I giggle to myself the whole way down the stairs and up the house’s front walkway. I leave the paper folded into a discreet square and stuck in the seam of his door, and then I ring the doorbell and knock loud and long enough that I feel pretty sure he heard.
I consider jotting my phone number at the bottom before leaving, but decide not to. I don’t want it feeling too official. Of course, I guess it is kind of official.
Would our baby have curls?
I go to work with a feeling of lightness and peace. I don’t feel anxious or emotional about what his reply might be. I’m going to be flexible (as promised) and let what happens, happen.
That’s the plan.
*
Gabe
Flexible in every way.
I snort.
Fucking Marley.
The words of “The Plan” are written in sparkly gold gel pen. All that’s missing is a scented sticker or a lipstick mark. I’m smirking in the foyer, thinking about riding my bicycle to the drug store for some stickers, when my lawyer calls.
The firm has had people on my case day and night for months, and they feel confident at this point—$400,000 later—that they can’t bring a reversal.
Fuck.
I figured that would be the outcome, but…just fuck.
I can’t stay in the house. I end up going for a run with Cora. Then I go upstairs to the green room. After a brief look at my laptop, and I stretch out on the bed. I shut my eyes and let myself drift in and out of sleep. And while I lie there half-dreaming, I play a slideshow in my mind of Marley.
It’s probably dumb as fuck to get involved with her again. And what about the baby part of things? Even thinking of a baby makes my chest hurt. There’s a part of me that doesn’t ever want to see a fucking little kid again.
I think of Marley at the clinic, fixing up sick kids. And how she wants a baby of her own. I think about the shit she walked in on the other day…and what I did to her. And what I did last night. The way I used her as a balm for myself. Selfish. I was a dick the first time we knew each other, and I’ve been a dick to her since the minute she got here. Not because she deserved it, but because I felt like shit.
So fucking selfish.
I try to think of Marley with a big belly. Marley with a baby in her arms. It makes me think of Gen, but I do it anyway, because I can’t go into something like this blind. I have to wipe my eyes, and then I get up and go work out downstairs.
The folded piece of paper still sits on a chair in the front parlor.
I look at it as I come and go. I try to run at times I might see Marley. I even try the six o’clock run time again, but I don’t see her. For three days, I listen to her move above me, and I think of how it felt to be inside her mouth. How it would feel to come inside her. And even though I try not to, I think about her home-cooked meals and whipped cream coffee.
On a Friday, I get an international call and answer, thinking of my many overseas deals.
The voice on the other end of the line is like a kick to the gut.
“Hi Daddy! It’s me, Geneva! I’ve been on a trip. I got my Mommy’s phone. I said ‘Mommy, I want to call Daddy, I can’t keep waiting!’ Mommy said you have to live at work, far, far away. Are you writing a book about palm trees in the ocean? That’s what Mommy said.”
I can barely breathe to speak.
“Mommy said I can see you at Christmas if I’m really good!” I hear someone whisper. “Now she says I can’t.” She starts to cry. My fist is clenched so hard I feel shit snap. “Daddy, why did you go?” I hear her sniff, and then more whispers. “Did you know I have another Daddy now? Mom said you want him to pretend to be my Daddy?”
I do the best I can, for my daughter. Because this child is mine, and she will always be mine. I tell her what her mother wants. I smooth things over. Make her smile.
When the phone call ends, I run to the bathroom and vomit.
After that, I fill the green form out and walk it up to Marley’s door.
*
Marley
The Plan
Gabe & Marley
Needs (Marley):
-1-2x a day “encounters” two weeks out of every month
-Attractive partner with stamina and mystique
-Occasional cider and lattes (both with excessive whipped cream)
Offering:
-1-2x a day “encounters” two weeks out of every month
-Enthusiastic partner with flexibility (in every way – tehehe)
-Occasional meals (of food and also the illicit variety)
**Please fill in the following**
Needs (Gabe):
-Your pussy, bare and spread for me. My tongue between your swollen slit. My fingers in your cunt. My thumb on your clit.
Offering:
-One hard cock—only sometimes a dick. Plenty of stamina and more-than-average mystique.
In his own neat, all-caps, hand, he wrote: BE READY FOR ME.
9
Marley
I haven’t told a soul about The Plan. Not because I feel so sure my besties wouldn’t understand but—
Okay, yes, it’s safe to say my friends will think I’ve lost my everloving mind.
Sex with Gabe would seem extremely no bueno—risky at best, self-destructive at worst—but if they find out I’m trying to have a Gabe baby? They’d probably have me committed.
And it’s true, we need to talk more about how we would share the baby. Who would have the baby and when. But I can’t really see a losing situation. It’s about ethics. If I couldn’t conceive a child by a father I have access to, I’d use a sperm bank, and I wouldn’t feel badly about it. But if I can give my baby a dad—if I can give my unborn, unconceived child the gift of a living, breathing father who could mentor him, who would love her—then I have to try. And Gabe would love a baby.
If he still wants to be a father to a child who isn’t his by blood and whose mother wants him to get lost, I think it’s very safe to say that he would love a baby we made.
And he wants to make one. I can’t help grinning into my bedroom mirror like a kid at Christmas.
I’m wearing Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer leggings and a red sweater I know maximizes my bustiness. I rub a little lotion on my throat and have to suppress a giggle. I feel like I’m in high school.
I’m not sure when or if Gabe’s going to come up tonight, so I get busy in the kitchen, setting up some of the southern-style chicken and dumplings Gabe used to love, and then starting on a pecan pie. If he doesn’t come around tonight, at least I’ll have this pie to keep me company.
While I work, I pour some apple cider—this time, cold—and turn on the latest Lorde album. A lot of it is about failing relationships, breaking up, or moving on. Since I didn’t really plan to make this proposal to Gabe in the first place, I haven’t spent that much time dwelling on it…but as I get the dumplings simmering, I think how in a fucked up way, I’m fortunate. To get another chance. To not leave things between us how they were left for so many years. Every time I thought about him, I felt smothered by guilt and regret.
Maybe we can turn all that around. If not spouses, become—
I hear a knock and nearly yelp as I spin toward the door. Wrong door. He’s not knocking on the outside door. He’s at the interior door, leading into the den. I grin as I hurry over to it.
It’s not locked.
I turn the knob, trying for a neutral look as I pull the door open.