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But the main reason was the intense need, almost down to my bones, that longed for a child.
“Please say you’ll support me,” I said quietly.
Lisa’s lips pressed into a thin line as she sat up, using my hands for leverage. “Of course, I’ll support you, Soph.” She bit down on her lip, smearing lipstick across her teeth. “But how are you even going to get pregnant? I thought you had… what’s it called? Poly something.”
“Polycystic ovarian syndrome.”
“Yeah! That.”
I nodded as I sipped the last of my chardonnay. I lifted the glass toward the bartender, silently requesting another.
“I do.”
“I thought that was supposed to make it difficult for you,” Lisa said, her eyes going soft. She knew it was a touchy subject for me, and had she known what I’d been doing for the last few months, she likely would have wanted to hold me while I cried. I didn’t want to put that on her, though, so I’d kept her in the dark until now.
“It does. I’ve, uh, been going to the sperm bank for a few months now,” I explained, my tapping foot growing wilder in my nervousness. “I’ve tried multiple times but it’s never worked.”
I made a point not to look at her. I didn’t want to see the sympathy written all over her face.
“I have an appointment next week at an IVF clinic,” I finished.
Lisa’s eyebrows rose in shock, her jaw dropping open just a hair. “How would that even work without a man?”
I couldn’t help but laugh. What did she think I was going to do, grab a random guy off the street and start fucking him while doing the treatment? That’s not how any of it worked. “Well, when couples do it, the guy gives his sperm in the same way a donor would. They put the egg in a weird little dish thing and force the sperm toward it, pretty much guaranteeing a fertilized egg. It’s the implantation afterward that can be iffy.”
“So you’re going to use a donor for that, too?”
“Yeah,” I grinned. “It’ll be like baby roulette. Who’s will it be? Nobody knows.”
Lisa snorted as she nearly choked on her drink. “And your parents are okay with this?”
I tapped the rim of my glass, smearing the lipstick stains, and pulled my lower lip between my teeth. “I haven’t exactly told them.” A waiter rounded the edge of the table and deposited another glass of wine in front of me, swiping away the empty one.
For once, Lisa fell silent. She stared at me with widened eyes, the clinking of ice in her glass a thing of the past. It was never a good thing when she felt like there was nothing she could say.
“They wouldn’t approve,” I elaborated, hating the words already as they fell from my lips. My parents were old-fashioned, and not in the fun, fancy drink way. No, they were heavily religious; they believed that marriage was the key to a healthy life, and a woman having a child outside the confines of a stable, godly relationship was unholy. I’d written off that shit years ago, but I’d be lying if I tried to say the kernels of their beliefs didn’t live inside of me just a little bit, screaming from the depths of my mind that I was fucking up.
I didn’t want to live my life according to them.
“I’ll tell them eventually when the time is right.” I lifted the glass to my lips and took a hearty gulp of wine, desperately needing it to chase away my worries. “They’ll probably disown me, though.”
She raised one brow at me. “Doesn’t your brother have a kid?”
“Yeah. With his wife. Aaron wouldn’t dare defy my parents, not in a million years. You should have seen how excited they were when they found out,” I sighed, the temptation to drop my forehead against the rim of the wine glass gnawing at me. “I highly doubt they’ll feel the same when I have to tell them I’m having a baby with a stranger.”
Lisa pursed her lips as she gave my hand a gentle squeeze. “I’ll cover for you, you know. As long as you need it. Plus, you could always design some sick-ass clothes to hide the bump.”
I couldn’t stop the sly grin from spreading across my cheeks. I’d studied fashion design in college, and now that I was able to run my own small business from the comfort of my home, I could absolutely design some interesting clothes to hide it. Babydoll dresses all around.
“How’s the business doing, anyway?” She asked, a quick and easy way to change the subject to something she knew was the opposite of one that caused worry. My business was doing great. In fact, it was so stable that I’d been able to purchase my first home in a fancy neighborhood, surrounded by large homes and expensive cars. It was a condo, but that didn’t matter. It still felt like a step in the right direction.
“Great.” I grinned as I pulled my phone from my purse. Unlocking it, I slid it across the table, my shopfront open on the screen. “Business is booming. I can hardly keep up, to be honest. I’m up five hundred percent from last month since I hired a new marketing guy. He really knows what he’s doing.”
“That’s insane,” she gawked, her eyes glued to the screen of my phone. “Soon you’ll need to hire little foreign children to make your designs.”
I sent her a seething glare as I snatched my phone back from her. “Don’t even joke about that.”
Chapter 3
