Nicole

This time we don’t stop.

As we slide into the last week or so of my cycle, we don’t quit our horizontal hobby.

I tell myself it’s because we have his dates to finish, and it would be silly not to screw. We don’t go at it nightly like we did when I might have conceived, but it seems foolish to execute the hotel hijacking date I promised without making full and proper use of the bed.

Because of our dogs, we make the hotel escape during the workday when we take a long lunch. It comes complete with shower sex at a swank Gramercy Park hotel, as well as another round on the bed.

In the post-orgasm haze, he wraps an arm around me and tugs me close. “For the record, I absolutely want you to be pregnant, but this has been the most fun I’ve ever had, and I’d be lying if I said I won’t miss it once you’re knocked up.”

I smile and snuggle into the crook of his arm. A wistfulness settles over me, but it comes with sadness, too. “I know. Same here.”

“It’s sort of strange. That this is just going to end,” he says in an even tone, as if he’s making a scientific observation.

I close my eyes because the reality hurts.

Yes, we will end.

Yes, that’s always been the plan.

We were supposed to be practical. A wham, bam, thank-you, ma’am. We weren’t supposed to miss the sex, or the closeness, or the cuddling when this ends.

Our relationship has always been finite. It has a beginning, a middle, and a clear and obvious end. Like a rotation of a planet, our relationship starts in one spot and ends there, too, and no one should bat an eye or shed a tear.

Perhaps this makes me foolish, or maybe it just makes me focused on the mission, but I hadn’t thought about how I might feel when this is over.

Now, I feel more sadness than I expected, and a longing, too, even as I’m consumed with my own amped-up hope for a baby.

“But we’ll stay friends,” I say, drawing in a breath that strengthens me. “We’ll be friends and colleagues and Ping-Pong partners.”

“Yes, we absolutely will.”

I wonder if that prospect sounds odd to him, too.

But then I stop thinking when he kisses me once more, because I’ll take what I can get for the next few days.

Three in the morning.

The twenty-eighth day.

The bitch doesn’t show. But I don’t trust her. She fucked with me once before. She might do it again.

The navy-blue night has draped its blanket over the city as most of Manhattan slumbers. But all over this island, there are pockets of people awake like me. Some with lonely hearts, some with graveyard jobs, some unable to let go of the day.

I lie awake, moonlight slicing through the blinds, casting a silvery glow on my bed. Ruby sprawls next to me, her russet tail twitching, her snout fluttering. She is dreaming of bones, peanut butter, and beef jerky while my wide-awake wishes are for soft breath, angel-wisp hair, and a new life to love.

I flash back to the time Ryder and I talked about how much love one has to give. I imagine when I do finally have a baby, I won’t be wondering if I have enough love for everyone in my life. I’ll be wondering how I can store so much inside me.

I like to think our ability to love is infinite. I want to feel the limitlessness of love.

But I know better than to blindly believe this time is the charm. I need to be prepared for my monthly bill to ruin my morning with her blood-red appearance.

When I first asked Ryder for his help, I thought he’d give me a cup of batter and I’d send him on his merry way. It would be a true transaction, and then I’d turn to basters and exam tables and appointments. Any disappointments I’d process on my own with friends and family.

Now, no one is more enmeshed than he.

If my test is negative again, do we simply go on? Do we have monthly dates in my bed during the nights when I’m most likely to conceive? Do we go about our separate lives the rest of the time? What if it takes three months, six months, or more?

Ryder’s nearly done with his field guide to dating, and it thrills me to see his show and column inch back up in popularity. I gave him what he needed—a dating companion. But my need for him has no end date yet.

How can I expect him to maintain this sort of commitment to making love to me every month until I’m pregnant? How can I ask his commitment-phobic heart to keep practicing fidelity with my body?

But the more nights we spend together, the more it feels like we have some sort of commitment. I feel it in the pounding of my heart, in the calm inside my chest, in the warm glow that comes when he holds me. I see it in him, too, in the way he looks at me, in the tenderness of his touch, in how he sets his hand on my belly as if he’s hoping too.

I don’t know what to make of any of it, though. I let the thoughts repeat over and over, and in the tangled mess of my mind, I finally find sleep.

In the morning, I’m still blissfully period-free.

She doesn’t show during the day, either, and that old friend hope bubbles up again, like a tease. Surely, she’ll pull the rug out from under me any second. I tell myself that soon the crushing waves of cramps and disappointment will collide in me, mixing up a new cocktail of sadness.

But hope is a potent drug. It overpowers fear. My wish is stronger than my need to tamp down all this fervent want.

The next morning, I walk my dog in the chilly dawn, the remnants of this week’s Halloween still in store windows. After I race back to my apartment, nerves and anticipation jostling inside me like boxers in a ring, I take the stick I never peed on last month, and I pee on it.

I stand in my bathroom, counting the seconds.