Page 43 of The Best Worst Thing

Girl Talk

Around lunchtime Monday, Nicole pushed down her shoulders, opened the door to her sleeping office, pressed her forefingers to the cool plastic of the wall switch, and clicked on the lights.

She barely recognized the place.

In just a few weeks, a filter—fuzzy and foreign—had faded every inch of the room.

All of it, distant and peculiar. The wide planks of oak slotted beneath a colorless, tasseled rug.

The sorry-you-can’t-get-pregnant self-help books that lined the shelves on the back wall, alphabetized and organized and pale pink or green or blue.

The soft maple of her desk, still home to a dozen color-coded sticky notes, a few tidy stacks of note cards, and a single unfinished script, left to collect dust.

Nicole ran her fingers over the top page.

Episode 98: The Waiting Game. She sifted through a few more lines, her index finger tracing chunks of dialogue that were no longer hers.

Sure, she had written them. She had brought them to life.

But now, they were meaningless. Every single word had been an artifice.

Proof to the whole world, and to herself, that nothing mattered more than motherhood.

Week after week of channeling all that pain and disappointment into a story that, when she inspected it now, looked a whole lot like armor.

She let out a short, sharp cry, then chucked the whole script in the trash.

And then, when that felt surprisingly good, she kept going.

She tore the place apart. The injection schedules.

The social media calendars. The books that told her what to eat and how to sleep and when to fuck.

A framed selfie of her and Gabe kissing—cheeks, pink—on the icy cobblestone outside their place in New York, a few months after she realized she’d gotten him all wrong.

That deep down, he was a good one. That she was never going to let him go.

She threw it all away.

It was fast.

It was easy.

And when she was done—when the room had been sufficiently exorcised—Nicole pulled back the curtains, let the midday sun pour through the glass doors, and reached for her phone.

“I was going to call you earlier!” Valerie said as steam billowed around her freckled face. “But then I put on a movie for the boys, and then I fell asleep, and then I started ironing these little name tags into all these little T-shirts …”

Nicole, who was pacing, smiled. “I mean, I get that. Labeling is very soothing for me.”

Valerie laughed, and the conversation, despite Nicole’s knotted stomach, carried on. As much as she wanted to, Nicole couldn’t just spit out her question. After all, her relationship with Valerie was different. It was inherently vulnerable. Fraught and imbalanced and, possibly, finite.

How many times had Nicole, in those online forums, watched an intended mother and her carrier start out as the best of friends? As two grown women, suddenly brought together by some strange and new commercial sisterhood? Each of them so eager to please, to play their part?

And how many times had she watched those bonds fall to pieces?

Pregnancies, after all, were long. The feelings that first connected you—excitement, maternal instinct, the desire to post something cute on Instagram—grew complicated.

At some point, the stress would surface.

The panic, the trauma. The jealousy, the inadequacy.

Every one of those big, ugly emotions you swore you’d leave out of this brighter path to motherhood would break through.

What had brought you and your carrier together in the first place—the idea of some perfect baby who was finally going to heal your broken heart—lived in her now.

It was, for those nine months, hers to keep safe, to care for, to remember not to feed room-temperature coleslaw or take on a roller coaster or bring along for a soak in a bacteria-ridden hot tub.

By delivery day, that was simply more pressure than any woman, on either side, could take.

And so Nicole was polite. She was kind. She asked what the boys were up to today.

How Valerie’s husband was doing in Japan.

Whether the medicine Dr. Akhtar had prescribed was helping with Valerie’s morning sickness.

And finally, when there were no more green smoothie hacks or home organization trends to discuss, when there were no more chances to prove she was a good person, that Valerie was so much more than an incubator, that what they had was real, Nicole’s restless legs came to a halt.

She wiped her palms on her shirt and steadied her voice.

“So, if you have a few minutes, I wanted to talk to you about my podcast?”

“Oh, okay, sure,” Valerie said, wandering into her kitchen and beginning to prepare her usual afternoon snack of saltine crackers.

In the background, her sons had started some sort of war revolving around a single baby carrot.

Valerie did not seem concerned. “You know, I’ve been meaning to ask you about that.

I figured with everything going on, maybe you weren’t going to do it anymore. I felt bad bringing it up.”

“I felt that way for a while too. But then I sort of, well, reconnected with an old friend of mine. We ended up talking about the podcast a lot. It made me realize how much I actually miss it. And that I don’t want to just let it die.”

Valerie nodded, nibbling the edge of a cracker very carefully as Nicole continued.

“I do want it to be different, though. I want to start talking about motherhood the way you and I always have, if that makes any sense. Just be superreal about the whole thing—about how it’s not a sure thing.

How it’s kind of ugly and scary. Trying for it, deciding against it, being in it, losing it.

