I don’t wait for her to fill in the blanks.
“I’ve been seeing someone,” I explain carefully. “My boss.”
Angela’s brow shoots up. “The one you hate?” she asks, her face morphing from surprise to anger. “The one who’s, like, twenty years older than you? That’s?—”
“It’s not like that,” I rush. “He needed an heir. It’s complicated.”
“An heir?” she echoes, like I’ve started speaking in code.
I nod, fingers tightening around the mug. “There’s a clause in his business contract. If he doesn’t produce an heir, he loses the company. He asked me to be a surrogate? I don’t know if that’s the right word.”
Her face freezes. “What?”
“For money,” I add, like that makes it better. “To help with Ava. It’s why I’ve been able to?—”
“So let me get this straight,” Angela interrupts, voice rising. “You’re not donating an egg, you’re not using someone else’s embryo, you’re literally pregnant with your boss’s child and calling it,surrogacy?”
The word cracks like a whip. “It’s not?—”
“Oh my god, April.” She pushes her chair back. “Are youinsane? He knocked you up and called it a business transaction?That’s not surrogacy, that’s manipulation dressed up in a fucking power suit.”
Heat floods my face. “It wasn’t like that.”
“Hepaidyou.”
“I agreed.”
“Did you have a choice?” Her arms cross. “Did you feel like you could say no?”
I stand, flustered, and unprepared for the onslaught of questions. “He’s not like that. He’s taking care of everything.” Panic boils hot inside me as I force out explanations, trying to make her see. Why can’t she just see? Nicky sees, why is this difficult? “He’s—he’s good to me. Genuinely.”
Angela stares. “You’re defending him?”
“I’m just telling you it’s not what you think.”
She exhales like she’s trying not to scream. “So it was just for the money?”
My throat closes. “I don’t know anymore.”
Angela’s lips purse as she stares at me, the gears turning in her head. “What is it right now? For the money? Or for him?”
Silence, thick and heavy, descends. My throat tightens, the panic flaring hotter. “I have to go.” She calls after me, but I’m already at the door. I don’t look back.
————
I take three steps down the stoop, and my body forgets how to keep it together.
My vision blurs. My throat closes. My heart feels too big for my ribs, like it’s swelling and swelling until it’s going to split me open on the sidewalk like some stupid, spectacular accident. I press a hand hard to my sternum as if I can physically hold it inplace. Angela’s words loop on repeat, merciless.For the money? Or for him?
I tell myself to be offended and angry. To march back in there and tell her she doesn’t get to interrogate me like I’m some teenager who fell for the wrong boy. Things are allowed to be complicated. But, the truth is already crawling up my spine and perched on my tongue because the moment she said it, my body answered before my brain could lie. It’s about him.
I walk because stopping feels like dying. I shove my hands in my pockets and move fast, head down, like if I keep my feet going, I can outrun the panic rising in my chest. Upper Manhattan slides past me brownstones with wrought-iron fences, a bodega with a cat in the window, a couple arguing on the corner, a stroller pushing through a puddle. I don’t know where I’m going. I’m just going.
My phone is heavy in my coat pocket. I think of calling Nicky. The thought is a relief for half a second. Her voice, her bluntness, her laughter when I’m being dramatic and her sharp, clean advice when I’m being stupid. She’d tell me what to do. She’d tell me what this is.
Then I see her face in my mind when I admit to what she’d warned me against from the start.I couldn’t keep my emotions out of it. I can already hear her, deadpan.“April. Babe. Are you out of your fucking mind?”I can’t have another person look at me like I’ve fucked up. I can’t admit out loud to anyone else that I failed. That I didn’t keep it clean and cold and contained like I promised myself I would. Because I tried. God, I tried. I tried to keep him at a distance. To keep my body separate from my feelings and treat it like a job. Then last night happened, and I couldn’t lie to myself anymore.
His bed. His hands. The way he held me after, like he forgot he was supposed to be made of steel. The way his voice sounded genuine when he said he wanted me safe. The way he asked meto move in like it was the most natural thing in the world, like I was already folded into the shape of his life. It shouldn’t have mattered. But it did. God, it did.
