this a lot, too, over our break,” I admitted. “I was pretty messed up about it when we first got there, actually. But Mom and I had a big talk, and it changed my perspective a little. Like, we wouldn’t think twice about this if all…that…hadn’t happened, right? We’d have used Freddie in a heartbeat.”
“But all that did happen,” Nick said. He sounded so tired. “And it finds a way to keep reminding me that it happened. I’ve tried to have perspective. I’ve tried to remind myself that this baby would be made out of our love even if it’s not out of our genes. If you borrow a cup of sugar from your neighbor to make a cake, that doesn’t make it his cake. I’d be the one rubbing lotion on your belly and massaging your feet, and holding your hand when you’re in labor, and getting up in the middle of the night, and changing diapers, and walking that baby to her first day of school. I would be Dad. Freddie would just be helping us figure out how to get her here. I know all of this is true, but…” He gulped air. “I’ve recited those things to myself every day since the last try didn’t work. But I’m not sure yet if I believe them.”
“You are one of the most loving people I have ever known, and, not for nothing, we are both stubborn as hell,” I said, twining our fingers. “I do not see us letting all that psychological shit win. I really don’t.”
“You seem awfully confident,” he said. “I wish it could be that easy for me.”
“Do you think this is easy for me?” I asked. “Because it’s not. It’s brutal. But this is a tipping point, Nick.” I caught his gaze and held it. “We will always remember this conversation. We will always remember what we decided tonight. If Eleanor’s rules are writing this story, which ending can you live with?”
Nick poked another finger into his sandwich, then prodded at it until the first two had a frown arcing underneath them. Then he stared at me, and in that look, his melancholy gave way to a sort of determination.
“I want to believe in myself the way that you believe in me,” he finally said. “Call him.”
* * *
Nick and I were coming home from a meeting with Bea the following month when Freddie came running up to us in the courtyard, flushed but handsome in a blue suit.
“Hi,” he said. “I saw you out my window. Do you two have a moment to talk? It won’t take long.”
Nick and I exchanged glances. We’d begun the day at Dr. Akhtar’s office, where I’d had another of what felt like an endless series of blood tests—this time to see if Freddie had been able to get the job done where Nick had not. Sometimes it seemed like I must have given all the blood I’d ever had in my body.
“You can’t go back on it now, mate,” Nick said, with a jocularity that sounded forced to all of us. “It’s a done deal. We’re just waiting to see if it worked.”
Freddie flushed hugely. “Right, right. I lost track of the timing there a bit.” He nodded aimlessly. “But I, um. It’s not that. It’s about me. I mean, I know that’s also…sort of. Anyway, it’s not about the baby.”
“Why don’t we go inside?” I suggested.
“Yeah, this isn’t a conversation I really want to have in the courtyard,” Freddie said.
“You’re making me nervous,” Nick said as we clattered up the steps and into Apartment 1A, as neat as a pin and smelling like cinnamon rolls.
“No, no,” Freddie said. “It’s not bad news! Is there somewhere we can be private? I don’t want the staff to overhear any of this.”
“Of course,” Nick said, shooting me a quizzical glance. The conversation I’d had with Freddie formally asking him for his help had been brief, and kind, and a bit fraught, all adjectives that could describe every chat we’d had since. I had no idea where this was going. Not even a hint.
We stepped into Nick’s office, cozy and warm. Someone, in preparation for our return, had lit a fire in the grate, and it crackled in welcome. Out the window, I could see that it looked like snow.
Freddie closed the door tightly and turned to us.
“You should sit down,” he said.
“Why all the cloak-and-dagger?” Nick said as we took spots on his sofa. “Are you going back into