How the whole thing is out of our control. How it’s so different for everybody.”

Nicole was walking in circles now. Quick ones.

“I was wondering, and please don’t feel like you need to say yes or answer right away or anything like that, if maybe you’d want to help me?

Like, as a cohost? You can totally say no.

I know you’re so busy. And pregnant. But I thought you’d be perfect.

Just you and me, telling stories. Talking to other women who’ve gone through something that’s changed them. Who’ve been to hell and back.”

Valerie’s face had lit up. “Wow. I don’t even know what to say. Are you sure I’m the right person? I’m not a writer or a reader or anything like that. I don’t know if I’d be any good at it.”

“Are you kidding?” Nicole had probably walked ten thousand steps at this point.

Most of them, in place. “You’re one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met.

You’re such a good mom. Your heart is enormous, and you’re so warm and honest and vulnerable.

And you might not’ve realized this, but I’ve known it since the day we met. You’re a storyteller. A good one.”

Valerie beamed. Nicole did too. And then Valerie—who was pacing now herself—began to rattle off every question under the sun.

How would they record? How long would it take?

How would they handle the time difference?

How would they pick guests? Choose topics?

What if Valerie had a horrible radio voice?

They talked it all through—eager, giddy—while Valerie deftly policed the Battle of the Last Carrot unfolding behind her.

“What about all the tech stuff?” Valerie said, plopping onto her sofa once her children had been sent to their rooms to look quietly at their books until their three-minute timers went off. “I can barely crop a photo on my phone.”

“It’s not as hard as it looks. I learned to record, edit, do everything myself. The marketing, the social media too. Once you get the hang of it, it’s actually really fun. But even if you only had a little time to record, that would be okay. I could handle the rest.”

Valerie nodded. “Would I need anything? Other than my laptop?”

“Oh!” Nicole zipped over to her desk, hastily unplugging a microphone and a pair of studio headphones.

“I pretty much have two of everything, from before! I can ship it! Or I could even come out, if you wanted? I’m just really excited.

We can try it out—you don’t have to commit.

Maybe we could start with your story? See how you like it? See how we sound?”

“Oh my gosh! Yes! Come!” Valerie’s face had scrunched so deeply Nicole almost wanted to cry.

“We start school in a week—the twenty-second. Let me double-check our calendar, but come! Stay with us, and stay until the ultrasound, okay? I can definitely sneak in a little work when the boys are sleeping or watching their shows these next few days, but once school starts, I’m all yours.

Well, from nine thirty to two fifteen, Monday to Friday, anyway. ”

Nicole leaned against the balcony door and smiled straight into her phone. The hot glass warmed her tingling skin.

“Okay,” she said. “Just let me know. I’ll find a flight.”

The next few days flew by.

In the mornings, Logan and Nicole would time their runs—his fast, eight miles; hers, slow and four—so they could sneak in fifteen or twenty minutes together before their days began.

They’d meet up on the Greenbelt over on Logan’s side of town, each of them damp and sweaty and smiling, then grab iced coffees, talk through their to-do lists, and take each other in as the hazy morning sun crept higher and higher up the hill.

Once Nicole got home, she’d fry an egg or grab a banana or toast a waffle, then take a quick shower and settle into her desk for the day.

She’d put together a crash course for Valerie.

She’d take notes. She’d organize thoughts, ideas, and inspiration.

She’d search for potential guests everywhere she could find them—message boards, the comments sections of Facebook posts, the crowdfunding pages of women who didn’t have the cash to pay for an adoption attorney.

She’d replay interviews over and over, trying to put her finger on what made the great ones so good.

The best hosts, it seemed, knew when to make small talk, when to press for more, and when to shut the hell up. When to sit back and just listen.

She and Valerie, Nicole realized, didn’t have to do this show perfectly.

There would be no script. Sure, they could prepare for every guest. Pore through questions, seek to understand.

Edit masterfully. Help moments crackle. But really, more than anything, what they needed to do—what Nicole needed to do—was lighten up.

To be herself. To make space for the truth, then get out of the way.

It would be a change, but she could do it. That much she knew.

And so Nicole got lost in the work. In seeing the podcast through this new lens.

Every morning was endless; hour after hour to uncover this or consider that.

And then, seemingly out of nowhere, her office—sun-drenched and ivory and bright—would turn yellow, then peach, then red.

Somehow, another day had dissolved. Somehow, it was seven.

She’d rub her eyes and shut down her monitors and rise to her feet, gathering the half-empty yogurt cups and ripped-open bags of pita chips that littered her newly cluttered desk.

And then, every night—before she darted downstairs to grab her keys and head over to Logan’s for dinner—she’d pause.

She’d turn around, she’d put her hand on the wall switch, and just before she dimmed the lights, she’d take a few moments to breathe it all in.