“Okay. None of that came out right. I’m going to start over.”
“Sure.” Josh puts on his the-world-is-here-to-amuse-me smile that I associate him with and settles back on my bed to listen.
“I’m tired of waiting for some fairy prince to come along, sweep me off my feet and give me a family to love and kids to dote on. I’m thirty-two, it could be years before he arrives, if ever. In fact, seeing as how the last few years have gone, I’m banking on never.”
“Alright,” he says. “I’m with you so far.”
I let out a surprised huff. “You know, that’s what I like about you. You don’t judge.”
He nods and takes the compliment.
I continue, “I want kids. Ever since I first held Sasha in my arms and she grabbed my finger with her tiny little hand I—” My voice cracks. “I realized I wanted to be a mom.”
I know it’s not a modern sentiment, that I should be happy with my career, my single life, my autonomy, but darn it, can’t I be a successful, modern woman and still want someone to love? A family to love? Can’t I excel in my career and also want to hold my baby to my chest and wipe her tears or give her love?
“Alright, but what does this have to do with me?” Josh asks.
I stop pacing and pull down my skirt. The top dips lower on my breasts. To his credit, Josh’s eyes never leave my face. Come to think of it, he’s one of the few men outside of my family whose eyes have never strayed below my face.
“I could pick a sperm donor from a database. It tells you basic things about the donor. But that kind of freaked me out. I thought…I figured, if I’m going to have a baby, I’d like to know more about the father. So, I made a list.”
There, see, I did make a list.
I hold up a finger. Josh stares at it. “First. I wanted the father to be smart. You’re smart.”
That’s a bit of an understatement. Josh isn’t just smart, he’s brilliant. He got straight A’s in high school and he graduated magna cum laude from an Ivy League.
I hold up another finger. “Second. I want the father to be…”—how to phrase this—“okay looking.”
Josh raises an eyebrow. I wave my hands at his face. “You know. Your nose is straight, your teeth are straight, and you have a nice chin.”
“A nice chin?”
“Yeah.”
I hold up a third finger before he can say anything more. “Third. I want the father to be athletic, to make up for my complete and utter lack of coordination.”
“You are pretty clumsy,” he agrees, referencing, I’m sure, the sauce all over me.
I shrug and take his agreement as a good sign.
“Four. I want to know the father comes from a healthy, robust family.” But, come to think of it, I don’t know that about him. “Does your family have any history of disease? Cancers, diabetes, heart disease, you know all those things they ask you on the family history form at the doctors.”
He lets out a disbelieving huff of air. “My grandpa had ulcers. And my mom’s brother had arthritis. My grandma had adult-onset diabetes.”
“Hmm. Okay. No, that’s alright. Every family has something.”
Josh raises his eyebrows. “So, that’s it? I met your qualifications. I’m your perfect sperm donor?”
“Exactly. I mean, I’ve known you all your life. I know you’re a good guy. You have really good genes.” He raises an eyebrow and I shrug. “You’re already like a member of the family. I’m not asking you to be a dad or anything. If you don’t want the baby to know you’re the father, that’s okay. If you do, then we can make an agreement where you have a weekend a month or…” I trail off at the look on his face.
“For crying out loud, Gemma. This sounds like a divorce without the benefit of the honeymoon sex.”
Oh. Wow. Okay.
I look down at the pink rag rug covering the wood floor.
Josh has never divorced, but I have. And now that he puts it that way, it does sound crazy/horrible asking him to be a sperm donor. There’s nothing, absolutely nothing in it for him. Not even honeymoon sex.
I take a moment to think his words over then look up. “Okay. No, you’re right. It was really stupid of me to ask. I just thought, you know, if I had to pick anyone to be a donor, I’d want to pick someone like you.”
I feel myself flush. It’s not like I’ve been pining after Josh freaking Lewenthal for twenty-four years. I’m indifferent to him. He’s always been around, sort of like that potted plant in the corner that you don’t notice until someone points it out. We don’t really talk or interact, he’s just there.