Chapter Twelve
With my Atlanta Braves cap pulled low over my eyes, I hunkered down in my chair in the waiting room of ARMC or the Atlanta Reproductive Medicine Center. It was thirty minutes after closing, and the place was pretty much a ghost town, except for a few patients straggling out from their appointments. Each time someone came out to the front desk, I tensed, fearful they would recognize me. Abby, who sat beside me, would squeeze my hand reassuringly. As I cut my eyes over to her, I couldn’t help snickering at her disguise.
Her beautiful blonde hair was hidden underneath a jet-black wig. Her usually long hair was only chin length. Tortoise shell glasses were perched on her nose, and her usually sparkling blue eyes were hidden under dark contacts. Of course, the disguise had been my idea. She hadn’t given two shits about whether or not we were spotted a fertility clinic. “A lot of our fans suffer from this too, Jake,” she had reasoned. But the prideful side of me didn’t want to see our faces splashed all over the tabloids—our private agony on a grocery newsstand as people checked out with their milk and bread.
The ARMC’s Perimeter location had become a familiar fixture in our lives since I’d finally decided not to be a selfish prick and consent to having a baby. Usually you had to go a whole year of not getting pregnant before you were referred to a fertility clinic. But because of Abby’s surgery, we were a special case, and we got to cut the line.
She had been through a whole gamut of below-the-waist tests that I didn’t begin to understand. I was sure that more people had seen her vag in the last two months than in the entire time she’d been on this earth. As modest as she usually was, she didn’t seem to care her hoo-hah was on display for various specialists. For me, it helped that our doctor was a female, as were the technicians.
“Mr. and Mrs. Moore?” the nurse called.
It took Abby smacking my arm for me to move. For a minute, I didn’t recognize the name. And then I remembered I was even more of a bastard because I had us under an assumed name—my mother’s maiden name.
I scrambled out of the seat to follow Abby and the nurse down the hall. Once we were closed into the room, the nurse took my blood pressure and temperature. All the while, she and Abby chattered to each other while I remained silent. When a plastic cup was thrust into my hands, I totally froze. Even though there were words and sentences coming out of the nurse’s mouth, I couldn’t hear anything. I didn’t nod in acknowledgment or reply. My gaze bounced back and forth between her and Abby. While Abby nodded along, I remained rooted to the floor, unblinking and unmoving.
When the door closed behind the nurse, my throat constricted. The walls of the room seemed to close in on me. I stared dumbly down at the container in my hand before glancing down at my junk. If my dick could have talked, it would have probably said, Not on your f*cking life am I about to get it up in this room for you to jack off into a cup! Have you lost your pride, dude?
“Jake?” Abby questioned. When I glanced up at her, she wore a concerned expression. “Baby, are you okay?”
“Fine,” I croaked.
“You look a little green.”
That’s probably because I feel like I’m going to puke. “I’m fine,” I reassured her.
“You know I can tell when you’re lying, right?”
I gulped. “Seriously?”
She nodded as she closed the gap between us. “It’s okay to be freaked out about this, Jake. When it all comes down to it, I’m freaked out too.”
“You are?”
“How could I not be? We’re in a reproductive clinic under assumed names with me in a disguise.”
“Yeah, that’s true.”
She swept the wig off, her blonde hair tumbling over her shoulders. After she tossed it on the examining table, she looked back at me and smiled. “But in the end, it’s just you and me, babe. It’s still the two of us making a life, even if the conception is a little different than what we planned.”
“I know,” I murmured, staring at the plastic cup in my hands.
“Jake, look at me,” Abby commanded.
When I glanced up at her, she smiled. “I wanted to do something to make this easier on you.” Her hands came to her top. With wide-eyes and my mouth gaping open, I watched as she pulled it off. “Abby?” I croaked. I couldn’t believe she was stripping down.
“We’re in this together, Jake. Did you really think I was just going to make you do this on your own?”
“Well, um, maybe?”
She tsked at me. As I gazed at her checked bra, I realized it was familiar. Licking my lips, I could barely wait for her to strip down. As she shimmied the skirt off her hips and down her thighs, I couldn’t help smiling.
She grinned back at me. “Recognize this lingerie?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“I chose it for a reason.”
“Besides the fact that I love you in it?”
“Mmm, hmm.” She tossed her skirt onto the table with her sweater. “You know, we did something like this once before, remember? Me in this lingerie with you touching yourself.”
“Um, it was a little different since we were both on the phone and weren’t in the same room together.”
“It’s still kinda the same thing.”
“If you say so,” I murmured, as I eyed her garters. “F*ck, Angel, you’re so damn sexy.”
