Page 9

Lovie

“ H i, good morning!”

The moment I walk into the sperm donation center, a woman at the desk greets me with a wide, friendly smile. The space feels faintly dystopian, but Dr. Cohen told me I might be better off finding a sperm donor near me here, since none of the ones back in Portland seemed to be the right fit.

I felt vaguely ashamed for being so picky, but she just assured me I have good taste, and that it makes sense to be selective when it comes to something like this.

The walls here are painted soft pink and blue, surely an homage to babies soon to come. I swallow back my anxiety and greet the person at the desk, who’s sitting perkily, with perfectly curled hair and a bright smile.

“Good morning.” I pull my bag back up onto my shoulder, even though it hasn’t really slipped. “I’m here for a consultation? My doctor—Dr. Cohen—she called for me.”

“Oh, sure,” the woman at the desk says, her fingers already clacking away at the keyboard. “You go ahead and take a seat.”

I do, and the moment I look up at the TV opposite me, Harrison Clark is in my face.

He’s the kind of coach that NHL fans know nationally, and even some fans outside the sport might be able to pick him out of a crowd—but here? He’s practically Baltimore royalty.

The news and sports channels in this city cover him like he’s a Kardashian, which means he’s on the TV now, his eyes crinkling charmingly at the corner as he answers questions during a post-game interview.

Last night was the Blue Crabs’ first pre-season game, and based on the data I collected, I’m pretty sure all my adjustments have been making some tangible changes to performance. The pre-season is always harder to judge, as play time is different than in regular games.

“Lovelace Waters?”

My name rings out through the waiting room, and it draws me out of my thoughts, reminding me where I am. Waiting to talk to these people about picking a sperm donor.

A woman stands in the doorway wearing a nice gray suit, a clipboard in her arms, “Would you like to come with me?”

I follow her back, and hear all about the sperm donation process. How they screen for all major issues—starting with STDs and ending with minor genetic details like the potential for balding or wrinkles.

At the end of the walk down the hallway, she brings me into a room and shows me how to read through their donor profile cards, what the different symbols mean, and how to know which donor is best for me.

“Based on the preferences you listed in your initial paperwork, we’ve narrowed a selection down for you. Of course, you’re always welcome to change your preferences and selection at any point—but these are the matches we feel best represent your wishes at this moment.”

The binder she sets in front of me is thick, layered, with crinkling plastic pages. She goes through the standard spiel— all donors are anonymous, and have signed away any rights to paternity.

By the time I leave the meeting, I feel a rising, dizzying sense of dread pressing at the bottom of my throat.

“How did it go?” Chrys answers the second I call while I’m walking through the parking lot outside the donation center. “Was it weird?”

Around me, birds chirp and flutter from tree to tree.

People sit at a boba shop across the street, and the smell of garlic drifts out from an Italian place next door.

None of the people around me know that I’m doing something so serious.

That right now, I am carrying a binder full of potential biological fathers for my future baby.

“It was definitely weird,” I say, trying to tuck the binder into my bag while walking to my car. “I feel like…like I’m trying to design a child. Isn’t that weird?”

“Well, that’s what people do anyway, right? Like, you pick the person you want to be with because they’re cute, then your babies are cute. This isn’t that much different.”

“I guess.”

“You’re always so chipper, Lov.”

That makes me laugh, and feel marginally better, and Chrys and I chat during my drive to the complex.

I tell her about the fact that all the donors in the binder have baby pictures, so I can choose what my future baby will look like.

She tells me about how Dad made it across the living room today without a single noise of pain, but then got sick right after lunch and had to lie down.

By the time I pull in outside the Blue Crabs Arena, I’m feeling marginally better. But I still end the call without telling Chrys the thing that’s really on my mind—a consuming worry that I’m going to pick wrong.

That even with all this data and information on each guy, I’ll miss something vital. Spend all this time and money using science to make a baby and not even end up choosing the best donor.

I’m so busy thinking about it, my mind flashing with the baby pictures from the binder that I don’t realize someone else is here until I hear the telltale crack of a hockey stick connecting with a puck.

Pausing, I play a little game with myself, trying to figure out which player it might be, down on the ice, way after practice, when everyone else has gone home. Colby Holder has his eye on moving up a line, and Justin Smith seems like he never wants to leave.

But when I walk up to the edge of the rink and look in, it’s not a player at all.

It’s Harrison Clark.

Of course it is. I seem to have the terrible luck of running into him everywhere. At lunch, between meetings, and any time I’m trying to install new equipment or gather more data on the players.

In that supply closet last week.

A flush moves over my body when I think about what it was like, the way he so easily picked me up and set me on that counter. How his thumb dragged up my thigh, somehow both patient and hurried.

How my nipples went tight at the slightest movement of his hips, my breath escaping me.

It turned out that I was completely right about Harrison Clark—he is dangerous to me. He scrambles my brain, gets me to consider doing things I never would have before. Sleeping together on the plane. Damn near hooking up in that supply closet.

