Chapter Fourteen
The only thing worse than having to live up to sex-on-demand was seeing how disappointed Emilia got when it didn’t get results.
She stood at the kitchen sink staring down into the basin as I made my morning coffee and reminded myself not to ask or comment about any recent tests. If it were positive, she’d have told me. And the frustrated—and even puzzled—expression on her face said enough, really.
“So which kind of shift are you on today? Late, early, or long call?” I said, taking a careful sip of the hot brew that had just percolated from the machine.
“I don’t understand.” She shook her head.
“What? I just wanted to know if I should make sure to be home early or—”
She waved her hand and that’s when I saw the pregnancy test. She bent to shove it into the garbage can under the sink. “No, I mean this. My period’s due tomorrow, and I don’t have any PMS symptoms.”
The first thing to hit me was the instant shower of relief knowing that we were well out of the fertile zone, which meant that she wouldn’t be hitting on me tonight.
Not that it was a hardship that my beautiful wife would hit me up for sex, but I was starting to feel like the prized bull in the cow pasture. The pressure to perform was...intensifying. And now, it seemed, even my swimmers needed to step up their game.
I finished stirring a little sugar into my coffee then moved up beside her to put my spoon in the sink. She waited, then washed her hands. I pulled her against me as she was drying them and kissed her hair. “We’ve only been at this for a few months and we’ve been spending our entire adult lives trying to prevent what we’re actively going after now. Maybe our systems are just a little...sluggish.”
She blew out a breath and rolled her eyes. “That is not a medical diagnosis, and you’re not—”
“The one here licensed to practice medicine. Yes, I’m aware.” I arched a brow at her.
She blinked. “Huh, do I end up saying that a lot?”
I landed a peck on her nose. “Once in a while, yeah. I’m just saying that maybe we need to chill with all the pressure we’re putting on this. It’s not a race. We’re young and—”
“I know for a fact that I’m ovulating based on the classic rise in temperature, the length of my luteal phase and—”
I turned her toward me, taking both of her damp hands in mine. “Emilia, breathe, please. I know this is important to you, but we have zero reason to believe that there’s anything wrong.”
Her brows knit, forming a deep ridge between them. “But it could have been the chemo. Something could have happened. I’m going to schedule an appointment to get checked out.”
I drew back for a moment. “I thought you already did that? We met with the doctor. She said everything was fine.”
She shook her head. “No, not the oncologist. A fertility specialist or that oncofertility doctor you saw at UCLA. They could run some tests, just to make sure we’re not doing all this for nothing.”
I tilted my head and gave her a look. “Well...not for nothing. I mean, we’re pretty good at it.”
She rolled her eyes at me, then pulled me in for a kiss. “I gotta go. Long day today.”
Long day. Got it.
She went to the fridge and grabbed the insulated lunch boxChef had packed for both her lunch and dinner.
We walked to the door together and then, locking it behind us, headed across Bay Island toward the parking garage on the other side of the little bridge.I glanced around at our neighbors’ perfectly kept yards and the common spaces and for the first time, realized that there were no children under high school age that lived here. Either people purchased later in life or lived a child-free lifestyle, but it was a definite that this didn’t seem to be a place that people deemed appropriate to raising kids.
I wondered what they all knew that I didn’t.
As we crossed the bridge to the peninsula, Emilia turned to me and picked up the thread of the conversation. “So, if everything on my end checks out, you know what that means, don’t you?”
“Hmm?” I said, still distracted, still deep in my own musings.
“It means you’re going to have to get checked out, see if your swimmers are up to snuff.”
I made a face. “My swimmers can snuff. They are very good at snuffing.”
I opened the gate at the end of the bridge and motioned for her to walk ahead of me while I shut and locked it with the keypad.
“There are a lot of factors...motility for one, ability to penetrate—”
“I think I’ve more than proven I can penetrate.”
She sighed and rolled her eyes dramatically. “Somehow, I knew you were going to say that even before the words left my mouth. I guess, though, since you’re such a strong manly-man you’ll be up to undergoing the tests necessary. Even the one with the giant needle they stick up your—”
“What?” I turned to her, alarmed.
