She dropped her hand. “A baby’s not some trophy you can parade around.”
I chuckled. “If there’s a baby in the picture, you can bet I’ll be holding that little warrior aloft before getting him baptized in the hardware!”
That made her laugh and winning that seemed like a huge victory. If I could do that, I could make a baby and smash the Finals.
“Banking on a boy?”
I shrugged. “I don’t mind. As long as they’re healthy. Now how about some tea?”
Another scoot of the St. James eyebrow.
“I can make tea, Doc. No need to look so skeptical.”
“I’m not. Tea would be lovely.”
Franky
* * *
Disappointment still gnawed at me. Jason was the last person I had wanted to see and now the only person I could imagine being here with me right now.
There were plenty of people I could call to be my shoulder—Rosie, Cat, Vi, Dad—but somehow it felt right that I share this mini-heartbreak with the man who could potentially fix it. Jason was right: there was no reason why we couldn’t try again, yet every day that passed was a day I was less likely to conceive.
I was old in fertility terms. Jason was in his prime. Only two years younger than me, and he was considered the perfect specimen. It didn’t seem fair, but life often failed to measure up to equity standards, especially when it came to men and women.
I could hear him puttering about in my kitchen. He didn’t know where anything was and not even how to make tea the way I liked it. I could have gone in there and taken over, but I liked the sound of him in the next room. It was similar to when I heard Beaker crashing into something in the bathroom. There was comfort in knowing I wasn’t completely alone. As my cats had yet to learn how to make tea, Jason would have to do.
I thought back to my plan to get pregnant, assessing each step in the process to see where I might have gone wrong. Jason was right—not that I’d ever tell him—that a first-time attempt wasn’t guaranteed to work. Sure, if I was a teen fooling around with her boyfriend who insisted on “just the tip,” I would probably be knocked up by now because that was the way the universe worked. But, even in making all these preparations, taking the fertility drugs, and ensuring the best possible conditions for conception, it still hadn’t worked.
Was I missing something? Home insemination was a proven method but had a roughly eighteen percent success rate. That was probably less for someone who was older than thirty-five, geriatric in pregnancy terms. So we were looking at a one-in-six or seven chance of getting pregnant.
Not great odds.
I could improve them with additional insertions of sperm, but it might take another six months, or longer. Would Jason be willing to participate for that long? And how would he feel about being little more than a delivery mechanism for his valuable genetic content?
“Milk? Sugar?” he called out.
“Milk, please. No sugar.”
A minute later, he arrived with two cups of tea. I had already put a coaster out for one and now I added another. He placed the cups carefully.
“Thank you.”
“No problem.”
He took a sip of his own and grimaced slightly, which made me smile. What a trouper. But would he be such a good sport if I tied him up for six months or more?
“I might go the anonymous sperm donor route.”
He stared at me over his cup, then placed it back down on the table.
“You’re already giving up? Why?”
“Because this might take a long time. And in the meantime, you would be beholden—well, obligated?—”
“I know what beholden means.”
Of course he did. “To be on call for monthly donations. It’s a lot to ask of you, and it’ll just get weirder.”
