Night, Forgotten

Original Edition - Chapter 8: Then

"There you are, Juju Bear." Owen's breath tickled the back of my ear as he came up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist. "Are you all set to head over to the Dolans'?"

"Nah," I stepped back and scooped up my long, tangled curls between my hands, gathering the mass of hair in a pile on top of my head. "Just about to start getting ready."

That evening, our neighbors were hosting the first holiday party we'd been invited to so far that year. It was likely the only one we'd be invited to besides Owen's company party, and that morning I'd woken up with a familiar social anxiety creeping along the back of my neck.

I'd spent the day trying to ignore it.

"Then what are you doing all the way in the parlor?" Owen did his best impression of the haughty, blue-blooded New Englander who, he imagined, pranced around using the word "parlor" in casual conversation.

I always loved using that word, parlor, to describe this room. It's what the realtor who showed us around had called it when Owen first took me to tour this house. Soon after we'd been led into the parlor, we'd both known that we wanted to live in this house together for the rest of our lives.

Despite its huge, bay window looking out to the front yard, the parlor somehow felt private, a special nook for conspiring or creating art. It was if all the hundreds of different stories attached to all the people who'd passed through the room were still lingering in the slightly warped floorboards.

I spun away from Owen and plopped down on the davenport, motioning for him to join me. "I don't know, I just kind of wandered in here thinking about what I'm going to wear tonight. What are you wearing?"

Owen gestured at the outfit he already had on: A fitted, forest green sweater over a patterned button-down shirt and dark jeans. "I thought I'd go as a gracefully aging L.L. Bean catalogue model," he answered, sitting down beside me and hoisting my slippered feet onto his lap.

"That's what you were for Halloween," I laughed.

I scooted down on the davenport and kicked off my slippers so he could more easily rub my feet between his hands.

"And besides, tonight is not a costume party," I sighed. "Mmm, thanks. You're so good at that."

"Have you eaten yet?" he asked. "Want me to heat you up some of that casserole Liza brought over yesterday?"

All week, Liza had been trying out new recipes for her Christmas party, which was beginning in just a few hours. She always referred to the cooking process as "an experiment," and we inevitably ended up being the recipients of her practice dishes. The day before, she'd stopped by with an almost completely full casserole dish of meat lasagna that actually looked surprisingly edible.

"No thanks, you go ahead—I'll defrost some soup, maybe. I'm not feeling like anything too heavy."

"Okay." He smiled. "I'm about to dig into that casserole for dinner. And real quick... do you happen to be fertile? Tonight?" He was trying so hard to make his voice sound easygoing.

It had been about a month since the first time Owen had brought up my fertility in a serious way. He'd left a voicemail for me during his commute home. I'd been in the parlor and my cell phone had rung unanswered up in our bedroom, so it had taken me by surprise when he'd arrived home toting a pink cardboard box filled with little paper strips meant for testing my pee.

Half of them were to measure my level of luteinizing hormone, or LH, to keep track of when I was ovulating, he'd informed me. When the little purple strip appeared, we'd know that it was time to have lots and lots of sex for the next forty-eight hours.

Fine.

The other half of the strips were pregnancy tests, which would reveal one control line when dipped in regular pee and two purple lines when dipped in pregnant pee.

Owen, helpfully, had also picked up some of those 3- ounce paper cups that people keep on their bathroom vanities to wash down pills. For me to pee in, he'd explained.

I'd been furious with him for pressuring me like that.

He wanted me to get pregnant! I got it. But he needed to trust me to decide when I was ready. When he kept forcing the issue, it started to feel like I was the parent of a child kicking the back of my car seat and whining, "Are we there yet are we there yet are we there yet...?"

That analogy had not gone over well.

After a big, raw fight that had lasted an entire night, we'd come to a solution. We would keep the issue of starting a family on the forefront of our minds, and we'd only talk about it once per week. That way, I'd be able to continually evaluate how I felt about it without resenting Owen for pestering me.

And Owen would feel assured that since we'd be talking about it weekly, I wasn't going to forget about having kids until it was too late and all my eggs had dried up, or whatever he was afraid of.

He'd been faithful about sticking to that arrangement; this was the first time he'd brought it up all week. So I humored him.

"The little strip showed up this morning when I tested my pee, so I'm about to ovulate. Or I guess I already might be." I took a deep breath. "But I don't think we should have unprotected sex, Babe. This is just not the month."

Owen's face fell. Of course he was disappointed.

I kissed him, told him that I took seriously what he'd expressed to me, and then repeated what I'd lovingly explained the week before and the week before that. When to get pregnant was a decision I still needed time to make.

Between the hours of eight o'clock that night and three o'clock the next morning, someone else would make that decision for me.