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“No, but giant fucking giraffes just might,” she said, her face breaking into a smile.
“You’re right. I wasn’t accounting for the giraffe factor.”
Out from beneath her, Holland produced the small giraffe I’d sat on earlier. “I’ve always had a thing for them.” She pulled the stuffed animal close to her chest and planted a tiny kiss on its small head and then tucked it back under her. The move charmed me in a way I couldn’t explain. “It was the only thing my mom ever gave me,” she said quietly, not meeting my eye.
My heart broke just a little and I tried not to think of the little stuffed bear in my dreams, the car door slamming.
That whole weekend I told myself that if Holland’s pregnancy didn’t change the way I felt about her, then it didn’t change anything else, either. We’d been on a trajectory, my duchess and I. We’d been accelerating toward a commitment to each other, even though we hadn’t defined anything explicitly. I knew she cared about me, I could see it move through her crystalline eyes when she looked at me, and I could feel it when she kissed me. And me? I was fucking head over heels, and while I would never have checked “yes” in a quiz about whether I was ready to have a kid, it was fucking happening, and I wasn’t going to run from what would be the first blood family I’d ever known. Holland and I were of one mind in that way.
Or so I’d thought.
“I’ll be right back.” The duchess stepped over me, heading for her bathroom as I paused our viewing ofFootloose.I’d never seen it, and she was weirdly insistent that we had to watch it. The original, not the remake. It did give me a strange new respect for Kevin Bacon. Before that I’d really thought he was famous mostly for that stupid six degrees game. But the guy had a skinny joyful appeal I couldn’t quite pinpoint.
I sat up, waiting for her to return, and slid around some of the magazines on her coffee table, looking at the covers. She had the usual assortment of girl stuff—fashion and home mags, a couple celebrity gossip rags. I was about to grab aPeoplewhen something caught my eye—a word that would grab anyone’s attention. “Insemination.” It was also fairly topical at the moment, so I couldn’t help but push aside the other magazines to pull it out. But it wasn’t a magazine. It was a brochure. From a local sperm bank. I stared at it, confused, and then flipped open the cover to find a letter tucked inside, made out to Holland O’Dell.
Dear Ms.O’Dell,
Thank you for your interest in the services offered by Irvine Center Reproductive Services . . .
Icy shock rushed through me. What was this? I read further and discovered that this was a brochure from a sperm bank—personalized to Holland. This was the place women went when they decided to get pregnant. When they decided that random chance or careful planning weren’t enough. When they decided to take things into their own hands.
Why would she have this? My mind began to twist in uncomfortable directions, pushing me to conclusions I didn’t even want to consider. Holland wanted a family. She’d told me that several times. She envied Delia and Carl, wanted what they had . . .
I hated myself for even thinking it, but what the fuck was this? I felt like I was holding a smoking gun. Had Holland lied to me and tried to rope me into being responsible for her pregnancy? For what? For money? I shook my head slowly indisbelief. My world tilted and everything I thought I knew slid sideways with a sickening crash.
Alarms sounded in me and familiar anger began to swirl in my gut, making me feel sick. The bathroom door clicked and she reappeared.
I stood. “What is this?” I asked her, holding up the brochure.
She wrinkled her nose in confusion and cocked her head to get a better look. “Oh!” She laughed. “Delia brought that to me. A while ago.” She gave me a strange look then, as if she couldn’t think why I might be asking.
“Were you considering artificial insemination?” My voice sounded thin and brittle.
The smile left her face and I watched her realize I was seconds from losing it. She shook her head. “No, not really.”
“Not really? Or no?”
“No!” She took a step back and it made me wonder what I looked like—if I seemed so frightening that she would need to get away from me. The step backward also seemed defensive, like something someone would do if they felt guilty about lying. “Delia and I talked about it a long time ago. About how if I didn’t meet the right guy . . .” she trailed off, her eyes darkening. “You don’t seriously think I . . .”
“I don’t know what to think.”
“Oliver, I would never—” I heard anger begin to creep into Holland’s voice, pairing with the hurt there.
I was standing in Holland’s living room, staring at her with the brochure shaking in my hand. It was as if I was watching myself from above, watching myself loseeverything I thought I’d found. I felt the familiar dark tug of anger, the betrayal and confusion that comes with being lied to by someone you love, and it began to overwhelm me.
It was way too fucking familiar. My vision narrowed and I felt a rush of emotion, a tidal wave breaking over me, washing me away where I stood and flushing every little bit of humanity I’d found recently back out until it was diluted by black swirling hatred and confusion. I had to get out before everything I’d tried so hard to get past in the preceding year knocked me down again and washed me out into a bleak, boundless sea. For a second I thought it didn’t even matter if Holland had lied or not. What mattered was my realization that she could. And that I’d made myself vulnerable to it.
And that somewhere, deep down in a part of me that was ugly and sour, I believed that she actually had.
“I have to go.”
Her voice followed me as I picked up my shoes and burst out her front door, searching my pockets for my car keys. I stumbled out to the elevator, my soul emptying out as I descended each floor until I found myself speeding along the freeway, an empty husk of a man.
“Fuck!” I screamed at the steering wheel, desperate to relieve the overwhelming emotion inside me somehow, to let it out before it swelled to the point that I exploded. “Fuck!” I screamed again, narrowly missing a car as I swerved through the lanes. My phone was buzzing in my pocket, but I ignored it. I stumbled into my house, poured a tall glass of scotch and sank into a chair, unable to form my disparate emotions intoanything that would allow a rational thought to press through the subsuming murk.
Monday morning dawned bright and optimistic, an irritating contrast to my mood. I was at the office early, and my email inbox was overflowing.
I knew Holland and I needed to talk, I just didn’t look forward to the next conversation. At all. I was angry and confused, betrayed again by someone I loved. Which was why I buried myself in work for the entire day.
