Josh and Gemma Make a Baby(9)

I scoot back and make a strangled sound.

He takes in my expression and starts to snicker.

“Kidding. Gemma, I’m kidding,” he says, and he drops his shirt.

I nod and blow out a long, mind-clearing breath. “Sorry, I didn’t say that right. What I meant to say was, ummm, we’ve known each other a long time.”

“Twenty-four years,” he agrees.

“Right. We grew up in the same town. Went to the same school. You’re my brother’s best friend. You come to our holiday parties, birthdays. You’re always around.”

I scrutinize his face to see if he gets where I’m going. Unfortunately, he just looks confused.

“I feel like I know you pretty well. I can say that you’re a decent guy.”

He frowns. “Thanks.”

“If I ask you something, do you promise not to tell Dylan, or anybody?”

Josh leans back and studies me. “Gem, I don’t think we should have sex.”

I close my eyes. “No. No, jeez. Obviously. Ugh, did it once, got the T-shirt.”

I open one eye and look at him, then I open the other.

He grins at me. “The T-shirt huh?”

I shrug and roll my eyes. “You remember when I had surgery for that ruptured ovarian cyst and the surgeon said I’d never have kids?”

At twenty-two I already had stage four endometriosis. Like Greg Butkis said, my abdomen looks like a grenade went off and my tubes are completely blocked. For a lot of women, there’s pain with endometriosis, but I never felt anything, never knew anything was wrong. Even today, I wouldn’t know anything was off, except for the fact that the doctors can see the damage.

Josh swallows and sits up straight, the joking smile fades from his lips. “Sure. I remember.”

I look at his expression and realize that maybe Josh doesn’t always take everything in life as a joke.

“I went to see an infertility doctor. I’m going to have a baby.”

An emotion flashes in Josh’s eyes that I can’t decipher, and the dark brown of his irises goes even darker. “You’re…you’re what?”

I nod. “I’m going to have a baby. The doctor said that I can’t get pregnant naturally, but I can through IVF. That’s in vitro fertilization-”

“I know what it is.” His voice is terse, and I can’t tell what he’s thinking.

I clasp my hands together to keep from fidgeting. “The doctor said women either use their partner’s sperm or donated sperm. And I…”

Oh jeez. Sitting in front of Josh, watching the expressions move across his face, makes this conversation a lot harder than I thought it’d be.

“You’re pregnant?” he asks. He looks at my abdomen.

My hand flies to my stomach. “No. Not yet. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.”

“Okay?” Then the confusion fades and I can tell he understands. “You want me to…you want my—”

“I want your sperm.”

“You want to have my baby?” he says at the same time.

“No,” I say.

“No,” he says.

“No,” I say again. “I don’t want to have your baby. I don’t want you to have any responsibilities or anything like that. She’ll be my baby, not anybody else’s.”

Josh makes an affronted sound in his throat.

I stand and start to pace. The horrible orange skirt climbs up my thighs so that my underwear is nearly visible. I yank it back down and the dried barbecue sauce flakes off my chest. Ugh.

“Okay. None of that came out right. I’m going to start over.”

“Sure.” Josh puts on his the-world-is-here-to-amuse-me smile that I associate him with and settles back on my bed to listen.

“I’m tired of waiting for some fairy prince to come along, sweep me off my feet and give me a family to love and kids to dote on. I’m thirty-two, it could be years before he arrives, if ever. In fact, seeing as how the last few years have gone, I’m banking on never.”

“Alright,” he says. “I’m with you so far.”

I let out a surprised huff. “You know, that’s what I like about you. You don’t judge.”

He nods and takes the compliment.

I continue, “I want kids. Ever since I first held Sasha in my arms and she grabbed my finger with her tiny little hand I—” My voice cracks. “I realized I wanted to be a mom.”

I know it’s not a modern sentiment, that I should be happy with my career, my single life, my autonomy, but darn it, can’t I be a successful, modern woman and still want someone to love? A family to love? Can’t I excel in my career and also want to hold my baby to my chest and wipe her tears or give her love?

“Alright, but what does this have to do with me?” Josh asks.

I stop pacing and pull down my skirt. The top dips lower on my breasts. To his credit, Josh’s eyes never leave my face. Come to think of it, he’s one of the few men outside of my family whose eyes have never strayed below my face.

“I could pick a sperm donor from a database. It tells you basic things about the donor. But that kind of freaked me out. I thought…I figured, if I’m going to have a baby, I’d like to know more about the father. So, I made a list.”