64. Rico
Rico
The moment I realized we had to do IVF, I felt a flicker of relief. There. Problem solved.
No thanks to the two idiots I’m cursed to call my brothers, who droned on about how I was a massive asshole for planning to knock up my wife only to boot her back to her own floor like she was an Airbnb guest whose stay had expired.
Disappointment. Shame. Blah, blah, blah.
I tuned them out somewhere between you need to rethink this and I can’t believe you’re this emotionally stunted. Honestly, it’s like they just met me.
They were there when I moved her in. She had her own room. The only reason she shared mine now was because Marco, that dumbass, put the idea in my head. Seemed logical at the time—constant proximity meant constant access. The math checked out.
Only, it wasn’t benefiting me.
I sat on the bed, arms crossed, scowling at the throw pillows.
I hate throw pillows.
They serve no purpose. Zero. Every night, I have to toss them onto the floor only to pick them up in the morning like a slave to home decor gods. Whoever invented them should be exiled from Earth. Straight to hell, where I assume they were conceived by a demon with a sick sense of humor.
And my wife, the woman who keeps inching her way into my personal space and—worse—my subconscious, had brought them into my room.
The same one who walked in three minutes past eleven.
Not unusual. She always comes home late. What was strange was her expression. Normally, she walks in radiating that post-work happiness, the high people get from doing what they love. Tonight? She looked broken. Actually, come to think of it, she looked like that yesterday. And the day before that.
Maybe that’s why she stopped texting me.
Not that I noticed.
Or cared.
Except I had noticed.
She also stopped responding to my notes. The ones I left her out of habit. And the ones she always—always—left a sarcastic remark on before sticking them right back where I’d find them. When did she stop?
A week.
It’s been a week.
I watch her move around the room, acting like I don’t exist, like I’m a piece of furniture.
She thinks she’s winning. Thinks she’s worming her way into whatever organ exists in the empty cavity where my heart should be. She probably assumes I’m in love with her by now.
I’m not.
Not even close.
I just tolerate her shit because saying I don’t love you and I don’t care wouldn’t exactly benefit me.
“Not tonight, Rico.” Her voice is flat, exhausted, as she breezes past me into the closet.
I follow. Lean against the doorframe.
“We had an agreement.”
Her fingers still over the dresser. She turns, eyes narrowed, and some long-dormant self-preservation instinct flares to life in my gut. Possibly my fight-or-flight reflex trying to warn me. Retreat, you dumbass.
I ignore it. Like I ignore every other feeling that doesn’t serve me.
“None of that agreement said that after a long day, I have to have sex with you,” she says, voice sharp.
“We agreed that when one of us needs it—”
“I don’t need it,” she cuts me off, turning back to her drawer, pulling out those silky pajamas she knows I hate. The ones she wears every night just to annoy me because she knows I’ll waste precious minutes peeling them off her.
I watch her move, jaw tight.
Fine.
Maybe I enjoy taking them off.
It’s like unwrapping a present.
Right now, I have a gut feeling I won’t get the satisfaction of peeling those silk pajamas off her, and if she thinks she’s sleeping in my bed like we’re some blissfully married couple, she’s severely miscalculated.
“Then I suppose you can sleep upstairs.”
The words slip out before I can stop them, which is rare, considering my verbal output is usually as controlled as a nuclear launch code. And yet, here I am, spewing pointless bullshit like I’m trying to win an argument I didn’t even know I was starting.
Why? Because looking at my wife’s face—those eyes going wide, her lips pressing into a tight, thin as hell line—I’d say I just set off a chain reaction that leads straight to a fight.
And what does a fight mean? Fifteen to twenty minutes of a back-and-forth verbal sparring match that could’ve been spent with her naked legs wrapped around me, making progress toward the entire reason I sought my brothers’ advice in the first place.
Which, for the record, I will never live down.
Does this woman realize the depths I have sunk for her? The sheer humiliation of sitting through a heart-to-heart with Dom and Alex, listening to them lecture me on women and emotions like they were delivering some TED Talk I never asked for?
And yet, her reaction isn’t what I expect.
“I suppose so.”
Not the response I wanted.
And now I’m annoyed.
Annoyed in the way a toddler is when they reach for candy and their mom slaps their hand away. The way my nephews sulk when Violet tells them no, like it’s the most offensive word in the English language.
“You need to take the tests."
She blinks. “Tests?”
“Ovulation tests.”
Cue the dramatic eye roll. If she added a sigh and a head shake, I’d have had the full trifecta of female exasperation.
“No.”
With that, she pushes past me into my bathroom, because apparently, room separation doesn’t apply when it comes to using my space.
She stands at the sink, pulling off the thin chain around her neck, setting it in some fancy little dish she put in my bathroom, next to an ungodly amount of feminine products, all designed to pluck, curl, scrub, or god knows what else.
Fine. I’ll push further.
“Then we do IVF.”
Now I’m just poking the bear. But this bear gets horny when she’s mad, so really, I don’t see the problem.
Her hand freezes over the faucet.
“You want to do IVF?”
I nod.
She turns off the water.
Her expression isn’t anger—it’s something worse. Something I don’t have the time or energy to unpack.
“So that’s all this still is?” Her hands wave between us like she’s outlining some invisible thread. There’s nothing there by the way.
“You just want me to get pregnant.”
“That was the agreement.”
“And we’ve made changes.” Her voice wobbles marginally, and I don’t like it. That… sound. The crack. Like something fragile snapping under pressure.
I ignore it.
“So moving me into your room was what? Just to make sure you got me pregnant? So I could be here, at your beck and call, so you could knock me up and then move on with your life?”
“Not sure why that surprises you.”
It’s direct. Honest. Cold. And for some reason, something in my brain, some deep, traitorous instinct warns me I should back the hell down. Maybe even reverse course before I say something I can’t take back.
But then there’s the other part of me.
The logical part.
The one that tells me I need to make this clear, once and for all. She needs to stop pushing. Stop provoking. Stop trying to change me.
I won’t change.
She’s my wife in the contractual sense.
Nothing more.
And it’s better that reality sinks in now—before she gets any deeper into this delusion. Before she convinces herself she can steal something from me that she will never be able to take.
Because the truth is simple.
I’m too broken to give her what she wants.
That’s just reality.