Page 19 of This Is How It Started
San Francisco’s legendary June gloom is hanging over the bay while we eat breakfast in bed. Of the two of us, he has the kitchen moves. My pancakes tend to look like crepes and taste like rubber.
I dip my fork in to test before I smother my pancakes with syrup. Chocolate seeps out into a gooey mess on my plate. I take a bite and close my eyes from the pure goodness of it. Just one forkful and I’m in heaven.
“Decadent, right?” Josh is watching me, a proud grin stretched across his face.
“Oh my God.” I cover my mouth with my hand, afraid to drip chocolate on our new duvet. “Definitely your best. What’s in here besides chocolate chips? Something is different.”
His eyes sparkle like he’s got a secret. “Try to guess.”
Of the two of us, he’s the foodie. My palate is rather unsophisticated. That isn’t to say I don’t like good food, but my taste buds can’t distinguish between ingredients the way Josh’s can. “I don’t know. It’s just...different. Come on, what is it?”
“Almond paste,” he says. “We had some left over from when I made macarons.” Josh got on a macaron kick after he did the design for a French bakery in Cow Hollow. The owner used to work at Ladurée in Paris and allegedly brought its macaron recipe with her to the States. She gave it to Josh as a thank-you with a promise that he wouldn’t give it to anyone else.
I take another big bite to see if I can taste the almond paste. “They’re so fluffy,” I say on a mouthful.
He digs into the heaping stack—another one of our Saturday rituals is that we share from the same plate—and we fork fight each other for the last scrap.
“Mm, better than sex,” Josh says, and I kick him under the blanket.
He looks at me, his brown eyes meeting mine, and says what we’ve both been avoiding for weeks. “I think it’s time, Rach.”
“I know,” I whisper. “I just wanted it to be...” I start to say “normal,” but that’s not really the right word. I guess what I mean is that I wanted it to be natural, that one day I would simply wake up pregnant without having to focus all our energy on it. Without doctors and hormones and laboratories.
As if Josh knows exactly what I’m thinking, he says, “Sometimes people need a little help. That’s all, Rach. It’s not a big deal.”
I blow out a breath. This isn’t the way I want to spend our anniversary. But the truth is we’re running out of time, especially if we want more than one child. Two had always been the plan.
“I know,” I say, yet I feel a tremendous amount of guilt for not being able to give Josh and me this one thing. This one ultimate gift. I can’t help but question whether there is something wrong with me, whether what happened seventeen years ago made me infertile. “But can we maybe talk about this tomorrow?”
“Or the day after. Or the day after that.” He smiles that Josh smile, and it goes straight to my soul. “Whenever you’re comfortable, Rach.”
“Thank you,” I whisper, a little choked up. God, I’m so lucky to have this beautiful man in my life.
“De nada, baby.” He winks and moves over me and kisses me on the lips. He tastes like chocolate and coffee, and I love him so much I want to cry. “You got it,” he says. “What do you want to do today?”
“Go for a walk, then make our list.” We do it every anniversary. Instead of New Year’s resolutions, we make anniversary resolutions. Usually, it’s about ten things we want to do for our marriage. Last year, the big ones were to get pregnant and buy a house. I suspect those two will land at the top of the list this year.
We almost got the house. It was a duplex in Eureka Valley that had been stripped of all its vintage charm. Josh wanted to put the charm back in it and rent the second apartment until we had enough money to make it one large home. The only reason we could afford the neighborhood in the first place was because the building had structural issues. The floors were so unlevel that you could roll a marble from one end of the house to the other. We hoped that it was a settlement issue and that for twenty or thirty thousand dollars we could shore up the foundation.
Josh brought in an engineer who works for his firm, and it turned out that the only thing that would save the foundation was to start over. Given that the house was perched on the side of a hill and was three stories high, we were probably looking at half a million dollars. Needless to say, it wasn’t worth it, not that we have that kind of money anyway.
If Josh wasn’t so particular, we could probably get something in the Outer Sunset or Outer Richmond, or even pockets of the city that are less desirable. But he’s looking for something that he can work his magic on, something architecturally interesting or at least something with architectural potential. I can’t blame him, not when it’s what he does for a living.
“You want to walk to Chestnut or go to the park?”
“What do you want to do?”
I’m hoping for Chestnut so we can look in the shop windows. It isn’t the greatest day weather-wise for the park. And while I’m not a clothes horse like Josie, I like something new every now and again.
“I know you’re voting for Chestnut,” he says, and I smile.
He knows. He always knows.
* * * *
Two hours later, we are back at the apartment, our walk a rousing success. I have a new dress Josh bought me in one of Chestnut’s trendy boutiques. And Josh got a fedora that he says looks exactly like the one Dean Martin wore inRobin and the 7 Hoods.
“Want to make our list now?”
