I shift in my chair, and give him a sheepish smile. “I just mean…I have to make a choice. I have to just do this. And the more I shop around, the more confusing it gets. And maybe I should just go with Pete—”
“Shop around?” he interjects, tossing his book onto the coffee table. “Do you know how that sounds?”
“Shop. Look. Research. It’s all the same thing,” I say. “It’s just like Petfinder or Match—no matter how you try to sugarcoat it, I’m shopping for sperm. Just like people shop for pets or spouses.”
Gabe nods, surrendering the point in a way that makes me feel jubilant. But then he says, “Okay. Maybe so…but I still think this Pete thing is a terrible idea at best.”
“And at worst?”
“A really, really terrible idea.”
“See that?” I say with a smirk. “You thought Revis was a really, really terrible idea, too.”
Lying on the floor between us, Revis hears his name and glances over at me without lifting his head.
“He was a terrible idea,” Gabe says, pointing at the leg of the coffee table that Revis recently gnawed during a thunderstorm. Gabe tried to sand it down and camouflage it with a brown Sharpie, but the shades of brown don’t match.
“But you love him,” I say.
Gabe raises his brows at Revis, then shakes his head, having learned not to be sidetracked by my meandering debating style. “Okay. But are you really comparing the father of your child to a mutt you rescued from the Humane Society?”
I stare back at him, a stubborn standoff ensuing. Several seconds later, after Gabe blinks first, I say, “Would you at least meet him? Tomorrow night? I invited him over for dinner.”
“Are you just trying to get me to cook?” he says, narrowing his eyes.
“Maybe,” I say. “But we could also order a pizza.”
“I have plans with Leslie,” he says.
“She can meet him, too.”
“So now you’re taking a poll?”
“No, I’m not taking a poll. I don’t care what Leslie thinks,” I say, already tired of hearing her name, at least the way he says it, so reverently. “I want your opinion as my best friend.”
He folds his arms across his chest and takes a deep breath, but I can tell I’ve reeled him in with this last line. “Is Pete aware that he’s being interviewed?”
“Interviewed? No. Because he’s not. Is he aware that I want him to meet my best friend? Yes. He is, and he wants to meet you, too.”
“Why? Because he likes you? Or because he’s seriously considering donating his sperm to you?”
“Are they mutually exclusive?”
“They should be.”
“Okay. The latter, then,” I say. “In fact, this whole thing was actually his idea.”
“It’s called wanting to sleep with you, ding-a-ling.”
“No,” I say. “It’s not like that. We wouldn’t have sex….We’d go through the proper channels….”
We have another staring contest, and this time Gabe wins. “So if he randomly donated to a sperm bank…you’re telling me that his jizz would be your first choice?”
“Please don’t call it ‘jizz,’?” I say, cringing.
“Okay. His seed. His sacred seed.”
“Yes. It might be, actually. Hence, the reason I want you to meet him….You read the essays—so what’s the difference?”
“There’s a big difference,” Gabe says. “But okay. I’ll screen this dude for you.”
—
THE FOLLOWING NIGHT, Leslie and Pete arrive at the same time, and are introducing themselves as I open the door. They are both dressed casually in jeans and T-shirts, though Leslie has on crazy high sandals and her hair looks suspiciously blown-out.
“Hey! Come in,” I say, feeling genuinely happy to see Pete and only a little annoyed to see Leslie.
Pete gives me a slight grin, followed by a friendly, one-armed hug. “Thanks for the invite.”
“Yes, thank you,” Leslie says, handing me a bottle of red wine with a funky Andy Warholesque label. “This’ll go with pizza, right? Gabe says we’re having pizza?”
“Yes, we are,” I say. “And yes, anything goes with pizza.”
I smile, and she smiles back at me, but there is something about her expression that seems insincere. It’s almost as if she thinks she’s doing me a favor by hanging out tonight—which I guess, in a sense, she is. But I don’t think she’s earned the right to feel that way, still in a trial period herself.
“Your hair looks great, Leslie,” I say, as Gabe walks into the foyer behind me.
“Thanks,” she replies so flatly that I decide to call her out in front of her new beau.
“Did you get a blowout?” I ask casually.
The question catches her off guard, and she hesitates before mumbling yes, she just didn’t feel like doing it herself so stopped in at Drybar.