She started laughing. “Kidding. The tests for men are easy and absolutely non-invasive. And, spoiler alert, they involve some alone time with you, a specimen cup and a few dirty magazines.”
“Sounds like a very exciting Saturday night,” I drawled as I pulled the helmet off my bike and shoved my laptop case into a saddlebag. Emilia pulled a face and froze beside the driver’s side door of her Tesla.
“Why are you taking that thing to work?”
I glanced at my bike, patting the saddle. “She didn’t mean it, honey. She’s just jealous because you are also a sweet ride.”
Emilia blew out a breath. “Very funny.”
“What’s wrong with me taking the bike? You aren’t still worried about safety again, are you? I think I’ve proven that I’m a safe—”
She pointed to my crotch. “I’m worried about their safety. If you insist on smooshing them up against your body, then that will affect your count and—”
Christ. This was really starting to get old. “Listen, you can tell me what to do with my testicles when I tell you what you can do with your breasts, deal?”
She rolled her eyes. “Just...be careful.”
“Me and my balls will be just fine, thank you so much for caring.” And with that, I pulled on my helmet.
With a thumbs-up I winked at her, then pulled down the visor. She laughed and slid into her car.
So now, aside from being the stud to provide sex on demand, I was also about to undergo laboratory testing because we’d been trying seriously for a whole two-and-a-half months.
I prayed this happened soon because I wasn’t sure how much more I could take of my bound-and-determined overachieving wife anxiously micromanaging something we didn’t actually have full control over.
Damn, this baby-making business was tough, orgasms or no.
But I was happy to note that me and my balls arrived at work safe and sound not twenty minutes later, none the worse off for the motorcycle ride.
A few days later, I was on my way back from the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco, with my soon-to-be replacement in tow. We caught a commuter flight for the ninety-minute trip to Orange County. Jordan liked to call these kinds of trips a “turn and burn” because we were able to do it all in a day without having to stay overnight, thanks to an early-bird morning flight and a post-dinner return. I was tired of not being able to sleep in my own bed.
When I mentioned as much to Jordan, after takeoff and our drinks were served, he shook his head. “You know that’s a sign of getting old, don’t you? When you’re away and all you can do is think about sleeping in your own bed.”
I rolled my eyes. He was starting to sound like Emilia, dammit. “You’re not so far behind me, you know.” I said, eyes narrowing in warning.
“I’m far enough behind you that I can milk the fact with all the teasing I can possibly squeeze in until I enter my fourth decade.”
Ugh, when he said it that way, it really did make me feel old. But that was ridiculous, like calling twenty-five a quarter-century just to make it feel older, weightier. But it meant nothing in the grand scheme of things.
“Well, I’ll just plan to get even by interrupting one of your ninety-hour CEO workweeks by calling from some beach in the Caribbean.”
Jordan arched an eyebrow at me. “Huh. Trying to scare me off of your job?”
I shrugged. “You already know how to do it.”
He sobered. “I am concerned, though...”
“That you won’t be able to fit into my superior shoes?”
It was his turn to pull a face at me. “That I won’t have your humility, for sure.” We laughed. “But seriously, my concern isn’t about the day-to-day nuts and bolts of the job. I’m confident I can do all that. But...”
I raised my brows, following his lead into a more serious conversation.
He met my gaze before continuing. “The vision part of things.”
My eyes widened. Wow...Jordan was keeping it real, for sure. “You had the vision to take the company public. We wouldn’t be there at all if it weren’t for you.”
He bobbed his head. “Yeah, yeah. I see that. And I’m not going to pretend false modesty and claim I’m not amazing at my job, because I know I am. But that’s the business end of it. What about the vision, the direction, what about the future of gaming and where we want to be?”
“Having the vision is good, but it only takes you so far. And you have people around you to help with that. Hell, you’ll still have me. I’ll be on the board of directors. Hopefully, they see fit to make me chairman. Plus, we’ll see each other socially. Our wives—sorry, I mean my wife and your girlfriend—are going to be business partners themselves. You’re stuck with me, man.”
