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“Twice.”
Fuck, he mouthed. “Why don’t you seem happy about that?”
“I am,” I sighed, my back straightening as I watched Jamey’s legs kick against the painted white side of my boat. “It’s just… when we had dinner with her family, she didn’t tell them about Jamey. I had to bring him along because my parents were still out of town, and she didn’t warn them. We showed up and it was so awkward, man. They looked at him like he was an alien before they managed to pull themselves together.”
Nathan’s hands left Jamey’s ears, one wrapping around his tiny abdomen and the other taking its place next to his leg, keeping him from squirming out of his lap and into the ocean. “I wouldn’t overthink it, she probably just forgot. Or maybe she was nervous about how they’d react.”
“She should have at least warned me, then.”
“You don’t know what was going through her head. Her parents are mega religious, right? Maybe that played into it. I wouldn’t worry too much about it, Huds, but if it's bothering you this much then you should ask her about it. Talk to her.”
“It’s probably not even worth that.” I pushed the hair from my face, tilting back to get a good blast of sun. Nathan was right when he’d shown up this morning, it was the perfect day to be out on the boat.
“If you like her, it is.”
“I don’t even know if I like her, Nate.” It wasn’t a lie exactly. I knew she wasn’t good for me, and I was far too attracted to her for my own good, but that didn’t necessarily mean I liked her. That didn’t mean that I was falling for her. I motioned for Nathan to cover Jamey’s ears again, and he did. “Just because the sex is fucking phenomenal and she’s amazing doesn’t mean I have feelings for her. We can mess around and still be casual.”
“In all honesty, I’ve met your flings in the past, heard you talk about them, complain about them… this doesn’t feel like the same thing. This is, fuck, you’re going to hate this when I say it, but you seem more into this girl than you were with Becks when you first met her.”
I winced at the sound of my ex-wife’s name, the way it felt entering my ear and the way it crawled down my back like a snake. “I did hate that. You’re right.”
I could have told him that Sophie was coming in for her next appointment tomorrow. I could have told him how excited I was to see her after not having seen her for forty-eight hours, but I didn’t. It was caught somewhere inside of me, desperate not to see the light of day, hiding beneath the surface. Maybe I could keep it down there. Maybe I could hide it away forever.
I should have told him, though.
“Uncle Nathan, it’s moving!”
Chapter 18
Sophie
Monday
To say that I was nervous would be an understatement. My legs wouldn’t stop bouncing, I couldn’t stop twisting the skin of my wrists, my jaw locked and eyes forward as I waited for my name to be called. I wanted to get started on the drugs, desperately, and I knew my nerves stemmed directly from having to discuss that. Not from inevitably seeing Hudson. No, I was far too used to that by now.
“Sophia Mitchell?”
The nurse across the room wore a plain white set of scrubs and held a clipboard to her chest, her small smile trained on me. I rose, grabbing my purse from the chair beside me, and followed her back to what I now knew was Hudson’s—Dr. Brady’s—office.
As she opened the door, an almost calm relief washed over me when we found it empty. That dissipated as she shut the door behind us.
“So, we’ve had a look at your file,” she started, stepping around me and dropping into Hudson’s chair. “Based on the report that you gave us when you first came in, you should be due to start your period this Friday. You track it, yes?”
I nodded. Slowly, I sank into the seat I’d sat in last time, the one I’d nearly tripped over when I tried to storm out.
“We should be able to start the drugs then in approximately two weeks’ time. It’s important that we time it with your cycle. It’s regular, correct?”
I sighed as I leaned back, the realization hitting me. I’d been far too caught up in all the shit going on in my personal life to consider my period and how it would affect my treatment. Stupid. “Yeah, pretty much bang-on twenty-eight days.”
She wrote something down on the clipboard, occasionally glancing up at me. “But you have polycystic ovarian syndrome?”
I nodded. “Yeah. My cycles are regular, though. I just have the cysts and the… you know. The reason I’m here.”
Her tight-lipped smile nearly made me want to cry. I hated having to watch strangers feel pity for me, I’d seen it far too often on the faces of the women in the sperm bank. “Alright. We’ll have Dr. Brady come in to double check your vitals and have a look at your bloodwork.”
As quickly as we’d arrived, she left, leaving me in the silence of my own breathing and winding thoughts. Hudson would be coming in soon, he would look at my file, notice that my period was starting on Friday. I tried to stop my mind from telling me that he’d stay far away for an entire week, that he wouldn’t want to sleep with me again until my period was definitely done.
Stupid of me to forget it even mattered. Stupid of me to want him to fuck me again.
