With that realization and understanding that Emily did not matter right now, I focused on the mission.
Or tried to, at least.
Chapter 9: Emily
Monday Afternoon
It was now twenty minutes past noon, at the restaurant I had texted Burke to meet me at, and he still had not shown up.
Perhaps I was the stupid one for thinking I didn’t need to confirm anything with him. Perhaps I was naive for believing just because he hadn’t responded to my text message didn’t mean he wouldn’t be here. No, there was no perhaps—I was definitely the idiot here.
Not only was Burke not here, the man, was actually impossible to reach.
The waiter came over to me, but I quickly grabbed my phone, pretending to be on a phone call so I wouldn’t get embarrassed by a third visit from him alone. When he left, I decided to try my luck at calling Burke anyway. Truthfully, I knew if he hadn’t answered by now, he wouldn’t answer at all, but maybe I was just naively clinging to some far-fetched hope that, I don’t know, his phone had died and it had just now come back to life.
But when I dialed it, I didn’t even get a ring tone. Just like the other…two times I’d called today, it had gone to voicemail.
What a bunch of shit. Had he no regard? No concern? No care at all for anything but himself? Couldn’t he have at least sent a text or something saying he couldn’t make it?
Fuck, it wasn’t so much that he hadn’t shown up. It’s that he’d just fucking…fucking disappeared entirely, ghosted me with no warning.
And not only that, if he really was gone, how were we supposed to sign the legalities of this arrangement. What was the point of all of this negotiating about parental rights and visitations if he was just going to fade into the wind, nothing more than an erotic memory I’d fucking masturbated to?
Boy, put like that, it was downright infuriating. And I had no idea…
I have no idea how to even pay him or send him his car.
It felt…now what did I do? I was already starting treatments and the process of priming my body to hopefully have a child. It wasn’t like that was something I could just shut down—maybe I could, but I wouldn’t having come this far. It felt unfair. I at least wanted to get him the car since that was worthless to me.
I could have fucked him, though. He hadn’t even signed the papers. He’d gone into a clinic, jacked it to some stupid porn, and walked out. Aside from meeting me twice, that was the extent of our connection. No contract, no bank transfer, no vehicle gifts, nothing.
I didn’t want to cheat him out of anything, but Christ almighty, how the fuck could I fulfill my end of the bargain if he wouldn’t let me?
“Ma’am?”
Ah, shit, I forgot to get my phone out when the waiter came by.
“Can I get you anything in the interim?”
I only had a glass of water in front of me. I knew the waiter was being polite, but what he was really saying was, “Order something already or we’ll ask you to leave so we can clear the table and make some cash.” Too bad my appetite had all but vanished under the stress of the moment.
“I’ll take a sparkling water, please.”
“And anything to eat?”
“Chicken and asparagus.”
I said it without really thinking. Maybe something good would happen and I’d get hungry between now and the time the food came out. Or maybe I’d just take the food to go and have myself an elegant dinner later that evening.
My phone rang.
I damn near dropped it on the ground, hurrying to answer it. Was it Burke?
No.
Not Burke.
But it was the doctor, which I supposed was the second-best call I could have gotten.
“Hello?” I said, nervousness evident in my voice.
“Hi, Emily, I just wanted to touch base with you about your embryos,” the doctor said.
I gulped. There was a part of me that feared the doctor was about to say I was somehow had bad ones. That was ridiculous, of course, but fears were usually that…and still able to overwhelm.
“As discussed before, we have one very high-quality embryo and two good ones,” she said. “The appointment is tomorrow, as you know. You can choose to implant two; we usually don’t recommend doing so, but in your case, because you’re in top shape with limited time, it might make sense to do both. It’s unlikely both will take, but they could.”
Two? Like, twins?
I had so many emotions running through me right then, I had trouble distinguishing them and separating them out. Excitement, anxiety, hope, fear, nervousness, trepidation, fulfillment…those were just some of the ones that came to mind, even if some of them seemed to overlap with the other. But one was definitely at the forefront of my mind and overwhelming all the others.
Finality.
Tomorrow was the implantation. Not next week. Not in a month. Not at some undefinable, unclear point in the future. But tomorrow.
And Burke was still nowhere to be fucking seen to finalize this. Whatever, its just me anyway. My life. My body. My future.
It raised some serious ethical questions in my head as to whether or not this was a good idea. Did I need to postpone the implantation to get his signature on all this Was his verbal agreement enough? On a personal level, perhaps, but if this ever got to court, it could get ugly.
And besides, he’d only said I could have one child with him. But did that mean one child, full stop, or
