Chapter 4
Julia
When I make it home, I’m still a mess. Sweaty, teary, rumpled, breathless.
I can’t go inside like this. This is one of the rare weeks when Richard isn’t traveling for work, and he’s going to say something if I walk in all flustered.
He likes “cool beauty,” he calls it. Unruffled calm, not a hair out of place.
I try to fake it when he’s in town, but today I just can’t.
This calls for a friendly ear. I locate my phone in my bag and dial my best friend, Heidi.
She lives in the same cul-de-sac I do, but a few doors down.
When she answers, I can hear the sound of our local public radio station blaring in the background.
She always listens to the radio when she’s cooking dinner.
“Hey babe, what’s up?” she says, banging a pot on the stove.
“It’s Julia,” she calls to someone, probably her wife, Nicole.
We all met when their son, Matthew, was in the same preschool class as my youngest, Molly.
The kids hit it off because they both liked to build tracks for their Hot Wheels? in the driveway, and our families have been close friends ever since.
The sound of her caring voice makes me burst into tears.
“Oh honey, what happened? Is Dick being a dick?” He never goes by Dick, but Heidi isn’t a huge fan of Richard, to say the least.
“It’s not him. Can I come over?” I sniffle into the phone.
“Of course. Stay to eat. I’m making cornbread and chili to celebrate the beginning of fall even though it’s hot as balls today. Figure of speech. I wouldn’t know anything about the temperature of testicles, but maybe you can confirm.”
That drags a chuckle out of me. “Confirmed. Be right there.”
Before I get out of the car, I shoot off a quick text to my husband to let him know I won’t be home for dinner, but there’s lasagna in the fridge for him.
I drop my phone back in my bag and cross the cul-de-sac to the purple Victorian with the pink door.
It’s not a historic home—it’s a 1990s build just like ours—but Heidi and Nicole have decked it out with extra trim and a colorful paint job so it looks straight out of the 1890s instead.
The porch overflows with potted plants and windchimes.
Their orange cat, Mr. Beans, is always hanging out on the front steps. It’s very them.
Heidi answers the door with a messy wooden spoon in her hand and an apron over an insect-print dress.
The colorful design brings out the blue in her eyes.
Her wiry gray hair is clipped back from her face with barrettes shaped like beetles.
She’s got the quirky-middle-school-science-teacher wardrobe down pat.
I must look terrible, because when she sees my face, she immediately crushes me in a huge hug, gripping my shoulders with her elbows so she doesn’t get chili drips on my top.
“Come in, come in,” she urges, pulling me inside.
I kick off my shoes in the entryway, the comforting scent of cornbread enveloping me as I follow her to the kitchen.
My stomach growls and gurgles, although maybe that’s from the latte.
I usually get soy milk, but I drank what Ian ordered me without thinking and didn’t take my lactase pills until I was in the car.
“Heya, Julia!” Nicole calls from the TV room. The background noise of a college football game greets us on our way by. “I’ll be out to chat in a few.”
“Sure, she will. I’ve heard that before,” Heidi scoffs, but her expression is indulgent. She and Nic have an amazing relationship. They appreciate each other’s strengths and call each other out on their bullshit. I really envy how easily they communicate.
Heidi installs me on a bar stool and then stands across from me, leaning her elbows on the counter. “Now. Tell me what has your eyes puffed up like it’s grass season?”
I sip the glass of water she hands me. “Oh god. I don’t even know where to start. This guy named Ian came into the bookstore today. A wolf guy. A wulver,” I correct. Heidi’s eyebrows lift, and she points her wooden spoon at me.
“Was he mean to you? If he was, Nic will beat him up for you,” she jokes. At least, I think she’s joking, although Nicole is a silat instructor so she could probably put anyone on their ass with her martial arts skills.
“No. He…um…asked me out to coffee after my shift. And I went. Platonically,” I say hurriedly. “He said it was just to talk about books.”
“Let me guess, it wasn’t about books?” She gives me a knowing look. “A man is not paying for your coffee to talk about books. He could talk to you about books in the bookstore.”
“Yeah. I realize that now. I just didn’t think…” I look down at my front, where my stomach rolls are making ripples in the front of my orange shirt. I gesture at them. “I look like a pumpkin! What good-looking guy in his thirties asks a literal gourd out on a coffee date?”
She rolls her eyes, hard. “You are the prettiest pumpkin in the patch, babe. Are you really surprised a handsome man is interested in you?”
“Yes! Nobody has hit on me since the Backstreet Boys were together.”
“They’re still together, Julia.”
“You know what I mean!”
“Did you let him down easy?” she teases. When I start to well up again, her mischievous expression drops. “Oh no. What happened? Was it bad? Or did you kiss him or something?”
“No, no. It was fine. Well, it started out fine. I gave him some book recommendations. But then he dropped a huge bomb on me. He claims he’s my fated mate. Or I’m his? I don’t know exactly how it works, but he thinks I’m his soulmate.”
Heidi’s face changes from a smirk to a grimace, like she wants to say something but she’s holding it back.
