Page 85 of Sure Shot
My heart stops beating for a long second, before thumping wildly back to life. She hasn’t spotted me yet, so I drink her in. Bess isn’t a big person, but there’s something so vivid about the way she carries herself. Neck straight. Shoulders back. Ready to take on anything.
She’s so beautiful, it hurts to look at her.
“Tank?” Eric calls from the hall. “Did you—” Bess’s chin whips toward us just as Eric appears in the doorway. “Oh,” Eric says quietly. “Hell. Hi, Bess.”
Her eyes widen, and for a moment, nobody speaks.
“Um. I’ll just…” Eric backs out of the bedroom and leaves the two of us.
“What are you doing here?” she whispers.
“The same thing you are, I guess.” It’s so quiet, I can hear the pink clock ticking on the nightstand. “I’m sure Eric had no idea you were looking at this place.”
“I didn’t tell him.”
There’s another awkward silence, and I want to ask her how she is. I want to tell her how much I miss her. I want to close the distance between us in three quick strides and kiss that perfect mouth.
“I’ll go,” I say instead. “This place is perfect for you. And I only need one bedroom.”
“So you mentioned,” she says with a sigh.
And that’s my opening. My cue to blurt out the whole fucking story—right here in front of the crib and the fluffy stuffed bear on the rocking chair. I could tell her how much effort and trouble I’d gone through to try to have a family.
But then I’d have to tell her how bad it hurts to fail. Most people don’t have any idea what that’s like. Does Bess want to know how every one of Jordanna’s monthly periods became times of mourning? Or how I didn’t even care if I ever had sex again, so long as I could stop letting Jordanna down?
Whoever owns this apartment probably has no clue how lucky they are.Another baby on the way. Do they know that you can try for five years and come away with nothing?
“I probably can’t afford this place,” Bess says quietly. “It’s a stretch. This building is so bid up.”
“You can too afford it,” I argue. She probably makes more than a half million a year.
Slowly, she shakes her head. “I’m a coward. My five-year plan looks great on paper. But those leaps of faith look different when the sticker price is almost two million bucks. And that’s before the cost of IVF, and a procedure called egg retrieval, and private preschool.” She shivers.
The drugs aren’t that bad, but egg retrieval is just as tricky as it sounds. I don’t say this aloud. If I start spilling my guts, I’ll never stop.
We can’t have this conversation in front of a crib that some stranger put together on his day off. The apartment owner probably has no idea how it feels to fail at the basic manly art of impregnating your wife. To spend fifty thousand dollars on specialists who give you a sterile cup and a pitying look as they point you toward the privacy of a room where you’re supposed to flip through some porn and unload some of your low sperm count jizz into a sterile cup.
My slap shot is fifty miles an hour. I can bench 350 and squat 475. But near the end of my marriage, there had been a night when I’d felt like the weakest man on the planet. My wife had wanted to try it again the natural way, and I physically couldn’t do it.
“What are you thinking about right now?” Bess asks, and I realize we’ve been standing in an uncomfortable silence.
“I was thinking…” So many ugly things. “You should buy this place. Pink isn’t really my color.”
“Really? That’s what you were thinking?” Disappointment crosses her face. “I think we’re done here. I’m outie.”
She scoots past me, a fiery angel. I can’t hear what she says to the startled brokers in the living room, but the door opens and closes a moment later.
Fuck. I leave the baby’s room, my neck hot with shame. I fucked that up, and pretty much everything that happened before it.
I can do better. Iwilldo better. Right now.
Eric is waiting with a worried look in the living room. “Nice place,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck.
“What do you think?” Wilson asks, ever hopeful.
I think I owe Bess a giant apology. “One of us will make an offer tonight. Let me have your card.”
The other broker frowns at me from across the room. “I’m going to have photos up on the website tomorrow. This place will go fast.”
