The Knocked Up Plan

Ryder doesn’t move. He stares at me with a quizzical gaze. His hands are in his lap. He’s a statue.

I let the air out of the balloon, releasing it abruptly. “What I mean is, would you be my donor?”

The balloon races across the diner, squealing and squeaking, landing splat on the table, the rubber a limp, pathetic mess.

Ryder’s brows knit together. He makes a sound. I’m not sure what noise it is. I’ve rendered him speechless. He swallows. Opens his lips. Tries to talk. He drags his hand over his jaw. His square jaw that I want for my baby. His genes are so fine, and now I’m wantonly coveting the DNA that made his face.

“Nicole.”

I try to read his tone, but it’s impossible. For several interminable seconds, I’m sure I’ve ruined our friendship and our working relationship.

I need words. I need to talk my way back to normal. I adopt a bright, cheery smile. “Hey, don’t worry about it. We can totally pretend I never said that. Let’s bring on the milkshakes and talk about Steve’s insane swing.”

His lips twitch, and he lifts his arm, stretches it across the table. He sets his hand on my right hand. “Nicole,” he says again, and this time his voice is strong, reassuring. “You caught me off guard. I never in a million years expected to be asked that.”

“It’s not exactly an everyday request,” I whisper.

He shakes his head. “It’s not.”

“More like something from a sitcom, huh?” I say with a little we’re all good shrug.

“I don’t think it’s a sitcom,” he says, and I want to thank him a thousand times over for not bantering back with me. He seems to realize that now’s not the time for jokes. “Let’s talk about what you have in mind.”

My lungs inflate with oxygen again. I recalibrate, since I was sure he wasn’t going to be open to it, based on his initial reaction. But as I regard his kind eyes and his palm on mine, my pulse settles. His hand is warm, and it calms my nerves. It gives me the courage to begin.

“I looked into adoption, and while I think it’s amazing, I want to try first to have and carry a baby. I’m completely ready to do it on my own, so I’ve been looking into sperm banks.” I stop to roll my eyes in a self-deprecating way. “Believe me, I know it’s the height of irony that the gal who usually has open browser tabs full of the latest and greatest in vibrators and sexual positions now spends more time perusing the offerings at sperm banks.”

He smiles, and that’s another feature I can add to the list. The man has a great smile. It’s warm and exhilarating at the same time. “Some women are checking out Plenty of Fish. You’re checking out plenty of tadpoles,” he says, then makes a keep-talking gesture with his free hand. “Go on.”

“And the reality is pretty stark.”

“You mean the pickings are slim? Or there’s no one you want to bring home to mama?”

“Let me tell you all about sperm banks.”

A soft flurry of laughter falls from his lips. “Words I never thought I’d hear tonight. Or any night,” he says, and oddly enough, this conversation is going better than I expected.





Eight





Ryder

Before she can utter a word, the waitress returns with Nicole’s chopped salad and my burger. We say thank you, then I eye the lettuce, tomatoes, and carrots in Nicole’s dish with suspicion. “You sure about the burger thing?” I lift the top bun on mine. “Eat me. I taste soooo good,” I say in a cartoon character voice.

She laughs and shakes her head. “Thank you for the offer. But I’m cutting back on food that talks.”

“Tell me everything I ever wanted to know about sperm banks. But wait. First, can we just agree that the word sperm is up there with moist, pucker, and slacks?”

“It so is. We should call it cupcakes instead of sperm,” she says, and I’m glad we’re keeping it as light as we can, because this is such a serious topic. I meant it when I said never in a million years did I expect her to hit me up for some of my swimmers. I figured she had a crazy column in mind, too, or that she’d also been slapped with a new assignment from Cal—we’ve heard from a sexual researcher in Indonesia about five newly discovered sexual positions. Can you test them out and report back on their pleasure potential, please?

But this? She’s given me a bona fide, certified case of complete flabbergastedness.

I’ve no intention of becoming a dad, considering I don’t have a wife nor do I want one, since wives—in my experience—have a habit of spreading their legs when you’re not home.

Mine did at least.

With several men.

Yeah, that’s Maggie for you. The sweet little pastry chef had quite a secret life.

The woman who stood next to me in a church and took a vow before God and all our friends and family to be faithful wasn’t loyal at all. To top it off, she was unfaithful in spectacular fashion. That’s how she did everything. With panache. With exclamation marks. When Maggie made a decision, she was all-in. She didn’t just cheat. She cheated seven times. With seven men.

But she was sorry. She was so very sorry. She didn’t realize she had a problem. She didn’t know she was addicted. Would I please stand by her while she sought treatment for sex addiction? Because she wanted nothing more than to conquer her addictive behavior, change, and remain my wife.

As if that was ever going to happen.

Look, I’m sympathetic to addiction. I have a cousin who has battled the demons of alcoholism. I get that addiction is a beast, and it can wrap a person in its clutches. I understand the painful toll it can inflict on a family.

But as a man, I couldn’t bring myself to look beyond what Maggie did to us. She admitted everything one evening in our living room after I’d just finished a report for a client.

“Honey, I need to tell you something.”

She kneeled beside my chair, clasped my hand, and then spewed forth her confession like vomit as she came clean and begged for forgiveness.

I was shocked. I was hurt, and I was, frankly, disgusted. “Whatever forgiveness you seek, you’ll need to find it with God. It’s not coming from your soon-to-be ex-husband,” I told her, and then I kicked her out.

Two years of marriage, nine months of engagement, three months of courtship. That’s 1095 days of my life flushed down the drain.

All of them a lie.

In retrospect, the signs of her extracurricular activities were there all along. Too much time on her phone, too many unexplained hours away, too many distracted moments. I’d chosen to look the other way because I’d loved her. But it’s amazing how quickly you can fall out of love with someone when they smash the vows of marriage and fidelity, stomping on them with steel-toed boots.