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“You should be,” I say, wanting him to know how much this means to me. “Very few people make the cut.”

50

Owen

I want to say it. The words sit on the tip of my tongue, but I’m exhausted from having said more words than I think I ever have, and from the emotional pull of reliving one of the worst periods in my life.

But when Alice looks me in the eye and tells me I’m one of her favourite people on earth, I want to tell her she’s my only favourite person on this earth.

But I don’t.

Although she suggested Pippa didn’t love me enough to stay, even if starting a family meant taking a different path than the one she imagined, Alice doesn’t know what it feels like to reach a certain age and be told kids are no longer on the table.

She’s only thirty-six.

What if she hits forty and realises a child is the one thing missing from her life?

What then?

It’s always easy to say things when you’re not the one living them.

I’ve never hated Pippa for what she did. She had the courage to say exactly what she thought rather than sticking around to watch our marriage fall apart. She stood up for what she wanted, what she believed she deserved. She told me the truth: She hadn’t signed up for an infertile husband.

I just wish she’d loved me enough—or more than the idea of a biological child.

And I think that’s what hurt the most.

That she loved a child who didn’t exist more than me.

That she never stopped to consider what I might be going through, how it felt to be told my future would never look the way I thought it would. To know I’d never have a child with my eyes or hair or temperament.

When everything was said and done, I think I resented Pippa because she was able to walk away from it all while I couldn’t.

And now there’s Alice.

Beautiful, caring, chatterbox Alice, who spent her day off with me by the coast and went to a garden centre to buy shrubs she knew absolutely nothing about because she thought planting them might help me through my grief. Alice, who asked me to be her fake boyfriend at the wedding of a friend she hadn’t seen in twenty-one years.

Alice.

Who needs me to smile nicely next Saturday and pretend to be madly in love with her.

And that’s what stops me from telling her how I really feel, because, deep down, I know she cares about me as more than a friend.

But after Friday, something shifted.

Gone was the boldness of Alice declaring we should “give it a go.” Gone were the flirtatious comments she used to throw at me without hesitation.

Instead, she stepped back, careful and respectful in a way that made my chest ache because I knew exactly why she was doing it.

She was protecting me.

Or maybe protecting herself.

And the worst part is that I think we’re both doing the exact same thing.

I also need to remind myself that just because she cares about me, that doesn’t mean she wants the whole shebang. Smithy cares about me, but that doesn’t mean he wants to spend the rest of his life with me.

I would love to spend the rest of my life with Alice.