We might not have physically had sex to make those embryos, but so much love went into that creation. I want to try and see if surrogacy will work, but for however daring I may seem, I’m terrified often. And parts of this terrify me.
“I can’t be the sole decider in this,” I tell Rose. “I just can’t. It’s a huge deal, and it’s going to affect all of us.” I look at Ryke. Then Connor.
Rose does too.
Connor sets down his coffee mug and then leans back. “Ryke and I have concerns.”
Rose’s back arches, preparing for battle. “You’ve been talking? Together?”
“Yeah,” Ryke says. “We fucking do that sometimes.”
Connor stretches his arm over the couch. “Though it can be mildly annoying when he just stops speaking like someone cut off his tongue.”
“Not everyone has to fill every fucking pause.”
“Concerns?” I interject to steer this sinking ship to land. “You’ve both been talking about concerns that involve…us?” I motion between the four of us.
They’re quiet again, their gazes intrusive and intense and practically burning through Rose and me.
“Okay, so just my sister and me,” I realize. Rose squeezes my hand in support. I silently hear her war chants: we shall prevail over our foes.
Which just may be our husbands in this scenario.
“Darling,” Connor begins.
“Don’t darling me,” Rose snaps. “We don’t need coddling from either of you. We’re trying to make a fucking baby, not be babied.”
“Hey, I didn’t say a fucking thing,” Ryke growls.
This went astray real fast. “Let’s regroup here.” They all respect my voice so much, and I don’t have any sort of problem saying what I want to say. So I just speak. “I think it’s important that we listen to everyone’s point-of-views on the issue because it really involves us all. I don’t want to infer what you guys are thinking, so just let loose.” I wave to them like I’m bowing, but I can’t really bow while I sit.
Ryke nods to Connor to be the one to talk. Ryke isn’t much of a talker, but that’s already been established.
“Here’s what we know,” Connor says calmly, his new approach easing Rose more than before. “There are only two embryos. If they fail, it’s over.”
Part one of why Daisy Meadows is terrified. I had more eggs, but not all of them successfully created an embryo with Ryke’s sperm. Only two did.
We have two small chances.
“And?” Rose crosses her ankles, in a black Calloway Couture dress that hugs her frame beautifully.
Connor says a word in French and stops himself, his eyes flitting to me. I’m the only one who can’t speak the language, so he respectfully keeps it in English. “We’re concerned about the possibility where this fails and you’re both emotionally distraught in the end.”
Rose glares. “Then stop thinking about us being emotionally distraught.” My sister is defensive because she wants this to work as much as I do, and bad realities hurt.
“My main concern is with you, Rose.” His severity grips every word. “Grief is a realistic outcome, and will you be able to meet it?”
“Yes,” she says strongly. “This is complicated. I see that as much as all of you. She’s my littlest sister, and of course if this fails, I’ll feel partially responsible. It’s my body that’ll reject the embryo, but I want to help.”
I turn to Rose. “Please don’t blame yourself if something goes wrong. Please.”
“I will,” Rose says icily. “And you have to accept that.”
Part two of why Daisy Meadows is terrified.
Silence blankets the room. I’m the one who ends up breaking it. “We can put it off until you and Connor have a girl…” It’s taken many, many months for them to change our minds about this timeline. Rose even tried to bribe me with chocolate cake. It was a valiant effort, but her genuine tears did the ultimate trick. I felt how badly she wanted to do this now and not wait.
Rose shoots Connor the worst kind of look, like he returned a hurdle to their track.
“Daisy.” Connor draws my attention to his calm exterior. “Rose and I aren’t going to try for another child until we do surrogacy.”
“Do you even want to attempt it?” I motion between Ryke and Connor. “You both seem so upset.” If you could see their faces, you’d know they’re the distraught ones.
Just to do something with my hands, I start twisting my hair in a high, messy bun on my head. Both men exude a type of masculinity that makes them feel larger than the room. Every time I hone in on this, I remember how much younger I am in comparison. To take my mind off the age differences, I focus on Ryke’s unkempt hair and unshaven face, polarizing Connor’s smoothness.
But their distraught features never change shape. They are upset. They don’t even say differently.
Ryke rubs his jaw and then drops his hand. “Because we fucking love each of you, and we know exactly how you’ll be if this fucking fails.”
Because we’re sisters. But that’s why Rose and why I want to do it in the first place. I couldn’t think of a better birth mom for our baby. I’d be the baby’s biological mom still, and I like that our child will know that her aunt carried her for nine months.
The downside is disappointment and heartache if everything goes wrong. I worry about Rose’s health, but she always combats with, “I’m thirty-three. I’m not dead yet.”
I think about everything and ask the men, “But you two—you’re both okay in the event that everything goes right, right?”
“Why wouldn’t we be?” Connor asks, though there’s no confusion in his face.
“This bonds all of us in a way. Rose and I want that, but do you two?”
Rose wears this expression like oh, the tables have turned. We’re definitely on the offensive now. Rose pushes it one step further.
Bluntly, she says, “Ryke’s baby is growing in my body, and you both have to watch. So if you’re not able to handle this, speak now.”
I wait for Connor’s I can handle anything arrogance, but he’s pokerfaced and silent.
Ryke shakes his head. “It’s not our fucking place to say whether we do or we don’t. Either way, it shouldn’t be a deciding factor.”
I rock back in shock. “So you do have issues with this?”
Rose is even surprised. “Connor?” I hear the vulnerability in her voice when she says his middle name right now instead of Richard.
“I can view nearly everything from a scientific standpoint, but emotions are variables and this has many more than I’m used to.”
I feel like they’re both speaking around something. “Can you just come out and say it?”
“Look,” Ryke says. “We’re good friends, but when I think about Connor, I’m not filled with warm fucking feelings.” They can grate on one another.
Connor, more clearly, tells us, “It’s about sex.”
“What?” Rose swings her head towards both men.
My eyes widen at this realization. Oh. It’s just been proven. Their friendship chips away at their maturity. Which is usually at one-hundred percent unflinching, unabashed, we can do anything kind of levels.
It’s plummeted to something strange. I want to make a joke about this theory being proven, but I’m a little speechless.
When Rose is pregnant with our baby (aka Ryke’s baby), she’ll still have sex with Connor. This whole thing is new territory, sure, but the only reason Connor and Ryke are taking short pauses at the idea is because of their complicated friendship. Otherwise, I think this would be smooth sailing.
To Rose, Connor says, “I can’t tell you my emotions about it because I’m not sure exactly what I feel.”
Ryke leans forward, closer to us, his forearms on his knees. “Connor and I talked it out, and we both don’t want it to sway the fucking decision one way or the other.”
“We agreed on something,” Connor says. “It’s rare, so let’s leave it at that.”
Rose is as rigid as can be. “You both made this weird.”
“It was fucking weird to begin with,” Ryke says.
“It’s funny if you think about it,” I chime in with a growing smile. It must be contagious because their lips slowly inch upwards. Now that we surfaced the buried concerns, we exchange more certainty than before.
“Let’s vote,” Rose says. “I’m for surrogacy as soon as possible.” Her piercing yellow-green eyes set on me.
I don’t hesitate. “For.”