“So I could check my app. The one that keeps track of my cycle.” She started counting on her fingers, her lips moving silently.
It hit him then what she was worried about, and his stomach tied itself into a hard knot. “You’re not pregnant,” he assured her.
She shook her head. “I’m not on birth control. What would be the point since I wasn’t getting any until…” She flapped her hand back and forth between them. “Never mind. Is there a pharmacy close? We should grab a Plan B. Because if I’m remembering correctly, I’m pretty sure we’re in the danger zone here.”
“We’re not.” He got up from the bed to walk into the bathroom and dispose of the broken condom. When he returned, he found her lying on her side, her breasts doing that lovely slide-and-hang that drove him wild.
“What do you mean we’re not?” A little line had formed between her eyebrows.
“I can’t get you pregnant.” Never in his life had those five words sounded so foul. But saying them to Grace had them dripping from his tongue like poison.
Her frown deepened and he waited for understanding to dawn. He saw the moment it did because her eyes widened. “Did you…” She paused and started again. “I know a lot of guys who went in for vasectomies after Roe v. Wade was overturned. They didn’t want to put their partners at risk.”
“I didn’t get a vasectomy, Grace.”
The line between her eyebrows deepened. “Then…I’m not sure what we’re talking about here then. Are you…” She cocked her head. “Are you sterile?”
And there it was. Out there with such clinical accuracy.
“Yes.” That single syllable growled out of the back of his throat, sounding like tank tracks crunching over gravel.
He wasn’t sure what he expected her response to be. Confusion, maybe? Or his arch nemesis…pity? He should’ve known better, though. It was Grace he was talking to, after all. Good, tender, kindhearted Grace.
Her pretty face filled with compassion. “What happened?” She jerked back her chin and waved a hand. “No. That’s such a personal question. You don’t have to answer if—”
“Considering what we’ve just been up to, I’m not sure there’s anything you could ask me that’s too personal.”
She searched his eyes and quietly asked again, “So what happened?”
“Testicular torsion.”
The two words didn’t sound so very awful. Maybe it was the alliteration. But despite their poetic cadence, the truth of them was devastating.
“I’m assuming that’s exactly what it sounds like?” She made a face of sympathetic pain. “Your testicles got twisted?”
“Not so much the testicles themselves, but the big blood vessels that attach them to my body.”
“How?”
“Wish I knew.” He shrugged.
How many times had he gone over it in his head? How many times had he thought back on the days before it happened, looking for some inciting incident? Like an injury or a strenuous bout of exercise. But…nothing. As hard as he’d racked his brain, he’d come up with a big ol’ handful of nada. And every medical professional he’d spoken with since assured him testicular torsion was a medical mystery, seeming to have no discernible cause other than bad fucking luck.
“I simply woke up one morning with a stomachache like nothing I’d ever experienced before,” he explained.
“How old were you?”
“Twelve.”
Her compassionate expression turned into one of worry. “So you were still living with your parents? What…what did they do?”
In his mind’s eye, he could see the derision and anger on his father’s face when he shook him awake from his drunken stupor. Any hope he’d had that the man who’d supplied half his genetic material had actuallylovedhim—or even just cared for him alittle—had died that day. Right along with his ability to father children of his own.
“Bert told me it was just the flu. Wacked me on the back of the head and said I needed to suck it up and stop crying like a baby.”
“Dear sweet lord.” Wetness gathered in her eyes.
“I laid on my little mattress on the floor in my room for eighteen hours trying to be as still as possible. Even breathing made me feel like I was dying.” He sat on the edge of the mattress and closed his eyes at the remembered agony. He’d taken a bullet and been sliced by blades that didn’t hurt half as much. “It wasn’t until I reached down and felt my tiny twelve-year-old balls the size of grapefruits that I finally thoughtto hell with my parentsand called 9-1-1.”
