Читать книгу The Choices We Make - Karma Brown, Karma Brown - Страница 12

3

HANNAH

Ben and I had been married for 2,190 days, and we’d been trying to get pregnant for nearly every one of those.

We met in Jamaica, at the wedding of my college friend Jasmine, who also turned out to be Ben’s first cousin. He was tall and funny and had a thing for useless party tricks, like balancing a salt shaker on its edge and folding a dollar bill into a tiny collared T-shirt, which I found irresistibly charming—especially after a few rum punches. With skin the color of steeped tea with a long pour of cream thanks to his Jamaican mother, and deep blue eyes he’d inherited from his American father, Ben regaled me with stories of his childhood in Jamaica, where his mom had been a chef and his dad the lead architect for a string of luxury resorts on the island.

Over too many drinks we laughed, and danced, then stumbled back to my hotel room after a late-night ocean swim. It was one of those perfect nights, the kind that you think back to when life is getting you down. I’d been thinking about that night a lot lately.

Now, six years later, I should have been used to seeing that single line or the words Not Pregnant, but every time it caught me by surprise. We’d moved on long ago from the bottle of wine and legs up in the air while we giggled at the prospect of having just made a baby thing. Even though we were actively trying to get pregnant, we rarely had sex anymore. I missed having sex.

I had become an expert at answering the blistering and insensitive, though well-intentioned, “So when are you two going to have a baby?” question. No longer did I answer with the enthusiastic “We’re working on it!” response I used to give early on—now I simply offered, “Soon, we hope.” The assumption that Ben and I didn’t have a baby because we weren’t trying to have one really pissed me off.

God, we were trying so hard.

The knock on the bathroom door startled me, and the plastic test stick dropped from my hand.

“Hannah? Everything okay in there?”

I cleared my throat. “I’ll be right out.” I picked up the white plastic stick with its one dark blue line, and threw it harder than necessary into the trash can beside the toilet, jamming a balled-up handful of tissues on top of it. I had promised Ben I wouldn’t do a pregnancy test this time, would wait for the call from the doctor’s office with the official blood test results. But I was having a tough time kicking the habit.

A moment later I unlocked the door and stepped out into the hall, disappointed Ben wasn’t still standing there waiting for me even though I knew I would have been irritated if he had been. I found him in the kitchen, sitting at the island with a six-pack of Anchor Brewery beer and a bouquet of yellow tulips—two of my favorite things. My cell phone vibrated in my hand, and I glanced at the screen. “West Coast Fertility & Associates.” There was no point in answering it.

I started crying. Damn it.

“Hey, babe.” Ben jumped off his stool and wrapped his arms around me.

“Stupid hormones,” I blubbered, my face pressed into his chest. When I pulled back I saw a wet spot on the blue-and-white gingham-patterned cotton of his shirt, which I uselessly tried to blot with the sleeve of my cardigan.

Ben, his arms linked around my waist, leaned back and looked into my eyes. “Everything is going to be fine. You’ll see.”

I nodded.

“We’ll do in vitro next month, and I have a really good feeling about it,” he said.

I nodded again. “Thanks for the flowers,” I said, craning my head around him to look at the tulips on the counter. I didn’t want to talk about next month. Or IVF. “And the beer. I take it at least three of those are for me?”

Ben laughed. “Well, I figured you might need it,” he said. “And if not, I was prepared to drink the lot.” He winked and I stood on my tiptoes to kiss him.

“I love you, Ben Matthews.”

“I love you, too, Hannah Matthews.”

I extricated myself from his embrace. “Listen, I just need to go call Kate. You know how she frets.”

“I’m sure she can wait for one beer,” Ben said, cracking the lids on two bottles. “Here.”

“Thanks.” I took it from him, then picked up my phone. “I’ll be right back, okay?”

Ben nodded and took a sip from his bottle, settling in on the couch. I headed to the bedroom upstairs and shut the door, then put my phone and beer on the nightstand and picked up a pillow from the bed.

Covering my face with it, pressing so hard my knuckles dug into my cheekbones, I screamed into the four-hundred thread count Egyptian cotton pillowcase until my throat hurt and I had no air left.