I smiled, happy, bopping my head to the beat of the music. They’d picked a good spot, close enough to boogie, far enough to talk. And I wanted to talk.
I guess it was the alcohol making me brave.
“How would it work?” I said. “The… the baby thing.”
The guys looked at each other for a long moment before Carl answered my question with another question.
“You really want to talk about this now?”
I nodded. “I just want to know. So I can think properly.”
He smiled. “Whatever works. No pressure, Katie. If this isn’t for you, it isn’t for you.”
But it was for me.Theywere for me.
I looked at the people in the club with us, the couples going about their business, having a good time. I looked at the group of women at the bar, laughing and joking, casting glances in our direction. And that’s when it hit me.
If I wasn’t the one for them, they’d need to find someone else. They’d need to find someone who could give them what they wanted. Give them a family.
I thought about it being one of those women, the women flashing glances our way, wondering which guy was mine and which was free game. I thought about another woman having Carl’s baby, Rick’s baby, bringing up a family with these two amazing men at their side.
And it made me feel sick as a fucking dog.
I didn’t want someone else to have their baby. I didn’t want someone else taking my place in their life.
I took another sip of cocktail.
Drunk. I was drunk.
“So,” I said. “Tell me. How would it work? You must have plans.”
Rick cleared his throat. “We, um… we’ve given it some thought.”
“A lot of thought,” Carl added. “We come together or not at all, that’s the rule.”
“I know,” I said. “I get it.”
“But you don’t,” Carl said. “We wouldn’t want to know, not for certain.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Who the father was,” he continued. “Thebiologicalfather. We’d rather not know.”
Rick leaned over, took my hand. “We’ll love a baby the same either way, it doesn’t matter. Why complicate it by knowing?”
I looked from one to the other. “So, you just… share… and then don’t know whose baby it is?”
“Exactly,” Carl said. “That feels right to us.”
“And then we’d live together? Bring it up?”
We. I said we.
Rick nodded. “I only work part time, it makes life a bit easier.”
“And how would you explain it to the baby? Daddy one and Daddy two?” The thought made me laugh and it shouldn’t. “Sorry,” I said. “This is just surreal.”
“It’s alright,” Carl said. “And we don’t know yet. We don’t know what the baby would know us as.”