Page 58 of Screwed (Dad Bod Contracting 4)
Imogen laughs quietly. “Oh, it’s scary all right. But exhilarating and exciting and amazing too.”
“But my doctor says it would be super risky.”
Imogen just rolls a shoulder. “Eh, I’m technically high risk, being over forty myself. It just means a few extra ultrasounds, and a few more doctor appointments throughout the pregnancy. We’re both super healthy, and you even more so than me.”
“I just…I don’t know how to reconcile the part of me that’s still, like, NO WAY, no babies, never ever, and the part of me that’s like, GIVE ME BABY.” Audra touches her belly—flat, with six-pack abs. “I almost feel it sometimes. Like it’s already real. Even though I know it’s not.”
“You guys have been trying?” Imogen asks.
Audra nods. “I went off birth control a couple months ago. It took a while for my cycle to reassert itself into a normal rhythm—and after having super short, light periods if any at all for so long from the birth control, having a heavy flow fucking sucks, let me tell you.” She laughs. “And yes, we’ve been…trying. A lot.”
Imogen laughs. “You guys fuck like sixteen-year-olds who just discovered sex as it is.”
Audra’s eyes widen. “You have no idea. It’s even more, now. Like, once we both got on board and committed to actively trying to get pregnant, it’s like our sex drives went into overdrive.”
Imogen rears back, eyes wide. “Your sex drive is in overdrive? I…I can’t even fathom what that means.”
Audra laughs, shakes her head. “Morning sex almost every day. I put my feet up, and he brings me coffee. He comes home for lunch most days and we fuck again. And then, most nights, we fuck a third time before we go to bed.” She laughs harder. “It’s honestly kind of exhausting, even for me, but I just…I fucking want him. ALL. THE. TIME. I want his cum inside me. Sorry to be so graphic, but I just…it’s a craving. I’m not even blowing him anymore. Like not at all, the poor guy. I think he misses the spontaneous BJs.”
“He’s getting sex three times a day,” I say drily. “I think he’ll survive.”
“He’s used to getting a BJ several times a week at least. Now it’s down to literally zero. But I just don’t want to waste it. I want it inside me.” Audra shakes her head, as if she can’t believe what she’s saying. “I want his baby juice inside me, and I want it in a way I can’t explain. I barely understand it myself, but it’s like this crazy biological imperative.”
Imogen sighs. “Audra, god…” She twists and faces Audra again, touching her on the shoulder. “Let’s just be real, here, huh?”
Audra frowns. “I am being real, Im.”
“Calling it the work of some mysterious biological imperative is a copout and you know it, hon.”
Audra tips her head backward and groans. “Goddammit, Imogen. Can’t you give me one little white lie?”
Imogen shakes her head. “No. Because you wouldn’t give me one, and you know it.”
Audra turns away and paces across the room, slumping to the couch, head hanging, face buried in her hands. “I’m fucking terrified,” she whispers. “Of being a mother. Of being my mother. Of being a terrible mother.” Her voice drops until we almost can’t hear her. “And yet I’m even more afraid of not being able to get pregnant, and never knowing.”
Laurel comes to sit on the couch, and suddenly all four of us are crowded together, the three of us huddled around Audra—who, for once, doesn’t fight the affection as she weeps like I’ve never seen her weep.
“As the only one here who has already had a child, I can tell you this, Audra: that fear of being the worst part of your parents?” Laurel’s voice is a quiet murmur. “That will drive you to be the best mom you could possibly be. You’ll make your own mistakes, but you sure as hell won’t make their mistakes. I can tell you that you’ll never be ready. I can tell you that it’ll be hard—Imogen will testify to the fact that being pregnant is hard, unless you end up being one of those annoying bitches who has an easy pregnancy. But it’ll be worth it.”
“I don’t even know if I can get pregnant,” Audra says. “And that’s the scariest part.”
Imogen laughs. “I was told I couldn’t get pregnant,” she says, and then palms her belly. “And look at me. And we weren’t even trying. I thought I couldn’t get pregnant so we never bothered with a condom, and obviously I wasn’t on birth control. And the one morning I suddenly started throwing up, and I missed a period…” She shrugs. “So I took a test, and promptly freaked the fuck out.”
Imogen wipes her eyes. “So you guys don’t think it’s stupid to try for a baby?”
