“Guys don’t face questions like that, huh?” Her question pulls me back to the topic at hand, our discussion about her uterus and how the hell anyone thinks it’s their business.
“Nope.” I swipe a dusting of crumbs off the top of my soap box and consider the last time I had to field intrusive questions. “Not from coworkers, anyway. My mom asks about grandkids every time we talk, but she’s not really dialing up the pressure or anything.”
She nibbles at the onion tart, considering me. There’s a guardedness in her expression that wasn’t there a few seconds ago. “You said you want kids?”
“Definitely,” I say. “I always looked forward to being a dad.”
To being a better dad than my own.
Sarah studies me like she’s heard the unspoken words and knows exactly where I’m coming from. “So this is a definite part of the arrangement?”
“Arrangement?” I smile and pick at a stuffed mushroom cap. “Is that what we’re calling it?”
She shrugs and stabs a carrot stick into a puddle of hummus. “We wouldn’t really be planning to call it marriage, would we?”
“Why not?”
“Because,” she says, and for a second I think that’s enough of an answer. “Because you’re talking about something different. A business agreement or something.”
I consider that for a moment. “Would you rather call it a merger?”
She rolls her eyes and steals a mushroom cap off my plate. “Maybe a barriage. A business marriage.”
That does have an interesting ring to it.
“How about a confederation,” I suggest. “A confederation of two.”
Sarah laughs. “Very Star Wars,” she says, and I can’t tell if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. “I guess that’s fitting, since you’re the guy who had the Chewbacca throw pillows.”
“I loved those pillows,” I say, amazed she remembered. “And the beanbag chair?”
“I loved that chair.” She grins and polishes off the last of the onion tart. “Okay, how about fratrimony?”
“What’s that?”
“Matrimony between two friends.”
“Fratrimony,” I repeat, rolling it around on my tongue. “Too close to flatulence.”
“Good point.” Sarah steals another mushroom cap off my plate, so I swipe a bacon-wrapped water chestnut off hers. “Is there a cool French word for marriage?”
“Mariage,” I offer. Even with the proper pronunciation, it still sounds just the same. “We could try ménage instead?”
“Perv.” She grins like she always has at my dirty jokes, more delighted than annoyed. “How about amalgamation? Consortium? Connubiality?”
“I don’t know what’s sexier—you using all those big words, or the fact that you just made it sound like you’d be my concubine.”
“Or you’d be mine.” She takes a bite of a phyllo pastry, sprinkling crumbs down the front of the snug dress covered in netting. “Damn,” she mutters, fishing into her cleavage for a dropped bite of food.
All the blood leaves my brain as I remember what it felt like to bury my face between her breasts. How lush and full and warm they felt in my hands.
She meets my eyes again and catches me staring. Something about the darkening of her irises tells me she likes it. That she enjoyed our night together as much as I did.
I want more.
I always did, I guess, but I can handle it now. At eighteen, my heart didn’t have the protective walls to keep it from shattering if I fell for Sarah and things didn’t work out. But the fortress is strong now. The sort of platonic friendship she wanted ten years ago—I can do that now in ways my younger self couldn’t.
“Conjugality,” she suggests.