She gave me a wicked grin as her fingers came to the button of my jeans. After she unbuttoned and unzipped me, she slid my pants and boxers down to my knees. Although I was enjoying the sights, my dick still wasn’t with the program. I couldn’t help feeling a little embarrassed when Abby glanced down and saw. “It’s okay,” she whispered, her breath warmed against my cheek. “I’ll take care of that.”
I moaned when her hands came to grip my dick. As her hands worked up and down me, my cock slowly started to rise to the glorious occasion. I exhaled the breath I’d been holding. “Touch me, Jake,” Abby murmured. With her free hand, she brought my palm to her breast. As I squeezed her flesh over her bra, she continued working my growing length.
With my free hand, I reached out to pull her closer to me. I wanted my lips on hers, but most of all, I wanted my tongue in her mouth. It was the closest I was going to come to being inside her today. As I thrust my tongue against hers, Abby moaned into my mouth. I slid my hand into the cup of her bra to knead one luscious breast. My thumb tweaked her nipple into a hardened point as Abby sped her pace up on my dick. As I continued plunging my tongue in and out of her mouth, I felt my balls tightening.
“Come for me, Jake,” Abby commanded, her breath hot against my mouth.
Since she’d never said those words to me before or with that demanding tone, I could do nothing else but obey her. Burying my head in her shoulder, I shuddered and convulsed. When I finally came back to myself, I glanced down. In a hoarse voice, I questioned, “Did I make it?”
“Yep, we have a cup full of baby batter!”
I laughed. “Is that what we’re calling it?”
She grinned. “It’s better than a cup of cum, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, I think so. Although I’m digging the alliteration of it.”
Abby kissed me. “Thank you, Jake.”
“You’re welcome, Angel.”
She smiled as she pulled away. She then capped the container and hurried to get dressed. I pulled up my boxers and jeans before heading to the bathroom. After Abby and I washed up, the nurse appeared to take the container.
“So what happens now?” I asked.
“After the semen analysis, it will then be frozen in preparation for the IUI procedure.” She glanced over at Abby. “Which should be in a few days, right?”
“Yes,” Abby replied.
The nurse nodded. “Then we will unfreeze the sperm, wash it, and then prepare for the IUI. Then hopefully, you’ll be pregnant.”
“I hope so,” Abby murmured.
“The next step is to call us when you get your LH surge, and we’ll go from there.” With one last smile, she headed out the door with our baby batter.
“How about dinner?” I asked, as Abby grabbed her purse.
“After all of that, how can you think about food?”
I snorted. “I just worked up an appetite, babe.”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re impossible.”
“Frankly, after you just used me like that, I think the least you could do was buy me dinner.”
Abby grinned. “I think I can do that.”
The morning of our IUI, I went in with Abby to hold her hand. I felt like I needed to be there not only to support her, but because it felt like I still had a part in conceiving our child if I was there. I couldn’t believe how quick the actual procedure was. Sure, there was a lot that went into the ‘before’ parts of the insemination, like Abby having to pee on an ovulation stick, take some egg producing drugs, get ultrasounds during her period and God knows what else. Then of course, there was my part of jacking off to get our baby batter, which turned out I had good swimmers. I mean, I wasn’t too surprised at that fact.
But that morning, it was just a catheter shooting my jizz into Abby’s uterus. She didn’t even have to lie down for a long time afterwards. When it was over, Dr. McElroy gave us her kind, knowing smile. “Now, don’t be surprised if it doesn’t work out the first time. The window for conception really is smaller than anyone believes. Just because it doesn’t happen this time, doesn’t mean it won’t.”
I guess I should have taken more stock into that little pep talk. Especially when the early pregnancy test the clinic did revealed we weren’t pregnant. Abby held out hope that maybe the test was wrong until she got her period. I found her a weeping mess in the bathroom, glaring at a box of tampons on the counter like they were the enemy.
Wrapping my arms around her, I let her cry it out. When her sobs had become nothing more than sniffling, I pulled away and kissed her. Cupping her face in my hands, I stared intently into her eyes. “Angel, it’s going to happen. Remember what the doctor said.”
“I’ll try,” she whispered.
I would like to say that the second time was a charm, but it wasn’t. And each time we didn’t get pregnant, more of Abby’s hope died a little, and I saw the vulnerable, emotionally battle-worn side of Abby that few others did. She had been so good to care for me during my dark times, so now it was my turn. Each time, I spoke words of encouragement that the next time would work.
And then the fourth time it actually did.
Abby was really pregnant, and I was going to be a father.