Janice Johnson - First Comes Baby

“I don’t know. That seems weird. Well, all of it does. But I’ll think about it. Okay?”

Laurel nodded.

“Now, how about some dessert? I made a coffee cake today.”

Stomach knotted with the aftermath of nerves and maybe a new case of them—she was going to have a baby!—Laurel still smiled and said, “Sounds great.”

This had been the hardest part, she reminded herself—and kept reminding herself, even after she’d said goodbye to Sheila and Matt’s brood, hugged both of them again and gotten behind the wheel of the car.

She’d had alternatives in mind, but Matt had been first on her list. They’d been friends since she’d taken her first job after the rape in a legal aid office. He was great: smart, good-looking in a teddy-bearish way, gentle, kind and healthy. She knew his parents were still alive and going strong in their seventies—tonight Sheila had mentioned they were on a cruise in the Caribbean—and that his grandmother had lived into her nineties. She knew him. The essence of him.

Of course, she’d considered going the sperm bank route. Had even called a couple of places. She’d almost convinced herself that she balked because she could never know how much in each donor’s profile was true and how much false. Graduate student in astrophysics. Sure. But maybe he worked at the local Brown Bear car wash. I.Q. of 154. Uh-huh. And how did he measure it? An online pop quiz?

But that wasn’t really it. Some of those donors probably were graduate students who needed some bucks to supplement their fellowships. No, what mattered was that they were strangers.

Strange men.

However clinical the procedure—there was that word again—she would still be taking a part of him inside her. Her skin crawled at the idea.

But a friend… A friend for whom she had no sexual feelings. That was different. She could hug Matt, and his sperm she could accept.

And he’d said yes. They’d said yes. Tears burned behind her eyelids when she let herself into her small house in Lake City.

LAUREL DIDN’T TELL anyone what she planned. Not her father, not her younger sister. Once it was a done deal and she was pregnant would be soon enough. They couldn’t try to talk her out of it then.

And they would. Even Matt had, in his gentle way.

He’d cleared his throat apologetically. “I know you don’t see a sexual relationship in your near future. But you’re still young, Laurel. It’s not as if your childbearing years are passing. You’ve done a lot of healing. You’ll do more. Becoming a parent with someone you love…”

She’d shaken her head. “No. It’s not going to happen, Matt. And…I need someone to love. Someone I can love.”

She guessed the certainty in her voice had swayed him. Or the plea, she wasn’t sure. All she knew was, she didn’t want to argue with anyone else. Explain. Justify.

Nope, she would just announce, “I’m pregnant,” and have faith they’d be happy for her.

Caleb was different. She wouldn’t tell him when he called or she responded to his e-mails, but in person, it would be hard not to. Fortunately, he was out of the country, as he often was, so she hadn’t had to make an excuse to avoid seeing him.

She didn’t know what he’d say, whether he’d understand or would try to talk her out of a decision she’d already made. He was less predictable than her dad or her sister.

Part of her wanted to tell him. He’d been the most amazing friend she’d ever had, and had been since the second week of their freshman year of college.

Laurel still remembered the first time she’d seen him. Their dorm at Pacific Lutheran University had a rec room in the basement, complete with a Ping-Pong table and a dozen sagging sofas and chairs too grungy even for the local thrift store. She had wandered down, feeling shy but acting on faith that, since nobody here knew her, if she forced herself to pretend to be outgoing she might actually be popular. A bunch of kids were draped on the sofas, one reading and nodding in time to music that played through her headphones, some arguing about whether any curriculum should be required—how funny that she remembered that—and two boys played Ping-Pong.

One of those two was in her intro to psych class. They’d sat next to each other and exchanged a few words, so she felt comfortable pausing to watch the game. Until the second boy aced his serve and taunted the guy she knew, then grinned at her. She looked at him, he looked at her and… It wasn’t true love at first sight, even though the girlfriends she made in the weeks to come believed through all four years that she had a crush on Caleb Manes. What they’d done was fall into like. There was a connection. They were instant friends, this tall, lanky boy with curly dark hair and electric-blue eyes and former high school nerd Laurel Woodall, in those days carrying an extra twenty-five pounds.

She could talk to Caleb; he really listened. And he talked to her, telling her stuff no guy ever had before. They advised each other through girlfriends and boyfriends, first kisses and breakups. He’d slipped a note into her hand when all the seniors in their graduation robes milled like sheep impervious to attempts to herd them into order. She had waved and smiled at her dad, snapping pictures, then peeked at the note.

Friends forever, it said.

She’d felt a tiny glow of warmth and relief at his reassurance that somehow they would stay connected even though they were going in different directions. Caleb had signed up for the Peace Corps and was going to bum around Europe with a buddy until he had to report for training. She had a summer job lined up and was heading to law school at the University of Washington come fall.

But…friends forever. Of course they would be.

They almost hadn’t been. The irony was, she’d been the one who tried to shut him out, along with all her other friends. But Caleb hadn’t let her, a fact that to this day still filled her with misgiving and relief and probably a dozen other emotions mixed into a brew as murky as folk cures for hangovers: weird looking, vile tasting, not so easy on the stomach, but in the end, settling in there.

They’d never been quite as close as when they could drop by each other’s dorm rooms and later apartments at PLU. But that would have happened anyway. By the time he came back from Ecuador, she hadn’t seen him in two years. They were adults, embarked on careers, or at least—in her case—a job. He’d become engaged once, although the wedding had kept getting postponed and never did happen. Once his import business took off, Caleb had bought a house on Vashon Island, a twenty-minute ferry ride plus a half-hour drive from her north Seattle neighborhood. She saw him maybe once a month. Sometimes less.

They were casual friends, Laurel concluded, refusing to listen to any dissenting voices. She had no obligation to tell him anything.

It had taken her so long to work up the courage to ask Matt to donate sperm, her most fertile time of the month had come and gone. So now she had a month to second-guess herself, suffer daily panic attacks and pray that he and Sheila didn’t change their minds. Laurel didn’t think they would, but that fear had to be part of those panic attacks that hit her unpredictably.

She’d be sitting on the Metro bus she took every morning to work at the downtown law firm, hip to hip with some old lady gripping her purse and shooting glares at everyone who walked down the aisle, or some guy in cornrows blasting rap from headphones and bobbing in time. She’d be minding her own business, looking out the window and seeing the cross streets pass, wishing she’d had time for a second cup of coffee. She’d vowed to save her money and not stop every day at the Tully’s on the corner where she got off, but maybe today…