“Abrutishlystrong drunk idiot. Do you think you’ll see him again?”
I shook my head. “I really don’t. It was like, a time and a place. A Friday night in the city. If he called me up and wanted to do something off the wall, I might say yes. Nothing beyond that.”
She looked at me quizzically. “Well, there you are. Our girl is growing up.”
I felt another twinge of guilt for having let her down.
“I swear I’m going to get my shit together.”
She squeezed my right hand. “I know you will. No one thinks you’re intentionally a narcissist.”
“Keep piling it on. It’s good penance.”
“Next favor.”
“Anything.”
“Will you come to my firm holiday party with me? I really can’t bear the thought of being there dateless in front of Stephen ... and it would be way more fun if we could sit and judge everyone.”
“I wouldn’t miss it. I’ll be your proud plus-one.”
She sniffled quietly into a tissue. “Do you think it will hurt less by then?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly.
“He’s such a prat.”
I nodded. “For what it’s worth, he made sure you got home safely and then asked me to stay with you.”
She bit her lower lip. “I guess that makes him a little less bad.”
“Maybe just a little bit.”
Chapter Thirty-One
The acupuncturist was a block down from Gramercy Park. The doorman waved me up a small set of stairs toward a sign that saidDr. Jane Chiang and Dr. Dennis Wu, Acupuncture & Chinese Medicine.
I opened the door to a dimly lit waiting room with a wall fountain and a faded Van Gogh poster hanging over a dark green couch. I was ten minutes early. I sat quietly next to a side table covered in pamphlets titledAcupuncture for FertilityandUsing Herbs to Conceive.
I scrolled Instagram to distract myself when a petite blond in a beige peacoat and Nike running shoes flung open the door and sat down across from me, pulsating with an energy I didn’t recognize.
A minute later, a man in a black linen tunic and scrub pants appeared, smiling warmly in her direction. “Elizabeth, come on back.”
She bounced out of the chair, all but knocking him sideways with an aggressive hug.
“Dr.Wu. Ohmy god. Dr. Wu.” She held up a picture on her phone with shaky hands. “It worked.Twopositive tests.” She looked like she was going to cry. “You got me pregnant!”
I watched the scene unfold like a Bravo reality show about conception. He reached for a box of Kleenex next to the couch. She caught my eye and gave a knowing smile before they disappeared.
I stared at the wall fountain, transfixed by the flowing water, feeling numb. Fertility wasn’t something I had ever thought about in more than an abstract way. I wondered how old Elizabeth was.
Dr. Jane appeared a minute later, rescuing me from my mental spiral on whether fertility was something I’d ever need to think about, or how it was even connected to acupuncture. We spent fifteen minutes on my health history: no smoking, no drugs, social drinker, sometimes more. I gave her the PG version of how I’d sprained my wrist. She unwrapped the bandage and gingerly felt around the ligaments. She did something with an electric pen, explaining she was measuring my energy channels. Then she handed me a sheet and told me to undress.
When she came back, she deftly pricked me with needles everywhere except my wrist, dimmed the lights, put on calming music, and said she’d be back in half an hour.
My foot twitched, and I felt a sharp pain in my ankle. I willed myself to lie still.
As I closed my eyes, the conversation Ben and I had in Lake Anna came back to me. I fidgeted uncomfortably. Four years later, I was divorced and getting acupuncture for an injury that happened during a drunk hookup. Weren’t things like that supposed to happenbeforemarriage and conversations about children?
