Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 94048 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 470(@200wpm)___ 376(@250wpm)___ 313(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94048 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 470(@200wpm)___ 376(@250wpm)___ 313(@300wpm)
There were sleepovers. Sure, there were nights here and there. But never a sustained, consistent, night-after-night sleeping partner. And now I’m in Simon’s bed staring down the barrel of five years of this, and I’m starting to think I made a huge mistake.
“You said something earlier that I keep thinking about.” I turn my head and he’s looking at me. I can make out his eyes and his mouth in the darkness now that my eyes have adjusted. He sleeps in a pair of boxer shorts and no shirt, just his bare, naked chest, which is almost rude. He’s supposed to keep himself covered so I can more easily control myself.
“Yeah? What part? I did a lot of rambling.” The wine’s making me happy and sleepy as I curl up onto my side and tuck an arm under my head.
“About being the mother of my child.” He’s lying on his back, staring at the ceiling. “I guess I was being a little naive about your relationship to our child. I imagined you wouldn’t want to be involved, but that wouldn’t be easy for you, would it?”
I close my eyes. I can picture giving birth in an abstract way, but it’s hard to really know how it’ll feel. I can imagine having a baby, a little boy or girl, and all the emotions that come with it. I can picture these things but I know it’s like a pale shadow of the actual experience, and he’s right—if I get pregnant three months from now and have a child nine months later, that means I’ll be around for the first few years of their life.
How could I not be their mother? How could I bring life into this world and live in the same house without being there for them? Without falling in love?
“It’s a little more complicated than I realized,” I admit and bury my face in the pillow. “I mean, it’s not like the baby’s going to disappear after it’s born, right? I’ll be here, and so will the baby, and—”
He shifts toward me. I squeeze my eyes closed tighter.
“I won’t force you to be in this child’s life,” he says and sounds surprisingly gentle. “But if you want to be, I won’t stop you, either. I know that I’m asking a lot of you, and I’m willing to be flexible. I’m willing to give you what you need.”
The only problem being I don’t know what that is.
When I agreed to this, I pictured it as a surrogacy-type thing. Like it would be a mechanical transaction: pregnancy, shove the baby out, and boom, all done. But our deal doesn’t end there. Even if the child is raised somewhere else in the oasis, I’ll still be around. First steps, first words, first everything. How could I turn my back on that?
“I have to think about it,” I finally tell him. “But I guess it’s something I have to figure out.”
Another silence. I’m breathing slow and deep, and I keep imagining a child running around, a baby that looks just like me. How impossible it’ll be not to want to pick them up and hold them against my chest.
“Emily,” he says, and I stir, feeling sleepy, halfway to drifting off. “I want to ask your permission to do something.”
That wakes me the hell up. “Uh, sorry, I mean—”
“I want to hold your hand. Just for a minute. So you know that I mean what I say.”
My heart’s racing like crazy because I definitely wasn’t thinking hold my hand, more like slam his cock into my mouth, but this is probably better. I reach out until my fingers brush his arm and he shifts positions until our hands are touching in the space between our bodies.
His fingertips stroke along my palm. I shiver and close my eyes, biting my lip as a smile stretches my lips. It feels good. It feels intimate. It’s what we were going for, and now I wonder if I shouldn’t have stayed in that damn guest room, because in there I never thought about the implications of giving birth to his child, and I never had to hold his hand.
I never wanted him when I was alone in the guest room.
Walls and doors are probably a good idea, but I don’t think I’m going to be allowed any of those anymore.
Chapter 24
Simon
I’m stuck working late the next night even though all I want to do is go home and get into bed with my wife.
It’s fucked. It makes no sense. I shouldn’t need to lie in bed quietly, not even touching, barely even talking, with a woman who barely wants anything to do with me.
And yet she’s all I think about.
Her lips in the morning, the sound of her laughter, the glimpse of her breasts I caught as she stretched when I came out of the bathroom before I left earlier. I’m obsessing over these moments, these little nothing moments, and hanging on them like they’re all I’ve got.