“Are you talking about a sperm donor?”
“Yes,” he says. “Your timeline is tight, right? You’re thirty-five. You’ll have to meet someone and get pregnant almost immediately if you want to have a baby before you’re forty.” I look up in surprise, and Andre says, “I do listen when you talk.”
“I know you do. It’s just. . .” I don’t know why I’ve never thought of going the donor route. “I don’t know. It’s expensive, for one. And I’ll be a single parent.”
“Your baby will have two grandfathers, three uncles, and an aunt who will dote on her.”
I can’t help smiling at the enthusiasm in his voice. “You think I’ll have a girl?” Andre makes it sound like it’s real, this baby, not a dream that gets more out of reach with each passing day.
“Either is good,” Andre says diplomatically. “If it’s a boy, I’ll teach him to play basketball, and if it’s a girl—”
“Let’s not stereotype my unborn child. You’ll teach her to play basketball, too.”
He rolls his eyes. “Yes, Soph.”
There’s something to his idea. Before starting every date, I tell myself to have low expectations, but my brain doesn’t always cooperate. If a guy has a great dating profile, I get hopeful. When it turns out that he’s not forty-five like his profile says, but sixty, I get angry. I started the ‘Find a Partner ASAP’ project a year ago, and ever since then, my emotions have been on a non-stop roller coaster ride. If I went the donor insemination route, I could stop the endless parade of first dates. I could just breathe.
“Thanks, Andre.” I get to my feet. “I better turn in. Busy day tomorrow.”
“You’re working on Saturday? Again?”
“You sound like Papa,” I tease. “It’s the fundraiser tomorrow, you idiot. Why do you remember my dating stories and not my work ones?”
“Siri, find me a polite way to tell Sophia her work stories are boring.”
I smother my laughter and punch his arm. “I can’t believe you’ve forgotten how stressed I was a couple of weeks ago. Our landlord wanted to sell the building, remember? And then, out of the blue, Xavier Leforte called and offered to help. I told him we needed two million dollars to buy our building outright, and he didn’t even blink.”
“Xavier Leforte, the sex club guy?”
I raise an eyebrow. “How do you know about Club M?” I ask severely. I don’t want my baby brother mixed up with that crowd. Not after what happened to me.
Ten years later, my palms still sweat when I think of the aftermath of my first and only ménage. I’d been working at a hospital in Pennsylvania in those days. A small team of us—Riley, Nia, George, Jaime, Beckham, and me—had been in an early-career, rotational development program. Somehow, the hospital administrator, Florence Caldwell found out about Damien and me. My heart still races when I remember the way Mrs. Caldwell’s lips thinned. “A reprehensible error in judgment,” she’d said.
And then she’d fired me.
“I could ask you the same question,” Andre replies. “But I won’t because I don’t want to think about my big sister having sex.”
“Is that why you’re pushing the IVF route?” I quip. “I’m heading in. Night, bro.”
I grab his empty bottle, toss it in the recycle bin, and head upstairs to bed, forsaking the sandwich in favor of sleep. My dreams that night are tangled. Damien Cardenas makes an appearance, as does Julian Kincaid. They’re the men I slept with at Xavier Leforte’s sex club. I’ve tried not to think about them for years, but there they are again, popping up in my subconscious.
But I also dream about a baby girl. I’m holding her in my arms and smiling down at this tiny miracle, and we’re surrounded by my beaming family.
When I wake up, my decision is made. No more bad first dates. No more untrustworthy guys. Donor sperm it is.