Call Me Crazy (Bellamy Creek #3) - Melanie Harlow Page 0,6
“Well, the baby is something I’ve been thinking about for a while. I’ve always wanted children, but I haven’t met the one yet, and unfortunately for a woman, the biological clock is an actual thing. And mine is ticking.”
“How old are you?”
“I’ll be thirty-three next month.”
“That’s not that old. My mother had my brother Matteo when she was like thirty-eight or something.”
“I’ve got some additional reproductive health concerns, okay?” Uncomfortable discussing them with him, I took a sip of my martini. “Without going into detail, I’ll just say that it would be better for me to try to get pregnant sooner rather than later. It’s likely I’ll struggle to conceive, so putting it off will only be worse for me.”
He looked like he might ask more about it but closed his mouth and took a drink. “So how would that even work? Would we have to actually—”
“No!” I set my drink down so fast, some of it splashed onto the tablecloth. “It would all be done in a fertility clinic. You’d donate your . . . you know.” I found myself struggling to say the word sperm. “Genetic material.”
One of his dark eyebrows peaked. “My genetic material?”
“Yes.” My face warmed, and I knew a hot pink blush was creeping into my cheeks. “The procedure is called an intrauterine insemination. You provide the, um, DNA, it gets washed and concentrated, and then a nurse performs the . . . placement into my uterus.”
“Oh, like the thing with the turkey baster? I’ve heard about that.”
I sighed and sat up straight, feeling like a principal dealing with a troublesome schoolboy. “Yes, sort of.”
“That doesn’t sound very sexy,” he said, lifting his glass again—but not before I caught the grin creeping onto his lips.
“It’s not supposed to be sexy,” I said stiffly. “It’s science.”
“Okay, so what then, you get pregnant with our science baby and then I’m supposed to divorce you while you’re pregnant? No fucking way. I’ll look like a monster.”
“We can wait until after it’s born if you want,” I said quickly. “I’m just not sure how long it will take for me to get pregnant. I suppose we could write it into our contract that if I don’t get pregnant within a certain amount of time, the whole thing is null and void.”
Enzo thought for a moment and shook his head. “But if you do get pregnant, I’m an asshole for leaving.”
I held up both hands. “I’ll take all the blame. I’ll leave you.”
“But I must have done something to make you leave. I’m the asshole in all your ideas,” he complained. “No. If we do this, it would have to be an amicable parting. No one gets the blame.”
“Okay, fine. We’d split up as friends.”
“We’re not even friends right now.”
I tossed a hand up. “So we’ll split up as non-friends! However you want to end things, Enzo, I’ll agree to it. As long as I leave with the baby.”
Enzo sat up taller. “That’s the other thing. I’m supposed to just father this baby and never see it again?”
“I never said that. You can see him or her whenever you’d like. I won’t move away or anything. I want to live near my family—that’s why I moved back to Bellamy Creek in the first place.”
“So I’d be like . . . Weekend Dad or something?” He squinted and gazed off into the distance, like he was trying to picture it.
“If you want.”
After a solid thirty seconds of staring into the future, he shook his head. “I don’t know. It doesn’t seem right to do to a kid.”
“Enzo.” I reached across the table and put a hand on his, causing him to look down in surprise. “I’ve been thinking about having a baby on my own for a couple years now. I’ve researched fertility clinics, looked over donor profiles, talked with my family and my therapist.”
“What did they say?”
“My therapist understands. My family does not.” I pressed my lips together. “They’re totally against it. They cannot imagine why I’d want to get pregnant with a stranger’s baby or raise a child on my own. But they’re Catholic and old-fashioned, and they want for me what they had for themselves, and it’s just not going to happen—not in time for me to have a baby, anyway. I know I could always adopt, and I absolutely would, although I think it’s more difficult for an unmarried woman to adopt than for a couple. I admit, I haven’t done all the research. Because I really