IT’S ANOTHER DAY of silence on instant messaging, and I force down my paranoia by reminding myself that Marcus is genuinely busy. There’s a limited-edition, USB-powered Dr. Who clock on my desk beside my monitors. Marcus got it for my birthday four years ago. It’s never lost time before, but today it plays tricks on me. I watch the second hand and I swear it ticks backward sometimes, which might explain why the day feels like it takes weeks to end.
But eventually the hands reach 8:50 p.m., and right on time as always, I hear the front door open and Marcus calls out to me.
“Hey, Abs. Give me five minutes. I just need to change.”
Knowing Marcus, “changed” will only mean swapping one button-down for another. I, on the other hand, have changed three times this afternoon.
First, I searched through my underwear drawer and selected the sexiest set I own. It’s crimson, mostly lace, with a demi-cup bra and a skimpy G-string that I think makes my curvy ass look amazing. I peered at myself in the mirror and was quite pleased with the end result. I sat at my computer, and for just a few moments, I let myself imagine us coming home from dinner. I pictured him sitting on the couch—our couch—the place we’ve innocently leaned into each other hundreds of times while we watched TV. Except this time, I stripped slowly, seductively, out of my clothes and I saw desire in his eyes.
There was no denying the buzz of excitement that burned in me while I fantasized about that, which was completely confusing and terrifying. And as soon as I acknowledged it, the fantasy popped, and instead, I saw myself stripping down, but instead of desire in his gaze, I saw mortification. Uh, Abby. Lingerie? You do realize this isn’t actually about seduction, right? This is purely about procreation. Then I imagined us undressing each other and getting into bed and him admitting he wasn’t sure he could make it work. Shit, Abby. I’m so sorry. I can’t get it up. This has never happened to me before with any other woman, but then again, it’s not surprising that my penis just doesn’t want to come to the party on this particular occasion, is it? Because I could never think of you that way.
At that thought, I tore the red lace set off and buried it under a pile of dirty laundry as if it represented a physical threat to my safety. Then I went back to the plain white cotton set I had already been wearing. After that strangely uncomfortable yoga incident this morning, he’s already seen me in this set today and that’s weird enough...but somehow, it feels wrong that I’m not even wearing clean underwear for the occasion of us possibly conceiving a child.
So I changed again. This time I went for a plain cotton black bra and a pair of cartoon character panties. The set doesn’t match. Frankly, it’s the least sexy underwear I own, and that feels more appropriate.
I put my regular clothes over the top again and tried to laugh at myself for overthinking all of this, but the laughter got stuck in my throat, and so I sat at the computer and waited for Marcus to come home.
Another unproductive day.
When this is all over and done with, I’m going to have a huge backlog of work to wade through. I guess that will help distract me while we’re waiting to see if I’m pregnant.
“You ready for dinner?” Marcus asks from the door to my room, and I turn to face him, feeling suddenly guilty.
“Yes. Of course I am. But it’s so late—didn’t you already have dinner with your team?” It sounds like an accusation, and he tilts his head at me.
“I didn’t really eat. I wanted to wait for you. Although I can see that my plan didn’t work for you, either.”
“Plan?”
There’s a smile in his eyes. “We were trying to completely postpone the decision until the exact moment when it had to be made.”
“I’ve barely spared it a thought all day,” I say, and he laughs at me.
“If you knew how bad you are at lying, you’d never even try.”
I poke my tongue out at him and shut off the computer, then rise and take a deep breath.
“Time for wine,” I say, and he nods solemnly.
We’re seated quickly in our regular booth at Alfino’s. Marcus orders wine, but his charm appears to have disappeared—he delivers the request without social niceties.
“And vodka,” I blurt as the waitress moves to leave us.
The hostess looks at me, eyebrows high, then checks with Marcus. “Was that a bottle of wine?”
“That’s right.”
“And how many wineglasses?”
“Two,” I answer for him, then I add, “Plus the vodka.”
“Neat?”
Why is this so hard for her to understand? I give her a pointed look as I nod, and I’m surprised when Marcus mutters, “Make that a bottle of wine and two vodkas.”
The hostess shrugs, and Marcus and I share a nervous laugh as she walks away. But then we’re alone and unfortunately sober. I start to pick at the scant patches of pink polish that remain on my fingernails until Marcus catches my hand. “Abby. Calm down.”
I don’t know what I’m more nervous about—the risk that this could ruin everything, the fact that we’re about to cross a line I never thought we’d cross or the actual goal of all of this—motherhood. Even on its own, the thought of actually falling pregnant is terrifying. The only thing that’s more terrifying is the thought that it might never happen.
