Page 1 of The Best Worst Thing
Pretty Infertile
So,” Gabe said, “tell them what’s next.”
“Okay,” Nicole said, glancing at her note card, “well, tonight at midnight, we’re doing the trigger shot. That gets the eggs mature, ready to be fertilized. And this time, my doctor wants me to inject it intramuscularly, so it’s this giant needle, and it goes pretty much right in my ass, and—”
“It’s really more your hip, babe.”
“It’s my ass. I would know. I sit on it all day, trying to make you an heir.”
Gabe looked up from his microphone and grinned.
Ten years later, he was still stupidly handsome.
Tall and broad, with dark brown hair and ink-blue eyes and a strong, defined jaw.
And while two years of hormones had left Nicole drained, Gabe had grown even more attractive as he aged, in that way the best-looking men always seemed to do in their late thirties.
“I know,” he said, coffee mug in hand, “and thank you. But I’m the one who does the shot, and trust me, it’s your hip.”
“Whatever. Point is, we’ll do the trigger, and then Sunday morning, we’ll go to the clinic and they’ll knock me out, which is easily the best part, and then they’ll use another giant needle to pull out all my eggs—”
“And then I get to come in a cup!”
Nicole laughed, smiling up at him. He’d nailed that one.
Gabe wasn’t always on the podcast. When Nicole had first started her show—Pretty Infertile—a couple of years ago, he was a little bewildered by the whole thing.
But lately, he’d begun recording with her once or twice a month.
He’d set up her jokes and push her stories forward.
And sure, it took a bit of begging to get Gabe behind the microphone, but it was well worth it.
Because the episodes they did together always seemed to be the stickiest—to get the most attention, the most engagement.
“Oh!” Nicole said. “I meant to ask you! Did you pick your porn yet?”
“Mm . . . I’m torn. Teacher-student or girl-on-girl-on-girl.”
“Seriously? How vanilla. Why not live a little?”
“Fine,” he said. “You pick it out, then!”
Nicole grunted into her microphone, then rattled off a few choice fetishes while their goldendoodle, Nero, settled at her feet.
Through the balcony doors off Nicole’s upstairs office, the marine layer was just beginning to cast its cool, sleepy glow across Manhattan Beach, a coastal suburb of Los Angeles where nothing ever happened.
July 1, and still—fog. Nicole had called the South Bay home for nine years, but she’d never quite gotten used to this.
How late the summers started. And then, how long they dragged.
“I mean, if we’re talking about losing inhibitions,” Gabe said, “let’s revisit your first egg retrieval.”
“Oh god. I was high as a kite.”
“Just ridiculous.” He turned to his next note card. “Like, Colie literally wakes up from the procedure, reaches for my hand, and screams at the top of her lungs, ‘Gabe, wait, how was your ejaculation!? Was it powerful!?’ ”
“Dr. Williams said you should make it powerful! I was just checking!”
Nicole, weaving her toes into Nero’s spine, thought back to her first cycle of in vitro fertilization, when she’d really believed things were going to be different.
And why wouldn’t they have been? She’d been only thirty, and she’d done everything right.
Started getting nine hours of sleep. Quit running, quit hot yoga, quit drinking Diet Coke.
Ate nothing but fatty fish, organic avocados, and Brazil nuts.
Had the goddamn surgery. Twice.
“I mean, Nicole’s just putting on a show. I think every other patient in the surgery center could hear her. The nurses were giggling. An admin came and hushed us.”
“So then Gabe asks our doctor, who’d stopped by to see how I was doing, if everyone made a fool of themselves or if it was just me. And she, like, gives me this pitiful-but-adoring look, pats my head, and goes, ‘No, not usually, sweetheart. This is really something.’ ”
Nicole took a long sip of her coffee—decaf, of course, with a drop of almond milk—then glanced at her notes.
They had a lot more to cover. And all joking aside, Sunday morning’s procedure was a big deal.
Because this was their last chance to make embryos for their gestational carrier, whose first two transfers had failed.
Their contract, a boilerplate agreement, covered three. And after that, who knew?
Nicole would never admit it, but she was beginning to lose steam.
She was tired of spending hours a week driving up and down the 405 for an ultrasound, a quick blood draw, a last-minute vial of Menopur.
She was tired of needing a two-hour nap by noon just to make it through the day.
And she was tired of skipping out on baby showers, of crying over due dates that came and went, of watching the other women in her IVF forum disappear into motherhood, leaving her behind.
“Anyway,” she said, “the plan is—”
An alarm went off on Gabe’s phone. Nicole winced, then paused the recording.
“Sorry, babe,” he said, swiping through his email as he rose to his feet. “I have a nine thirty at the office. Can we finish tonight?”
“Oh, um, I guess so, sure . . . but then I really need you to come home on time, okay? Because I want to have everything done by tomorrow so I can rest after the retrieval, and making the graphics has been taking forever lately, and—”
“You’re the best,” he said, kissing the top of her head.
Nicole nodded, nearly biting her tongue as Gabe disappeared down the hall.
With her jaw still heavy, she began scrolling through the show’s latest analytics.
She hovered her cursor over a dip in last week’s drop-off chart.
She pinpointed the moment she’d lost too many listeners.
She compared that time stamp to her monthly, quarterly, and year-to-date averages.
And then, when she finally heard the front door shut, Nicole Speyer stared into her computer screen a little harder and tried not to think too much about the way she used to go places, see people, do things.
About the way Gabe used to look at her.
About the way she used to beg for him to fuck her.