He laughed. “I cannot tell you a time when that thought would serve as a relief. There were a couple times I would have been deliriously happy to defenestrate you and finally be rid of you.”
I laughed. “Thanks. But defenestration, though? Seems a messy way to dispose of a pain in the ass. Now if you want tips on how to fantasize cleaner ways to dispose of a pain in the ass, we can access my daydreams about dumping your body in the desert on a dark night.”
He laughed right back. “Damn, I’m going to miss this.”
“Of course you are.”
“Do you know what you’re going to do yet? I mean, are you going to settle down and be the househusband, fixing dinner and raising the kiddies?”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t know yet. There are too many choices. For now, I’m concentrating on handing all of this off properly and setting Draco up for success in the era of Fawkes.”
He waggled his brow. “Also known as the Golden Era.”
“Whatever helps you sleep at night, man.”
He laughed, sipped at his cocktail, eyes drifting toward the window for a moment before turning back to me. “Speaking of raising the kiddies, I have to tell you, we had a recent scare.”
I blinked. “What kind of scare?”
“Last month, April was freaking out one morning before work because she was a week late and made me run to the drug store and get a test.”
I sat back. “I’m sure that had the two of you freaking the fuck out.” With a twinge of shame, I remembered my own freakout when Emilia had tested positive four years ago on that fateful day right before New Years. There had been lots of broken glass involved, a grown-man tantrum and a raging migraine headache.
Who the fuck was I to judge, really?
“Nah, you know what? At first, I thought it was just me being, you know, protective of her feelings. I was strangely calm throughout it all. Went off and got her test, brought it back, talked her down from the brink of a panic attack,held her hand while we waited for the results.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “Wow, your lothario reputation is now permanently damaged—”
“Anyway,” he said with emphasis, cutting me off with a glare. “What I’m saying is I didn’t feel panicked the entire time. And after it came up negative...” he shrugged. “Just between you and me—and I’m not even giving you permission to breathe a word about this to your wife—I was kind of sad. I think more than a little part of me was hoping that I’d knocked her up.”
“Jeez, no wonder women think of us as cave dwellers.”
“Ooga booga.” He hit his chest. “I know it’s crazy and it’s definitely not the right time in our lives for that. She’s starting a new business, I’m about to take over yours. It will be a miracle if we even see each other.”
“Better put a ring on it, bro,” I said with a grin.
“Still waiting for the right time for that, too. That one seems like a minor detail compared to this baby thing.”
I blinked. “A minor detail? For a chick-slayer like you?”
“I’m glad that my reputation was so much the stuff of legends that people still talk about it. I’ve been with the same chick for well over three years and still going strong.”
I nodded, and he shook the cup in his hand, now empty of everything but ice cubes. He knocked one back and crunched it before continuing.
“We can all grow and progress, now, can’t we? Like you, when are you taking the next step in life?”
I frowned. “Still figuring out the professional angle.”
He nodded. “Mia hasn’t felt the need to, you know, try again?”
Jordan was the only one outside a few family members and Heath who knew about our previous loss and, like the friend I’d trusted him to be, he’d never breathed a word of it, until now.
I blinked. “Well, actually, you can’t tell anyone—especially April—but we’re sort of trying.”
Unfazed, he nodded. “That’s cool. Maybe your next life step is stay-at-home dad, then.”
I rolled my eyes. “Gotta get the bun in the oven first.”
He laughed. “Well at least that part of the process is fun.”
I threw him a look out of the corner of my eye.
“It’s not? What do you know that I don’t?”
“Let’s just say that sex on demand isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
He rolled his eyes. “If you want tips, let me know.”
“Fuck off,” I said, leaning back. “I’m serious. It’s just...different. Starting to feel a bit like work.”
Then I looked at my lime and soda, tilting it this way and that, wondering if somehow someone had spiked it with alcohol when I wasn’t looking. Or maybe I was just in need of getting this stuff off my chest.
Though the way he continued to tease me about it, I was regretting my choice in confidante.