It’s no wonder I’m nauseous about everything that’s happening right now. My whole world is about to change.
Am I really up to the challenge of this?
“We can wait a month. Until you’re sure,” Marcus adds now. I glance at him.
“Do you really think more time to think this through is going to help us?”
“Well, let’s at least talk about it. What are you thinking? What are you feeling?”
Scared. Scared. Scared.
Kind of turned on.
Confused about that.
Excited. Nervous. Anxious.
Scared.
Annoyed.
“Why do you always try to make me talk about things?” I demand, and he raises his eyebrows at me.
“Why do you always avoid difficult subjects?”
“Because it’s easier. And in this case, it’s survival.”
“Okay, then. Let’s go back to the original plan—the same plan I use with my dates most of the time. We’ll have a few drinks and pray for the best.”
I laugh weakly, and Marcus slips his fingers through mine to stroke the back of my hand with his thumb. He stares out into the restaurant, and his gaze is distant, like the weight of the world rests on his shoulders. I watch him out of the corner of my eye, and I’m conscious of how seriously he’s taking this. He doesn’t seem worried, but despite the quips, his brow furrows as if he’s concentrating hard. Then I look down at his hand through mine, and for just the briefest of moments, I know exactly what I want.
The gentle, innocent movement of his thumb over the back of my hand is giving me butterflies—the good kind, not the sick-with-nerves kind. I pause and focus on that for a moment, and the feeling starts to grow. Soon the butterflies are flapping harder, and I feel the warmth low down in my abdomen.
That’s just him holding my hand. So if we were, say, stark naked—
That pleasant train of thought grinds to a screaming halt as all of the disastrous possibilities occur to me again.
Maybe he’d never look at me the same way again.
Maybe I’d never look at him the same way again.
Do I really want a baby that much? What if we fall pregnant, but it costs us our friendship?
I snap my hand away, and Marcus clears his throat and is about to say something when the waitress returns with the vodkas. She sits them on the table, and Marcus and I each grab for a glass.
“To risking everything,” I say, by way of a toast. I’m trying to make a joke, but Marcus frowns as he knocks his glass against mine, then pauses before it reaches his lips.
“To gaining everything,” he counters quietly, and I down the entire half glass of vodka in one smooth movement and close my eyes as it burns its way down to my stomach.
“If you need to be drunk to do this, we’re not. Doing it.” The words are stiff and punctuated with awkward pauses. I shake my head stubbornly. “Abby, I know you suck at talking about things that are uncomfortable and I know this situation is the very definition of that, but you just have to talk to me.”
“It’s not me I’m worried about,” I blurt, and argh—I’m blushing so hard I’m probably luminescent. “I can do this. I mean—all I have to do is lie there, right? But you...” I sink underneath the table a little as I look away. “You have to be into it. What if we try and you can’t even bring yourself to do it? How on earth are we supposed to come back from that?”
He doesn’t say a word. I reach for the wine. I’m suddenly wishing we’d opted for a white so it was cold and I could press a chilled glass against my face. Ah—maybe I’m getting the flu? I feel feverish. It’s very uncomfortable. Perhaps I should go lie down.
“Abby,” Marcus says softly. “It’s going to be fine.”
Not once in my entire relationship with Marcus have I ever felt awkwardness this thick between us, and I hate it. I press forward with my idea, still tracing the tablecloth stitching with my gaze. “We could just make this easy. We each go to our rooms and...prepare. Then I could come to your room and get on my knees. I could wear a skirt that you could just lift up a bit so I’m covered. You can pretend I’m someone else and—”
Marcus winces, and I fall silent. It’s pretty obvious that he desperately wants to say something but just can’t find the words, so I prompt him. “What? Just say it.”
I know what he’s going to say, and it already hurts. I could never think of you that way, Abby.
The blow doesn’t come this time. Instead, he surprises me with a quiet outrage.
“Are you really suggesting that I go jerk off until I’m just about ready to go, and you do—God, I don’t even want to know what you’re proposing at your end—and then I just hammer away at you from behind while you think of England? And that’s how you want to make a baby together? If that’s seriously how you need this to play out, I want no part in it.”
“I just want to make this work for you,” I whisper, and he sighs. It irritates me. “Stop doing that. What do you need to say?”
Marcus swirls the vodka around in his glass for a moment, then he sets the glass down and reaches for my hand. He gazes at it thoughtfully until I see something change in him. There’s a tired acceptance in his eyes, and I don’t know what it means.
