“Who are these people?” I ask her.
“Work dorks, mostly,” she says. “I went to college with Lyla. She’s a socialist.” June shrugs. “I thought I’d mix it up.”
She squeezes my arm. “Thank you for dressing hideously so that I can sparkle. It’s so considerate.”
“Do you need anything?” I gesture toward the bar.
June knocks back the rest of her drink. “Actually, I’ll come with you.” She burps a little and grabs my forearm for support as I lead.
“I want to get pregnant,” she tells me once we’re out of earshot.
“Tonight?”
“While I can.”
An odd squeak escapes my throat. “What—and those guys back there are your donors?” I glance at the table.
“Essentially.”
“June.”
“I’m serious,” she says, clutching my forearm with her talons. “Just to know what it feels like at least for a second.”
“If you were pregnant for a few days, it’s just a few cells. It’s like you ate a corn nut. It’s barely a shadow.”
“I haven’t ever even taken the fucking morning-after pill.”
“It’s no picnic,” I retort, and she looks at me for a beat.
“Gross,” she says, and then laughs.
I sit sidesaddle on a stool watching her lean onto the gleaming wood bar, boobs hoisted, foot hitched on the brass railing underneath.
“Why?”
“May as well take the ol’ equipment around the block.”
“Well, do you want to have a baby?” I ask her.
“Not with any of these dipshits,” she quips.
Her smile dies when she sees my expression.
“Don’t you think if you want to be pregnant for a second, it might be worth thinking about? Dr. Ramirez said you could talk to a fertility specialist. You could still freeze… something.”
She ignores me to hail the bartender. “I’ll have two Bombay martinis, extra dry, filthy. With two olives each, up.” June points her thumb when she says “up.”
For a second I’m distracted that she knows how to do that. To order a martini in that way.
“You’re going to have kids, right?” She turns to me.
“I…” I think about my period. How long it’s been gone. How I’m terrified that I’ve broken something in there from all the abuses I’ve heaped on my body in the last few years. “I don’t know,” I tell her.
Our frosty martini glasses arrive. She leans over to slurp the top of hers before picking it up, and I copy her. It’s briny, slippery, and cold.
June takes her cardboard coaster upright and absentmindedly saws the edge of the bar with it. “I did talk to them. The fertility people. I even talked to Steph, and I’m not a good candidate for ovarian preservation. I asked. I can physically do it all—go on hormones, put it off as long as possible, try to have a baby—but nobody advises it. The thing is, I don’t want to find an angle on this one. I always try to game things, and it’s never worked. The reality is, I don’t want to risk it…”
She raises her glass to me. “I got to get knocked the fuck up right now.”
“Okay.” I raise mine. “To you conceiving however briefly at your secret hysterectomy sex party.”
We clink glasses.
“And to the science fiction horror show of me giving birth to my own fucking uterus and ovaries.”
“Jesus, June.”
She keeps her glass held aloft, so I touch it with mine.
We drink.
“Life is fucking weird,” she says.
“It is.”
“Do you think it gets worse?”
“Probably?”
She laughs and toasts me again, which makes me laugh. My sister hugs my shoulders and squeezes. I wrap my arms around her middle. In her stripper heels, she’s taller than me for once.
“Fuck, Jayne,” she says after a while, blinking rapidly, eyelashes fan-dancing. “I hate this.” She exhales slowly. I hand her a cocktail napkin, which she touches to the corners of her eyes. Her fingernails are shellacked in an oystery color. “But at least semen is an antidepressant, I think. It’s also basically all protein, right?”
“Totally.” I have no idea if this is true.
“Promise me you’ll have kids.” June blots her nostrils and inspects the contents of her napkin.
“June.”
“You’d be a good mom,” she says. A lump forms in my throat. “Everyone fucks everyone up, but you’re so fucked up already, you’ll be understanding about stuff like that.”
“Thanks, I guess.”
“You’re a good teammate.” She clears her throat.
I think about the two of us. Our tiny cult.
“And you’re sure you don’t want to talk to Mom about any of this?”
June shakes her head and extracts the olive at the bottom of her glass. “They have enough going on.” My sister places the furry olive pit on her napkin.
I think of Dad’s lump of dough, parceled off and tossed into deep-freeze time-out so that the rest of the family can thrive. I wonder if that’s what June’s been doing all along in plain sight. Hiding her vulnerabilities so as not to be a burden.
When her second drink arrives, she takes another healthy slug.
“Wish me luck,” she says, heading back toward her friends. “Gotta get my organ basted.”
chapter 41
Patrick walks in as I’m giving June a thumbs-up. Heat prickles my scalp. When we lock eyes, he smiles. I take a sip of my drink to know where to look and what to do with my hands and face.
My heart hiccups against my diaphragm.
“Hi,” I say once Patrick’s too close to ignore. The effort in my smile makes my left ear pop. All of this is intolerable. My chest is a too-small shoe for the blood-filled foot of my heart. I feel like I’m going to pass out.
“Hey,” he says, smile faltering slightly.
I take a step toward him and offer my cheek as I squeeze his shoulder. “Guess I can’t get rid of you, huh?”
He slides his beanie off, and his hair is messier than usual. Plus, he’s got a good bit of scruff going on. His cheek is cold from outside, and he’s as rumpled as I’ve ever seen him.
He leans in, flashing his teeth with uncertainty. “Actually, wait, I didn’t hear you. What did you say?”
I’m close enough to feel the heat of his neck on my lips. “It doesn’t matter,” I mumble, pulling back. “I said, um, whatever.” I flap my hands near my face unbecomingly. “Sorry.”
“Is it June’s birthday?” he asks.
“What?”
“June…？ She made it sound like it was her birthday.”
I shrug. “It’s just a regular get-together.”
“You want to sit down?” he asks.
The things I do for my sister.
My thoughts go scribbly with pent-up bitterness as I pick a small round table and pull out a seat.
I’ve had three cups of coffee today and little else. I couldn’t possibly hate myself faster.
He unzips his leather jacket as he sits and sets it on the back of his chair. The image of the two of us in matching sweatpants feels both so long ago and so far in the future that I’m racked with a sense of vertigo.