The Knocked Up Plan Read online

  “Please,” I moan, begging.

  His hand slides up and down his hard-on. “In my game, we’ve just landed on make her come.”

  Twenty-Two

  Ryder

  Her eyes give her away.

  She wants me to make her scream in pleasure.

  She always does. I’ve learned in this short time with her that she’s as addicted to orgasms as I’m hooked on giving them to her.

  I’ve got her pinned like this, her attention solely on my dick. “I want you so fucking wet. So fucking crazy.” I stroke from the base to the head, and her back arches.

  “Ryder, please.”

  “Please what?”

  “Please give it to me.”

  I shake my head. I grip harder and tighter, rocking my fist up and down my cock.

  Her breath comes in fast, erratic pants. I want to tease her so badly. I want her wild with desire. “Don’t let me do this alone,” I say.

  Her brows knit together. “You’re not going to jerk off on me, are you?”

  I nearly laugh at how worried she seems over the prospect of spilled seed. Coming on her chest would be pointless for her during this “window.” I grab her hand, wrapping it around mine. I move our joined hands up and down my shaft. For a brief second, I am damn tempted to finish the job and jack off all over those glorious tits. “You’d look so good wearing my come all over your chest,” I tell her with a groan as we stroke my cock together.

  “No,” she says with a desperate cry.

  The image turns me on so much that a drop of liquid beads at the head of my cock. I swipe it with my thumb and bring it to her lips. “Suck it off,” I tell her as I push my thumb into her mouth.

  She wraps those sexy red lips nice and tight around my thumb and sucks off the first taste of me. My dick grows even thicker. I bring my hand back to my cock and play with myself some more.

  “Touch yourself, baby. I want to watch you get yourself off.”

  Her hand shoots between her legs, and I scoot back, parking myself between her knees. Her legs are a V and her fingers fly over her wet clit.

  “Oh God,” she cries out as she arches into her fingers. It hits me like a flash of light in a darkened room. She’s so turned on she’s nearly there.

  “You’re going to come, baby, aren’t you?”

  She bites her lip and nods. Her face twists in exquisite torture. Her fingers fly over her pussy, and I have a front-row seat to the hottest show in town. I jack harder, faster. This is the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.

  In seconds, she goes off. She rocks her hips against her hand. “Oh God, I’m coming.”

  Her beautiful body writhes and twists and bucks, and I can’t wait. I move up her, wedging myself between her gorgeous thighs. I bury myself in her and groan. Her wetness envelops me, and it feels so fucking good. “Nicole,” I murmur as I lower my chest to her. “You’re so sexy when you come.”

  “So are you.”

  She’s even sexier when she comes twice, and I’m determined to bring her a double. I slow the pace, ease in and out. I swivel my hips, and bring her back up the hill. With each thrust, she pants harder. She moans louder.

  “Yes, baby. Give it to me. Come again. I want it so bad.”

  She digs her nails into my back and pulls me deeper, matching me thrust for thrust. Her hips rise in one long, gorgeous lift, and she falls apart. Her eyes squeeze shut, and she calls my name as she comes again.

  Something in me rattles loose.

  Pleasure, but also more than that. Something I haven’t felt in ages.

  Intimacy.

  Rather than fight it, I let it pull me under. I let it become part of us tonight. I reach for her hand, thread my fingers through hers, and I sink deep inside her as I climax.

  When we both come down from the high, we’re still holding hands. I don’t want to let go.

  “Like spin the bottle,” she whispers as she stares at our linked fingers, a reverent look in her eyes.

  “Yes. Just like spin the bottle.”

  We’re silent as we lie there, me collapsed on her, but I don’t want to move, and she doesn’t seem to want me to. Her other hand travels to my hair, and she runs her fingers through it. “Do you want to stay the night?”

  “That’s not on the spin-the-bottle board,” I say with a husky laugh.

  “I know.”

  I raise my face from her shoulder and meet her eyes. I’m not a clueless guy. I’m not a twenty-something playboy who doesn’t know what emotions are when they smack him in the face. I’m thirty-two, with a degree in psychology and a career based on a fine understanding of what happens between men and women when they come together.

  I am 100 percent aware of what’s happening here.

  I get why my heart is expanding in my chest.

  What scares me most is that even though I get it, I still say, “I do want to stay with you.”

  I call my neighbor, ask her to watch my dog, and then I spoon Nicole all through the night.

  Twenty-Three

  Nicole

  This time we don’t stop.

  As we slide into the last week or so of my cycle, we don’t quit our horizontal hobby.

  I tell myself it’s because we have his dates to finish, and it would be silly not to screw. We don’t go at it nightly like we did when I might have conceived, but it seems foolish to execute the hotel hijacking date I promised without making full and proper use of the bed.

  Because of our dogs, we make the hotel escape during the workday when we take a long lunch. It comes complete with shower sex at a swank Gramercy Park hotel, as well as another round on the bed.

  In the post-orgasm haze, he wraps an arm around me and tugs me close. “For the record, I absolutely want you to be pregnant, but this has been the most fun I’ve ever had, and I’d be lying if I said I won’t miss it once you’re knocked up.”

  I smile and snuggle into the crook of his arm. A wistfulness settles over me, but it comes with sadness, too. “I know. Same here.”

  “It’s sort of strange. That this is just going to end,” he says in an even tone, as if he’s making a scientific observation.

  I close my eyes because the reality hurts.

  Yes, we will end.

  Yes, that’s always been the plan.

