Sure Shot (Brooklyn #4)(67)

We can’t have this conversation in front of a crib that some stranger put together on his day off. The apartment owner probably has no idea how it feels to fail at the basic manly art of impregnating your wife. To spend fifty thousand dollars on specialists who give you a sterile cup and a pitying look as they point you toward the privacy of a room where you’re supposed to flip through some porn and unload some of your low sperm count jizz into a sterile cup.

My slap shot is fifty miles an hour. I can bench 350 and squat 475. But near the end of my marriage, there had been a night when I’d felt like the weakest man on the planet. My wife had wanted to try it again the natural way, and I physically couldn’t do it.

“What are you thinking about right now?” Bess asks, and I realize we’ve been standing in an uncomfortable silence.

“I was thinking…” So many ugly things. “You should buy this place. Pink isn’t really my color.”

“Really? That’s what you were thinking?” Disappointment crosses her face. “I think we’re done here. I’m outie.”

She scoots past me, a fiery angel. I can’t hear what she says to the startled brokers in the living room, but the door opens and closes a moment later.

Fuck. I leave the baby’s room, my neck hot with shame. I fucked that up, and pretty much everything that happened before it.

I can do better. I will do better. Right now.

Eric is waiting with a worried look in the living room. “Nice place,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck.

“What do you think?” Wilson asks, ever hopeful.

I think I owe Bess a giant apology. “One of us will make an offer tonight. Let me have your card.”

The other broker frowns at me from across the room. “I’m going to have photos up on the website tomorrow. This place will go fast.”

“I don’t doubt it. That’s why you’ll hear from either Bess or myself tonight.” There’s a testy edge to my voice, and I just don’t care. “Thank you all for your time.”

And at that, I’m gone.





Twenty-Seven





Normal is a Stretch





Bess





How was the apartment? Zara’s text asks me.

Expensive, I reply, just so she won’t ask a follow-up question. I need time alone here on my couch, preferably curled up into a ball. Preferably with a cocktail. Too bad I didn’t stock up ahead of this little crisis.

Of all the people in the world it had to be Mark Tankiewicz who’d walked into that bedroom-turned-nursery. Like I haven’t spent the last three weeks trying to erase him from my brain. Damn it.

If I bought that place, I’d always remember the soft expression that took over his face as I turned to look at him. And then I’d remember the hardened one that replaced it a moment later.

Even if my expensive new reproductive endocrinologist gets me pregnant on the first try, I’d stand in that room rocking my baby girl or boy and wonder why Tank didn’t want to be there, too.

Who could lead a normal life under those conditions? Although “normal” is a stretch for me already. “He can have that apartment,” I grumble aloud. He can turn the second bedroom into a man cave with a wet bar and a TV the size of a highway billboard.

I’ll live someplace else. Like Finland. I hear Finland is a nice country to raise a child. I could learn Finnish and scout goalie talent all over Copenhagen.

No. Not Copenhagen. That’s in Denmark. Oslo? No. Helsinki!

There’s a knock on my door, sudden and loud. Who the Helsinki could that be?

“Eric,” I call from my ball on the sofa. Today I could have done with a stupider employee. Goddamn him for sniffing out that listing just as quickly as I did. “Eric, I’m fine. I don’t need company. And you don’t have to apologize for doing your job.”

He knocks again. Men are so freaking stubborn.

I heave myself off the couch and open the damn door so he can see that I’m not drowning in tears and ice cream and tequila. Not yet, anyway.

But it’s Tank standing there. “Shit. Eric let you in the front door?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll fire him tomorrow.”

“Then you’ll have to be my agent, because Kassman made me fire him today.”

“Never,” I hiss.

“Can I come in? I need to say my piece.”

“No, you really don’t. Every time we’re alone together, the same thing happens. And I can’t ride that train anymore. I went off birth control, too. So my apartment is officially a danger zone for you.”

“Honey, it isn’t,” he says, his voice full of gravel. “There are things I have to tell you. And if you don’t let me in, I’m gonna have to shout them through your door, which is probably going to embarrass both of us. So for the sake of the neighborhood, it’s best if you invite me in.”

Help. I’m weakening. “Will it change anything?”

“Doubt it.”

My heart sinks all over again, and I make a move to close the door.

“Bess.” He catches the door before I can close it. “I love you.”

“What?” My eyes fill immediately with tears. “That’s just cruel.”