As he smiles at me and my chest swells with happiness, it hits me:
Mrs. Johnson lives in Indiana. Her phone number was an Indiana area code, and she told me she was “born and raised” in Indianapolis.
I grew up a Red Sox fan—I went to all their games when I was a kid. I could never put on a Yankees cap. They’d never let me come home!
That’s what Monica said at the baby shower when I tried to give her that baby Yankees cap. But the Red Sox is a Boston team. Every Yankees fan knows that. In Indiana, the team is the Braves. And I’d suspect nobody in Indiana is going to give you that a hard time for being a Yankees fan. But maybe they would. It’s not like I’ve ever been there before.
So why is Monica a hardcore Red Sox fan if she’s from Indiana? It doesn’t make sense.
I turn to Sam, about to tell him what I just realized, but then I shut my mouth. He’s already having reservations. If I tell him I’m worried Monica was lying to me, that will shut everything down for good. And maybe I’m remembering wrong. Maybe someone else made that comment about the Red Sox. Could it have been Lily, from accounting?
It’s such a small thing. It can’t be important.
