Page 15 of Beloved Beauty

Krishna dabs her mouth with her napkin and leans toward me. “I’m gonna duck off to the loo. Come with?”

The moment the bathroom door clicks shut behind us, Krishna laughs. “Apologies. Didn’t mean to dash out, but I thought I needed to pee. Now? Nothing. Pregnancy is wild. It messes with your body in ways no one warns you about.”

She uncaps her lipstick and leans toward the mirror, applying it. She catches my eye and grins. “How does it feel knowing you’re about to marry into the madness? Are you ready to be a rugby wife?”

I laugh, surprised. “Is that a thing?”

“Oh, it’s a thing,” she says, tossing her lipstick back into her bag. “Some wives are amazing—strong, grounded, the sort who’ll save your sanity in the stands. But then there are the others.”

She gives me a look—equal parts amused and deadpan. “Let’s just say high school didn’t end for some of them. It just has better handbags and Botox appointments now.”

I groan, but it’s playful. “Good to hear. I’ll keep my armor polished.”

“You’re different from what they’re used to,” she says. “They’ll either love you or fear you. Both work.”

She rolls her shoulders and straightens, her hand darting to her belly. Her expression shifts—surprise, then joy. “Oh! There’s that little flutter again.”

“Wow. That must be amazing. Do you have a feeling about the gender?”

“In my head, it’s a boy. Kye says a girl.”

“Well, one of you must be right.”

Krishna laughs. “How old are you, Magnolia?”

“Thirty-one.”

She nods. “Do you plan to wait a while?”

I shrug. “We want children, but the timeline is up in the air.”

The words sound simple, but they barely scratch the surface. The truth is that I’m not sure what rugby’s going to mean for our lives and everything we’re trying to build.

It’s hard not to wonder what that means for us. How much time will he have for home? For me? For a family?

I understand what the game demands. This isn’t a part-time passion. It’s a full-body, full-heart commitment. And while I will be beside him in it, I also know I don’t want to raise a baby half alone while he’s traveling or nursing a busted body.

So yeah, we want kids. But I’m not ready to bring one into the world unless we’re both here for it. Fully. And right now, that’s still a little too foggy for me to see.

“I was thirty-four and Kye was thirty-eight when we got married. We didn’t want to wait to start our family—and thank God we didn’t. Even getting a jump on it, it still took nearly two years. Specialists. Tests. A lot of hoping through heartbreak. It wasn’t just effort—it was luck, timing, stars aligning in just the right way. We were a week away from starting IVF when this one surprised us.”

Krishna’s words aren’t a warning. More a gentle, well-meaning nudge.

“It made us realize how little control we had.”

Something about that sticks, nothing unsettling, but it makes me take stock.

I’ve spent so much of my adult life avoiding pregnancy. But I’ve never once considered what would happen if, when the time came, I couldn’t. If wanting wasn’t enough.

Krishna’s tone is gentle, an offering of advice without pressing into sacred territory. “You’re young. There’s no rush, especially if you’re still figuring things out. But since you know you want kids someday, it might not be a bad idea to see someone. Just to get a sense of where your fertility is at.”

It’s the way she says it—easy, warm, like a friend passing on hard-won wisdom—that makes it land without pressure.

“I need to find a GYN here anyway. No harm in getting checked out.”

She smiles, soft and knowing. “Exactly. Just information. That’s all it is.”

Taking stock doesn’t mean we’re going to try tomorrow. It means being prepared when we decide the time is right.

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