“What is it? I mean, I know it sounds crazy, but he was so earnest. I feel terrible that he’s fated to me, but obviously I can’t give him what he wants. It’s not fair.”
“Yeah…” she says doubtfully. She sighs. “I hate to say this, but he sounds like a romance scammer. You know, those guys who get women to fall for them and then squeeze money out of them somehow.”
“Oh.” Shame floods me. I didn’t even think of that, but it makes perfect sense. Why else would Ian approach someone like me? “Well, I told him that I’m married, so I guess that’s the end of that.”
Heidi comes around the end of the kitchen island and gives me a side hug with her free arm before returning to the stove.
A cloud of fragrant steam billows out when she lifts the lid on the pot to stir the chili, and my glasses fog up.
She turns her head to look at me over her shoulder.
“So why are you so upset? Did he take the rejection well or was he weird about it?”
“Um, I don’t know. I was a little flustered at the time. He pretty much said he didn’t care, but that I should talk it over with my husband because I’m the only one who can have his puppies. He seemed more interested in that part than having a connection with me.”
“Huh.” Heidi clinks the lid back on the pot. “That’s interesting.”
“Is it?” I ask miserably. “I was thinking it was just another lie to prey on my feelings.”
“Well, he’s telling the truth that wulvers can only procreate with their genetic match. It’s a quirk of their biology. They call it fated mates, but there’s science behind it. It lends some credence to his story.”
“What does?” Nicole asks. She drops a kiss on Heidi’s cheek before plopping down on the bar stool next to me.
Though she’s my age and also Asian-American, she’s my physical opposite: tall where I’m short, slender where I am round, tanned where I am fair-skinned, muscular where I’m soft.
Her short, black hair doesn’t have any hint of gray, either.
“Julia’s got a fated mate, and he’s a wulver,” Heidi says, biting off the words like they’re juicy watermelon.
I squawk indignantly. “Two seconds ago, you said he was a scammer!”
“That was before I knew he asked you to have his babies.”
“Ooooh!” Nicole says. “Man, I would have been out here way sooner if I knew the gossip was this good. Are you going to do it?”
“What do you think? Of course not.” My face is hot, and I want to cry again. “I’m old and married. I can’t have some guy’s puppies. Richard would never let me.”
They share a couple-look that contains a whole conversation.
“Babe,” Heidi begins, her tone careful and sympathetic. “If…don’t be mad that I’m asking this. But if Richard weren’t in the picture, would you want to do it?”
“He is in the picture,” I say stubbornly. I refuse to even think about other scenarios, because it will only make me sad. Sad for Ian because he won’t be able to have a family of his own, of course. Not for myself.
“Kind of,” Nicole mutters. She’s not a huge fan of Richard, either.
“He has to travel for work,” I protest. “He has a very demanding business. He’s supported me for twenty-plus years.”
She makes a noncommittal noise. “You’ve supported him, too. Cleaned his house and cooked his meals and sucked his dick and raised his kids and kissed his ass and looked the other way when—”
“Nic!” Heidi says sharply, cutting her off.
“What? She deserves better, and you know it.” Nicole’s jaw is set, and her mouth is drawn into an angry pucker as she and Heidi have a staring contest across the counter. Nicole breaks first, sighing heavily. “Sorry, Jules. I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s none of our business.”
“It’s a little bit your business,” I whisper. I’m always bringing my problems to Heidi and Nicole, and that’s not fair to them. I need to deal with them on my own. I slide off the bar stool. “I should go.”
“Oh no you don’t.” Nicole grabs my arm and hoists me back onto it. “We are going to feed you first.”
“And hug you and tell you you’re pretty,” Heidi adds, and I try not to sniffle. My friends really are the best.
When the timer dings, Heidi serves up big bowls of spicy chili and heavenly squares of her honey-basted cornbread, and we carry them out to the back patio. Both are too hot for the still-sunny evening, but we eat and sweat and laugh and talk about how we miss our college kids.
But the whole time in the back of my mind, I’m still turning over that scary question: Would I want to have Ian’s puppies if Richard weren’t in the picture?
Would I want to have more babies? Help someone else become a parent? If I’m being honest with myself, there’s nothing I’d want more.
“Yes,” I blurt out, interrupting the conversation. “If Richard wasn’t…Richard, I would.” I don’t elaborate. They know what I’m talking about.
“Then you should do it.” Heidi reaches across the table to pat the back of my hand. “It’s your body. You’re the one who’d be carrying the babies, not him.”
“Yeah, fuck Richard,” Nicole adds. “Or actually, don’t fuck him.”
“No worries there,” I say dryly. “Richard only fucks out of town.”
Nicole cracks up. “There’s our girl. I was worried we lost you there for a minute.”
“I can put you in touch with our gestational carrier if you want to ask her what it was like to have a baby for someone else,” Heidi offers. I’d forgotten that they used a carrier to have Matthew.
“That would be great. I mean, to talk to her.” I still don’t know if it’s a good idea. But the more I think about it, the more I want to do it.