Now, down on the ice, Harrison skates hard toward the goal, juggling the puck easily with his stick. He’s a picture of perfect concentration and athleticism, and if I didn’t know better, I might think he was a player, not a coach.

He moves with the grace of a much younger man, and when he hits the puck, it rockets straight into the goal.

It’s frustrating that he’s so competent. That all the players admire him. If only he was bad at his job, it would be much easier to keep my distance from him.

He moves back out near the center of the ice, turning like he might do another drill, but instead turns and looks up sharply, his gaze connecting with mine.

Before he can say anything—or acknowledge that we’re the only two people here—I turn and practically run down the hall and to my office.

I think I’m safe, that he’s gone home, but the moment I step out of my office, I nearly run face-first into Harrison. Again.

“Shit, sorry,” he says, reaching out to steady me, and the brush of his thumb over my bicep, just under the sleeve of my blouse, sends shivers racing up my arms.

“My bad,” I mutter, drawing my bag back up onto my shoulder and shifting to go past him.

He’s impossibly handsome right now, his hair wet and his cheeks flushed. I didn’t know coaches still practiced like that. Maybe they don’t—maybe it’s just Harrison.

“Wait, Lovie?—”

Just from the tone of his voice, I know that he wants to talk to me about the program this summer, but I still don’t have an answer for him. My job is to make sure the Blue Crabs can be as efficient as possible, and giving up ice time and player energy for a camp just might not be the right choice.

I wish that I could just okay it. Maybe it would convince him to cool his hatred for everything I’m doing, his consistent campaign against my data-collection methods and my suggestions for improving the team.

“Harrison—” I start, but when he reaches out for me, he accidentally snags the strap of my bag.

My purse swings out to the side, and, in the next moment, my binder—the binder full of confidential donor information—goes spilling out onto the ground, papers sliding over the smooth concrete floor like playing cards on a pool table.

Heat rushes to my face, and I feel like a schoolgirl dropping her diary, the thing fluttering open for everyone to see. He looks confused for a moment, probably wondering why I’m reacting like this, then his eyes travel down, landing on the paper just beyond his sneakers.

It’s one of the profiles I’d tagged as a potential top choice. The one I’d most recently been considering.

Male, Caucasian. Twenty-two. His genetic marker profile is lying alongside his picture on the floor.

I see Harrison’s eyes moving over the papers, and I know there’s no way I can talk my way out of this, lie about what, exactly, the documents are.

“Oh my God,” I gasp, dropping to my knees to pick them up at the same moment Harrison bends down, keeping our eyes locked.

“My bad,” he mutters, seeming dazed as he reaches out and picks the scattered mess up before I can. His eyes scan over the documents, and this time, when my body heats, it’s not from lust, but embarrassment.

I shouldn’t be embarrassed. Many single women seek to build families on their own. Dr. Cohen says it’s empowering.

But that doesn’t stop me from seeing this through Harrison Clark’s eyes—an old, dusty spinster of a woman, trying to make a baby with science before it’s too late for her to have a family at all.

Finally, unable to stand the tension, I croak, “Well?”

“Well?” he asks, shaking his head a bit and closing the binder, then holding it out to me. I take it, hands shaking as I try to tuck it back into my bag.

“Aren’t you going to make a joke?” I ask, knowing my voice sounds weak and hating myself for it. There’s a long enough pause that I almost think Harrison might have walked away, but when I look up, he’s still standing there, a serious look on his face.

“Lovie,” he says, voice low. “I would never make a joke about that.”

“I’m probably not even going to do it,” I blurt, immediately regretting the admission. First, because it’s none of his business. And second, because I don’t have any other choice. Not if I want to have a baby.

It might be wildly expensive, time-consuming, and stressful, but it’s the path I’m choosing to take.

“You’re not?” he asks, raising an eyebrow, his eyes skipping between the binder in my bag and my face.

“Uh, I mean, it’s really expensive.” I cup my elbows with my hands and shift from side to side. Why am I even telling him this? There is not a single man on the planet—with the exception of Harrison Clark—who could get me to word vomit like this. “And my clinic is actually back in Portland, so…”

“It’s really expensive?” he asks, raising an eyebrow. “Don’t they get that stuff for free?”

Why are my cheeks so hot? I’m an adult—he’s an adult. This is a perfectly mature thing to be discussing. With the man I fucked on an airplane.

And who I wanted to fuck in a supply closet.

What is going on with me?

“Ha,” I manage, clearing my throat and patting the bag. “They do. It’s the other stuff that’s pricey. Testing, the procedure, seeing if it takes. Plus, I just…well I don’t really like any of these donors. Not so far.”

The next thing Harrison says nearly makes me choke.

Easily, as though it’s the most casual thing in the world, like he’s offering me a ride or to borrow a book, he says, “Well, I’ll do it.”