"To Optimus Prime," Riley said, raising his glass. "And the Autobots who follow him."
Our glasses clinked together when I spotted Sam walking down Commonwealth Avenue, his eyes lowered as he studied his phone and his Wayfarer sunglasses propped on his head. I jumped up as he approached, and getting out from this corner of our long patio table meant climbing over Andy, shoving Lissa's chair in, and leaping off an empty seat. The entire table stopped to stare.
Grabbing his wrist, I towed him deep into the restaurant. I was desperate for a quiet corner, or an alleyway exit, but the best I could manage was the blessedly empty ladies' room.
"Tiel," Sam started, warning heavy in his voice as I locked the door behind me.
"Are you having an affair?" I asked.
He blinked at me, and his face registered no alarm. Only mild confusion, as if I'd asked him to go line dancing tonight or help me spit-roast a pig. "What?"
"Are. You. Cheating. On. Me," I said, and the velocity of those words propelled me across the small room until we were standing a breath apart. "You've been so strange this week! You're shutting me out and coming home at weird hours, and you didn't want me to touch you this morning, and we're not having sex, and I have no other explanation than you cheating on me but that isn't the explanation I'm hoping for because I love you and trust you, and don't understand any of this. So, please. Tell me what the fuck is going on."
"It's not that at all," he said. He exhaled and rubbed his forehead. "I don't want to talk about this right now, Tiel. I haven't eaten today. My sugar is low and I need to get some food, and—"
"Why the fuck not?" I cried. "Why would you do that to yourself?"
Sam leaned back against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes closed as he blew out another breath. "I'm trying to figure some things out, and I've lost track of other things in the process. It wasn't my intention. I forgot to eat, and when I noticed it, I also noticed I was late for this" —he waved toward the door with a grimace— "thing, and I'd missed nine messages from you. I didn't stop to eat, or call. I came here because it seemed like the right solution to my immediate issues, but I've obviously fucked up. I'm sorry. I've had a rough couple of days, Tiel."
"I've noticed," I said. "What I don't understand is why you haven't told me anything. That's only making it worse, Sam."
"I'm just…I'm not cheating on you. That's the hardest of our hard limits." He held up his left hand and pointed at it with his right. "And I take this ring really fucking seriously."
The door handle twisted, followed by three sharp knocks. Scowling, I hollered, "In a minute."
I took his hand and pressed it to my chest, schooling my impatient expression. "Then tell me why your week has been so difficult, Sam. I need you to climb up that trust tree right now."
Sam's eyes fell shut again as he deflated. "I went to a urologist, and I had a semen analysis."
"That'swhat you've been keeping to yourself? That's why your week has been rough?" I asked. "You should have told me. I would've gone with you, andhelped."
He didn't register that innuendo at all. That set off all the crisis mode alarms.
"I went back for a follow-up visit this afternoon. My sperm count is on the low side. It's good, but there wasn't a lot of it."
I reached for his other hand. "Where have you been since then?" I asked, my voice soft.
"Walking in circles around my new project in the South End," he said. All that secrecy and indifference I'd been reading on him morphed into discomfort and embarrassment. "And Wellesley. Just…thinking."
Oh, my prepster.
"Okay, so…it's a little low." I squinted at him. "Then what have I been swallowing? There seems to be plenty. And those times that you go all Jackson Pollock on my tits, it's not an insignificant amount. We always need two or three washcloths."
"I love that you find so much humor in this," he said, his sour tone laced with a laugh. "I'm sitting here, telling you I might not be able to give you…to give you any of the things I'm supposed to, and you're fucking laughing about jizz."
"Would you rather I laugh about blow jobs? Because those are funny, too."
"Tiel, I'm not feeling any fucking humor right now," he snapped, but he couldn't stop the laugh from piercing his words. "The only thing I could think this week was that I didn't know what I'd do if I was the issue. Think about it, sweetheart. When we met with your doctor, after we lost the baby, she said all of your tests looked normal. You're fine.It's me. I'm the problem."
"Sam," I sighed, pressing my forehead to his. "Don't you remember how I found you?"
"You hypnotized me with that ankle bracelet, the one with the little bells, and you forced me into a malfunctioning elevator," he said.
"That's right, and that's because I was meant to find you. Fate, gravity, divine intervention, jingly ankle bracelets—whatever you want to call it—put you in that elevator with me," I said. "When we are meant to have a baby, we will have a baby. It might not be this month or next, or even this year, but when it happens, it will be right."
"What if we're meant to have that babynow, and my short sperm count is getting in the way?" he asked.
"Then let's figure out which weird-ass juices you should drink to get some action down there," I said, and his brow arched at my endorsement of his raw juice fanaticism. "Or maybe I should massage your balls but I really don't like the idea of sucking them. Oh, and Andy likes an acupuncturist in Framingham, although she says he yelled at her in broken English the whole time she was there. Maybe that's part of the treatment."
