Page 26 of Independence Bae

“What song did you and Cain dance to at your wedding?” I ask Ivy, signaling over to where Cain, Bert, and Penn sat around one of the firepits bullshitting over beers.

“We actually got married in France. Cain was a widow before I met him, so he hadn’t been super into the whole giant wedding thing. That was completely fine with me. I was in the middle of launching my wedding line and right around that time I found out I carried the same genetic marker my Mom did. She died of uterine cancer when I was really young, but because uterine cancer had made a widower out of my dad and considering Cain also had already lost one wife, I decided to have a total hysterectomy. So our wedding was bittersweet. It’s tied to a lot of traumatic emotions for me.”

She faced me, an embarrassed smile on her lips. “I’m so sorry. You asked about a simple thing and I’m Debbie Downer. There wasn’t a first dance. We got married in a beautiful old church in Toulouse—which was where my Mom was from. After the wedding, the French side of my family hosted a lovely dinner in the center of town. It was very Diner en Blanc.”

“I’m so sorry to interrupt.” Gemini, the chef who put together the incredible reception took a seat next to us. “I couldn’t help overhear. It’s so infrequently that I ever meet someone like me that I just felt compelled to come and say hi and introduce myself. I’m Gemini Tate, I’m the—”

“Gemini Tate, formerly Gemini James, the Chef de Cuisine who studied under Chef Tobin Laurent?”

Gemini’s hand stilled midair, her face broadcasting her confused delight.

“I wondered where you went when Tobin went to Vegas!” Ivy gushed. “Chef Laurent’s restaurant was one our favorite places when we were in Madison.”

“Oh! You’re from Wisconsin?”

“Chicago. But Madison is just over the border—”

“Get out of town! I’m from Chicago too! Born and raised.”

“And Raven here will be a Chicagoan shortly as well. I’m here for the wedding, obviously.” Ivy continued to chatter with more excitement than I’d seen her express so far.

“Wow—small world.” Gemini grabbed a proffered beer from the bartender, smiling her thanks. “I wasn’t going to come over and be that weird girl that randomly brings up super personal information but now I’m glad that I did!”

She went quiet again, pulling at her lip while seemingly mulling over what to say.

“Now it seems incredibly forward of me to have just invited myself into this conversation. But I just wanted you to know that being the one person in your friend group that won’t ever be able to share in the same experiences as them—I wanted you to know that there are other people out there that are experiencing the same thing. We’re always so quiet about it, you know? That you don’t know that the person sitting next to you is experiencing the same pain. So, I just felt compelled to tell you. That you aren’t alone.”

Gemini shared her painful journey of infertility with us, all the way up to her divorce from her husband and her recent move to Barren Hill—what a terrible name—to run the restaurant with her man, Finn.

“It’s so ironic, isn’t it?” I asked, watching Ted and Marley working the reception stopping at various tables and groups to thank everyone for attending. “At forty-three, Ted is getting a second lease on love. He doesn’t have to worry about his waning fertility, how solvent his eggs are, whether he’s still producing the proper amount of hormones, or have his second chance cut off at the knees. All he has to do is find a younger woman—like Marley—and don’t get me wrong I love Marley to death—but here comes Marley young and fertile and boom within months of them getting together she’s going to have his baby.”

It wasn’t until that very moment that I even realized I had an opinion on that.

“It’s definitely hard,” Ivy agreed, though her focus shifted to her best friend Hillary, who presently was in the lap of her husband Bert, laughing and joking with the rest of the guys. “You’re happy for your friends and try valiantly to keep the smile on your face because the second you don’t—you’re selfishly stealing away their happiness. It’s exhausting and hurts so much.”

“What’s even worse,” Gemini added, “is the friends who come to you to lean on you during their infertility journey because they know you’ve gone through it. You want to be the good friend, love and support them. Then they get that magic plus sign that always evaded you—and the second they have the baby they forget all the pain they talked about, as well as how painful it had been for them having to stand on the sidelines and bear witness to everyone else’s announcements.”

Somewhere deep inside had been this surge of fear—or even panic—that I wouldn’t be able to do the thing that all the other women did—because my career had taken me on this crazy adventure that didn’t spit me back out in front of the love of my life until the very tail end of my fertile years.

I needed to find Penn.

Chapter Twenty

Raven tucked into my chest,feeling her heartbeat, smelling the seductive saffron scent of her perfume while we danced to whatever honky tonk slow song the local band played for us—my life couldn’t get much better. Seeing Marley and Ted practically fluorescent they glowed with such unbridled happiness made me itch for the day when it would be Raven and my turn.

“We should get married right now,” I half joked.

“You know as well as I do that Elias and Anastasia Ellis would absolutely expire if their favorite son eloped.”

“Bryce eloped? When?”

I was far from their favorite son. Raven had heard some of the ways my immaturity and bullish pride knocked me off any pedestal she assumed I had been placed upon. I was Penn Ellis, the fuck up. Not their favored child in any way, shape, or form. Though getting married first, giving them grandbabies—maybe one day I’d fall back into favor.

“You’re so funny.” She wiggled her finger between my two ribs, forcing my muscles to contract in a tickle fit. “At the very least we need to get married in New Castle. Even if everything else is a royal fuck you to both your parents and mine.”

She hated New Castle. Said so herself that she balked and everything that even represented New Castle.

“Since when did you have a change of heart on New Castle? You haven’t even been back there in how many years?”

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