“Trust me?” he asks quietly, and I nod without hesitation. Because I do. I really do.
Now he draws in a deep breath, and then lifts my hand to gently rest it against the bulge at his groin. He isn’t hard—but he’s well on the way. He stares right at me as my eyes widen in shock, and I’m struck by the way that the gleam in his gaze is at once both alien and familiar.
Fondness, I frantically tell myself. But is it really fondness I see there? Or...
“I’m good with this, Abby,” Marcus murmurs, and the rumble of his deep voice sends shivers through me. My hand is still beneath his, against his rapidly hardening dick, as he adds softly, “It’s you I’m worried about.”
Well. That just makes no fucking sense. No sense at all. How often is that happening when we hang out? I snatch my hand away and stare at the table, conscious of the heat rising pretty much all through my body. This is a very different kind of flush. I’m hot in the face. Hot in the chest. So hot that fireworks are starting to go off, and shooting stars are lighting up the nerve endings all through my body.
But once the rush of confused arousal fades, all that’s left is anger.
“What the fuck, Marcus?” I snap, and I clench my hand into a fist, as if that will relieve me of the memory of the feel of him beneath it.
“Uh...”
“You said you could never think of me like that.” I bite the words out.
“What?” he gasps, and shakes his head slowly. “When did I say that?”
“Jess’s New Year’s party,” I hiss, and comprehension dawns in his eyes. For just a moment, his gaze dips to the table, then he raises it again to stare at me.
“Yeah, okay. I did say that. Right before you kissed me and proved me wrong.” I wince even at the mention of it—the embarrassment and regret rising with the intensity of the flush on my cheeks. His voice deepens as he mutters, “Jesus, Abby. Surely you noticed that I kissed you back.”
“I was drunk,” I mutter. “I don’t remember.”
“Really?” he asks. His tone is almost neutral, but when I flick my gaze to his face, there’s a challenge in his eyes.
“Really.” A lie. I saw the shock in his eyes that night—and it ran deep. That kiss blew his fucking socks off.
It went both ways. The man should teach classes on kissing. Maybe in the future, I’ll make a rule to only kiss guys who have taken and passed those classes because, hell—Marcus knew what he was doing. Our kiss went on and on, and every variable was perfect—the pressure, the movement, the pace, just the right amount of tongue at just the right moments. I remember how hard his body felt against mine, because he’s lean and tall but he’s muscled in all the right places, and how I wanted to rip the layers of clothing away so that I could feel the heat of his torso. I remember how he cradled the back of my head in his hands, and my heart raced so fast, and I wanted to melt into him because everything about the moment felt so right.
Everything about us felt so right.
That’s what freaked me out in the end. Me and Marcus were kissing on a rooftop on New Year’s and I wanted him so badly I could feel the need in every beat of my heart. I was happy for a moment, because I thought...well, we already live together. We can just go home and see where this leads us.
But that thought hit me like a freight train, because I’d been living with him for a year by then, so I’d seen firsthand what happened to Marcus’s flings. Hell, just a few weeks earlier he’d broken up with Liesel, and she’d been completely crazy about him—no amount of charm or Alfino’s was going to soothe that ache. I remember overhearing as she screamed at him and stormed out of the apartment, and when I came out to check on him, he was packing up the dishes as if nothing had happened at all and he gave me a sad smile and shrugged as he said that he’d warned her he wasn’t looking for anything serious.
As if he’d done everything right, and she was a fool to feel something for him at all.
I really liked Liesel. She was madly in love with her work and kind of quirky.
A bit like me.
Thoughts of poor, heartbroken Liesel were a bucket of cold water over that kiss, and I did the sensible thing. I pulled myself away from him, told him we were going to pretend it never happened, and then I ran home and hid.
“I tried to talk to you about it,” Marcus adds now. I remember how desperate I was to stuff all of the chaos back into Pandora’s box before it could really hurt us. But he was so stubborn—he just kept trying to raise the subject, and so I did something manipulative.
I sat on the couch with my laptop when I knew he was due home from work, opened, sat there with that stupid Craigslist page maximized on my screen until he came in, and made damn sure he saw what I was looking at.
He didn’t try to talk to me about it after that. I was relieved. Ashamed, too, but mostly relieved.
But now? All of these months later? I just feel cornered by this discussion, and when I feel cornered, I get angry and my temper starts to simmer. Doesn’t he understand how dangerous all of this is? I need his friendship. We can’t let that kiss—let alone any potential future kisses—get in the way of that.
