“I need your sperm,” I blurt out.
Josh starts to choke, then he coughs. His face turns red and he hits his chest.
Oh no. I’ve killed him.
He coughs and his eyes water.
I slap his back and he shakes his head.
Maybe I shouldn’t have just blurted it out like that, but I was nervous and I didn’t think.
Finally, he takes a wheezing breath and says, “Come again?”
“I…I need your sperm?”
I smile at him. The look he gives me makes my hand fly to my mouth in an effort to contain the laugh bubbling up from my chest. Oh jeez, I’ve lost my brain. I should’ve written talking points or a speech or something.
“You want to have sex?” Josh asks. He looks really confused. “Gemma. You really have to work on your pick-up lines.”
I shake my head. But he’s already starting to lift his shirt up. I catch a glimpse of rock-hard abs. “If you want to, we can. But we’ll have to hurry. The New Year’s Resolution reading is soon. We have maybe ten minutes. Not that I can’t blow your mind in ten minutes.”
I scoot back and make a strangled sound.
He takes in my expression and starts to snicker.
“Kidding. Gemma, I’m kidding,” he says, and he drops his shirt.
I nod and blow out a long, mind-clearing breath. “Sorry, I didn’t say that right. What I meant to say was, ummm, we’ve known each other a long time.”
“Twenty-four years,” he agrees.
“Right. We grew up in the same town. Went to the same school. You’re my brother’s best friend. You come to our holiday parties, birthdays. You’re always around.”
I scrutinize his face to see if he gets where I’m going. Unfortunately, he just looks confused.
“I feel like I know you pretty well. I can say that you’re a decent guy.”
He frowns. “Thanks.”
“If I ask you something, do you promise not to tell Dylan, or anybody?”
Josh leans back and studies me. “Gem, I don’t think we should have sex.”
I close my eyes. “No. No, jeez. Obviously. Ugh, did it once, got the T-shirt.”
I open one eye and look at him, then I open the other.
He grins at me. “The T-shirt huh?”
I shrug and roll my eyes. “You remember when I had surgery for that ruptured ovarian cyst and the surgeon said I’d never have kids?”
At twenty-two I already had stage four endometriosis. Like Greg Butkis said, my abdomen looks like a grenade went off and my tubes are completely blocked. For a lot of women, there’s pain with endometriosis, but I never felt anything, never knew anything was wrong. Even today, I wouldn’t know anything was off, except for the fact that the doctors can see the damage.
Josh swallows and sits up straight, the joking smile fades from his lips. “Sure. I remember.”
I look at his expression and realize that maybe Josh doesn’t always take everything in life as a joke.
“I went to see an infertility doctor. I’m going to have a baby.”
An emotion flashes in Josh’s eyes that I can’t decipher, and the dark brown of his irises goes even darker. “You’re…you’re what?”
I nod. “I’m going to have a baby. The doctor said that I can’t get pregnant naturally, but I can through IVF. That’s in vitro fertilization-”
“I know what it is.” His voice is terse, and I can’t tell what he’s thinking.
I clasp my hands together to keep from fidgeting. “The doctor said women either use their partner’s sperm or donated sperm. And I…”
Oh jeez. Sitting in front of Josh, watching the expressions move across his face, makes this conversation a lot harder than I thought it’d be.
“You’re pregnant?” he asks. He looks at my abdomen.
My hand flies to my stomach. “No. Not yet. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.”
“Okay?” Then the confusion fades and I can tell he understands. “You want me to…you want my—”
“I want your sperm.”
“You want to have my baby?” he says at the same time.
“No,” I say.
“No,” he says.
“No,” I say again. “I don’t want to have your baby. I don’t want you to have any responsibilities or anything like that. She’ll be my baby, not anybody else’s.”
Josh makes an affronted sound in his throat.
I stand and start to pace. The horrible orange skirt climbs up my thighs so that my underwear is nearly visible. I yank it back down and the dried barbecue sauce flakes off my chest. Ugh.