Page 37 of Sort of Seeing Someone

“How about we finally sit down and talk?” I gently suggest, gesturing toward the velvet green sofa I was sitting on just moments ago.

Olivia closes her eyes, sniffles, and nods. I put my hands on her shoulders and usher her into the living room, plopping her on the couch. I don’t know where her tissues are, so I double back to the kitchen and grab a square of paper towel and rip it into fourths.

“Here you go,” I say, handing her a rough square. She blows hard and her face is a blotchy red mess. All I can do is stare and wish I could absorb some of her pain.

“Did Nora tell you?” she asks.

“Yeah. She mentioned some…biscuit issues.” I dance around the wordfertilityin hopes to avoid another stream of sobs.

“It’s so stupid,” she says. “I just don’t know what’s wrong with me. I wish I could snap my fingers and make my bodydowhat women’s bodies have been doing since the beginning of time.”

“It’s not stupid,” I reassure her. “And there’s nothingwrongwith you. Plenty of people want to be parents and go through the same struggles before they get there.”

“Not Nora.”

“Well, Nora is an anomaly.”

“With bad design style.”

“With bad design style,” I concur, mostly because I have to in this moment. Liv cracks the faintest of smiles.

“This is why I’ve thrown myself into baking,” she says. “Everything is so precise. I put X in, I get Y out. I like that. I like seeing the fruit of my labor. I like having confidence in a process. It’s what’s supposed to happen with making a baby, but obviously that hasn’t been the case for me and Ted. Which is why I lost it with the caramel sauce just now—well that, and the hormones I’m taking to stimulate ovulation, but that doesn’t count. Does it?”

“Definitely not,” I say, having virtually no clue what she was talking about. Does she need a tampon?

“I just can’t have my recipes fail me now, too. You know, infertility is a really lonely journey—especially when Ted’s working sixty hours a week at the vet’s office. Baking has kept me sane through all this. It’s been something to do when I want to take my mind off another invasive transvaginal ultrasound, or when I’m feeling lightheaded from my fifth blood test of the week. Most of all, it helps me pass the time when my period comes and I know we have to gear up for another round of trying. My period came this morning, in case you can’t tell.”

I’m not sure what to say to that, so I say nothing, which feels right.

“This isn’t my first rodeo, Moonie. We’ll try again this month with another IUI. And if it’s negative again, that’sfine, I’m used to it by now. But I’ll tell you what won’t be fine. If all of a sudden I start to suck at baking and thenthatstops being a source of hope and joy.”

“Hey, do you have any more butter?” I ask.

“I always have butter.”

“Then let’s give it another go,” I suggest. “I’ll help. I don’t care about my clothes getting dirty. Maybe this needs to be a two-woman job. I pour, you whisk, Operation Scrumble Bars: Complete.”

Olivia lets out a big breath and blots her eyes again with another piece of the ripped-up paper towel.

“I don’t know if I have it in me,” she laments.

“You do. I know you do. You’re strong. All of us Miller girls are. We can do hard things,” I remind her—and myself.

At that, I grab both of her hands and pull her up off the couch, making a note that I see nothing. Not an ounce of head pain, not the slightest palm tingle, not a single vision. Maybe my woo-woo gift doesn’t work on people who live and breathe exactness. I really need to dive into those books from Angeline.

Alas, I drag Olivia to the kitchen and roll up my sleeves—not to help whisk, but to first go dumpster diving for the Dutch oven she pitched just moments ago.

“You don’t have to do that,” Liv says. “There’s like, egg shells and salmonella there.”

“I fished a Lego out of Nora’s toilet earlier today. I’m fine with a little salmonella,” I say.

Liv’scouch is as stiff as her personality. But still, before retreating to bed, she provided me with anoversizedpatchwork quilt fromAnthroand a glass ofCôtesduRhôneto cozy up the place that still smells like lingering sweetness.

I’m toasty warm under the covers as I sip on the nice red wine.Livsaid she opened it earlier for abourguignon, but I think it was in response to Aunt Flo’s untimely arrival. Regardless, she went to bed in a good enough mood since we nailed theScrumbleBars recipe the second time around and—gasp!—actually had fun baking them. (Though not as much fun as inhaling half the pan with two spoons while doubling down on Nora’s tacky styleafterward.)

Noting that it’s just about midnight, I set my wine glass on a coaster and revisit my phone for the first time since arriving at the condo. I was a bit preoccupied watching the butter and sugar on the stove in order to avoid anotherLivmeltdown, I did not get a chance tocheck ifShereémade good on her promise to post about me, let alone ifYaswas able to get her guy to make some progress on the Moon Batch Apothecary website. But as a soon as I pull up my email and see that there are tons of new messages, all order confirmations, I know everyone kept their word.

I spring up from under the blanket and continue scrolling. One hundred and fifty new customers want a piece of MBA, and two thousand new followers have come along for the ride. TheShereéEffect is apparently in full swing.

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