“Well, thank fuck I didn’t let you talk to me about it,” I growl. I push my bangs back from my face and take a steadying breath. “I should never have kissed you. It was stupid and impulsive and reckless. All of this is—all of it—it’s just too risky.”
“Okay,” Marcus says.
He’s completely calm. I am the only person here sweating bricks, and that enrages me further, so I say incredulously, “Okay? That’s all you’re going to say?”
“Tonight...this...it isn’t actually about that kiss. It’s about making a baby, and I just wanted to let you know that I’m up for going about that however you want to,” he says quietly. The rational logic and stark reminder of the ultimate goal of all of this—a baby—work to quell my anger, just a little.
I’m being an idiot. He’s done nothing wrong.
Marcus wants me.
Okay. Maybe he doesn’t want-want me. Maybe he’s just realized he’s able to want me if the circumstances dictate. Surely that’s it. It’s not an out of control forest fire of need, which is what I seem to be battling inside right now. I glance under the tablecloth again, thinking about the feel of Marcus’s cock beneath my hand. I want to reach for it again, to rub a little, to see if I can make him moan.
I have a feeling we’d both like it if I did that right now. And that isn’t alcohol talking. That’s me. It’s the undercurrent that I’ve skirted around, but never dared to acknowledge. That was some Olympic-level denial I’ve engaged in since New Year’s.
Gold star to me for being stubborn.
I glance at him, and the gleam is still there in his eye. Is it fondness, like I’ve told myself for all of this time? Or is the dark edge to that expression actually latent desire?
Holy shit.
This is all so confusing. Terrifying, messy, awkward...and I hate those things. God, I’ve planned my entire life to avoid those things.
I’d just like to go back to my room and play Warcraft now, please. There in the game, I slip into my character and I’m free from chaos like this.
The tension here is suffocating. The only thing I want more than to make that go away is a baby. I focus on that and manage to push down the urge to flee. I take a steadying breath in, and when I exhale, I successfully release the last of the desperation to retreat.
“What if it’s weird?” I whisper, staring at the table again.
“Was the kiss weird?”
I raise my eyes to his, and a gently reassuring moment shifts and morphs until it’s something altogether different. We’re both thinking about the kiss, and his gaze heats and I feel my breathing quicken. I drag my eyes away, but not because things are awkward.
It’s because my hands are itching to pull him closer. It’s because if I don’t, I’m going to throw myself at him again, and there’s a good chance my motivation will have less to do with having a baby and more to do with the pull between us that I’m just fucking tired of resisting.
Everything about this moment is dangerous and I can’t avoid it.
“Let’s plan to use the syringe,” he says. “Let’s have dinner and relax because we know that we’re just going to use the syringe. Then when we go upstairs, and if you don’t want to do it the clinical way, then you just let me know. I’m completely fine with either option. I just need for you to be okay—nothing else at all matters to me. Not even a little bit.”
“Syringe,” I agree stiffly, and then the waitress returns with a notepad to take our orders.
Our usual free-flowing chatter never makes an appearance, and neither one of us seems willing to reinitiate it—it’s like the tension is too solid to try to breach. We just sit and eat and drink, and the wine disappears, but while I wait for relaxation to hit me, it never comes.
I’m achingly aware of the gravity of the moment. I feel out of my depth, twisted up in my own thoughts, isolated in a prison of my fear. Every now and again, I glance at him.
This is Marcus. He is my best friend, the most important person in my world. He’s seen me weep. He’s seen me happy. He’s held my hair back from my face while I vomited when I was sick, and he’s supported my deepest hopes and soothed my deepest fears. He’s made me laugh until I cried. He’s been home to me for my entire life.
Sex would be a new intimacy, but it would come after a lifetime of others. He would never, ever hurt me. If he thought this could damage our relationship, he’d never allow it to happen.
“Dessert?” Marcus suggests when we’ve finally finished our mains. His tone is light-as-air, as if we’re about to go back upstairs just to go to sleep on any ordinary night in our life together, and I question everything all over again. Does he actually want this at all? His gaze assesses mine, but I can’t read him now. He’s pulled shutters over his eyes.
“No dessert,” I whisper, and he exhales and plays with the stem on his wineglass. Marcus has nice hands—the hands of a man who works with his brain—neat fingernails, strong, thin fingers. In my mind, I am replaying other moments from our shared history—the broad expanse of his naked torso that I’ve seen and noticed and told myself I wasn’t impressed by.
It’s been much harder to convince myself this year that I had no interest whatsoever in that torso. But now, just for tonight, I can stop arguing with myself. I can stop pushing down the quiet voice that wonders: What if?
I don’t need to wonder anymore. I can know for sure.
“Let’s go upstairs now,” I say, and Marcus glances at me.
“You’re okay?” he asks, and I nod. He follows as I slide out of the booth to walk to the counter. Even after all these years he always offers to pay when we go out and even after all these years I always insist we split the bill, but not tonight. I let him swipe his card to cover the whole amount, and as he does, I watch the distracted smile he flashes the concierge. I let my gaze wander over the stubble on his jaw and his chin and I wonder what it would feel like to have that against my cheek as we kiss. It would be rough, I think, but the good kind of rough...a stark reminder of his masculinity and the contrast between our bodies.
As he finishes up with the bill, he turns to me and catches my gaze. The air between us is so thick I have to force myself to breathe.
We walk side by side in silence as we head toward the elevator. Marcus reaches for his security card and calls the elevator, and when it comes, we step inside and turn to face the door.
Side by side.
Still more silence. And we’re still not touching.
It’s just the two of us in this elevator. Maybe it’s just the two of us in the world, because everything outside of this space has ceased to exist in my mind.
My heart is racing, and my pulse is so loud in my ears that he must hear it. I glance at him in the mirrored doors and catch him staring at me. His dark gaze locks with mine, and the tension hums louder between us. Is it there to stay? How am I ever going to wake up tomorrow morning after feeling this and see Marcus again as nothing more than a friend? We haven’t even touched yet, not really.
But it seems I’ve made my decision, because those concerns are quiet echoes instead of the screaming protests they were earlier. I can ignore them now.
And I will.
For a baby. We’re doing this for a baby.
Everything else is incidental. It has to be.
We walk from the elevator, down the corridor to the apartment, and he opens the door and waits while I step inside.
“Syringe?” he asks mildly, and I draw in a deep breath and take his hand. He turns and stares down at me, and I stare back. I know my eyes say it all, but he checks verbally. “You’re sure?” I nod slowly. Now he says it again, in case I’ve missed it the first hundred times. “I mean it, Abby. No pressure. Not even a little bit.”
I step toward him, until I am right where I would be if he hugged me, but we aren’t touching other than at our hands. I breathe in his scent and close my eyes and give myself a final moment to back out.
But suddenly, everything seems simple. I do desperately want a baby, and I want to have that baby with Marcus...but by God, that isn’t all I want. I want to touch him, and I want him to touch me. I raise my face to his, and I reach up and touch his cheek. I feel a triumphant thrill as I realize that I was right; his stubble is just the right kind of rough against my fingertips.
“I’m sure,” I whisper, and then lick my lips.
“Which room?” he whispers back, and at last, there’s a breathless, rough edge to his voice. That distracts me for a moment, and I miss the question, hearing only the desperation—but he waits for my response. I do a mental rewind and realize what he’s asking.
Where will we have sex for the first time? I ponder all the implications of this. My brain is so addled—with lust and excitement and fear—but my mind races forward, to after.
I don’t want to cuddle him. I mean, maybe I will want to, but if we are going to keep this as just sex—and just sex for a brief period of time—then I’m going to have to protect myself. If I do something stupid, like fall in love with him...well, that is a surefire way to guarantee things break between us.
We can have sex to make this baby, but it must be something we do separate from our friendship. Cuddling with him afterward is the first step to blurring the lines between the two, so I can’t let it happen. Equally, though, I can’t exactly kick him out of my bed, so it’s infinitely easier if we go to his room, and then I can just leave afterward.
But I miss him already.
Oh, fuck it.
“Yours,” I say, and Marcus gently pulls me along behind him to his room. I close the door, as if someone else might walk in on us or we need to hide what we’re doing from some mysterious third party in the apartment. Then I turn to face him.
He is breathing hard, and so am I, and the world is quiet except for those ragged, shaky sounds. We’re about to take off each other’s clothes, but that feels like something I should be doing with a lover, not with Marcus. If he undresses me, then from that moment on, once upon a time he undressed me.
I don’t know why this realization is so terrifying, but it is. It’s not too late for this to feel clinical, is it? I need to take my clothes off myself, as if I’m at a doctor’s office. How am I going to explain this to Marcus? I don’t know how to start, and after staring at him and panicking for a moment, I blurt, “Just give me a minute,” and run into his bathroom.