  We were supposed to be practical. A wham, bam, thank-you, ma’am. We weren’t supposed to miss the sex, or the closeness, or the cuddling when this ends.

  Our relationship has always been finite. It has a beginning, a middle, and a clear and obvious end. Like a rotation of a planet, our relationship starts in one spot and ends there, too, and no one should bat an eye or shed a tear.

  Perhaps this makes me foolish, or maybe it just makes me focused on the mission, but I hadn’t thought about how I might feel when this is over.

  Now, I feel more sadness than I expected, and a longing, too, even as I’m consumed with my own amped-up hope for a baby.

  “But we’ll stay friends,” I say, drawing in a breath that strengthens me. “We’ll be friends and colleagues and Ping-Pong partners.”

  “Yes, we absolutely will.”

  I wonder if that prospect sounds odd to him, too.

  But then I stop thinking when he kisses me once more, because I’ll take what I can get for the next few days.

  Three in the morning.

  The twenty-eighth day.

  The bitch doesn’t show. But I don’t trust her. She fucked with me once before. She might do it again.

  The navy-blue night has draped its blanket over the city as most of Manhattan slumbers. But all over this island, there are pockets of people awake like me. Some with lonely hearts, some with graveyard jobs, some unable to let go of the day.

  I lie awake, moonlight slicing through the blinds, casting a silvery glow on my bed. Ruby sprawls next to me, her russet tail twitching, her snout fluttering. She is dreaming of bones, peanut butter, and beef jerky while my wide-awake wishes are for soft breath, angel-wisp hair, and a new
life to love.

  I flash back to the time Ryder and I talked about how much love one has to give. I imagine when I do finally have a baby, I won’t be wondering if I have enough love for everyone in my life. I’ll be wondering how I can store so much inside me.

  I like to think our ability to love is infinite. I want to feel the limitlessness of love.

  But I know better than to blindly believe this time is the charm. I need to be prepared for my monthly bill to ruin my morning with her blood-red appearance.

  When I first asked Ryder for his help, I thought he’d give me a cup of batter and I’d send him on his merry way. It would be a true transaction, and then I’d turn to basters and exam tables and appointments. Any disappointments I’d process on my own with friends and family.

  Now, no one is more enmeshed than he.

  If my test is negative again, do we simply go on? Do we have monthly dates in my bed during the nights when I’m most likely to conceive? Do we go about our separate lives the rest of the time? What if it takes three months, six months, or more?

  Ryder’s nearly done with his field guide to dating, and it thrills me to see his show and column inch back up in popularity. I gave him what he needed—a dating companion. But my need for him has no end date yet.

  How can I expect him to maintain this sort of commitment to making love to me every month until I’m pregnant? How can I ask his commitment-phobic heart to keep practicing fidelity with my body?

  But the more nights we spend together, the more it feels like we have some sort of commitment. I feel it in the pounding of my heart, in the calm inside my chest, in the warm glow that comes when he holds me. I see it in him, too, in the way he looks at me, in the tenderness of his touch, in how he sets his hand on my belly as if he’s hoping too.

  I don’t know what to make of any of it, though. I let the thoughts repeat over and over, and in the tangled mess of my mind, I finally find sleep.

  In the morning, I’m still blissfully period-free.

  She doesn’t show during the day, either, and that old friend hope bubbles up again, like a tease. Surely, she’ll pull the rug out from under me any second. I tell myself that soon the crushing waves of cramps and disappointment will collide in me, mixing up a new cocktail of sadness.

  But hope is a potent drug. It overpowers fear. My wish is stronger than my need to tamp down all this fervent want.

  The next morning, I walk my dog in the chilly dawn, the remnants of this week’s Halloween still in store windows. After I race back to my apartment, nerves and anticipation jostling inside me like boxers in a ring, I take the stick I never peed on last month, and I pee on it.

  I stand in my bathroom, counting the seconds.

  Twenty-Four

  Ryder

  “Cupcakes. You need cupcakes.”

  The caller sounds intrigued by my statement, but happy, too. I can hear the smile in his voice as he says, “Cupcakes? Tell me more.”

  I lean back in my chair, park my hands behind my head, and give him my best advice. “There’s just something about cupcakes. They make you happy. When you’re tasting cupcakes, you can flirt with your woman, you can get to know her—you can find out what makes her tick and what ticks her off.”

  The caller laughs. “Cupcakes are like a universal lubricant, then?”

  I tense for a second, worried Cal will freak the fuck out if anything is remotely dirty on the show. Across from me, Jason widens his eyes in concern.

  But I’ve learned that dirty isn’t entirely the problem my boss has with my work. It’s the heartless dirty he abhors. He doesn’t mind a sex joke if it’s mingled with a wish for intimacy. “Cupcakes sure do seem to pave the way for good things. I’ve concluded that it’s the frosting, man. Frosting is everything.”

  “Awesome. I think I’ll find a cupcake shop for my date tonight.”

  Jason shoots me a thumbs-up as we say good-bye to our caller.

  It’s just me and the mic now as I close out the show. “But the real frosting is this—it’s listening to the woman. When she wants to talk, you listen. When she opens her heart, you listen. When she tells you her fears, you listen. Make her feel cherished, and that’s how you win a woman, whether with cupcakes, mini golf, geocaching, trapeze, an afternoon hotel hijacking, or a night at the arcade.” For the first time in a long time, I don’t feel like a fraud when I talk about intimacy and emotions.

  That doesn’t mean I want those things in my life. I’m just glad I can do my job again without hating it. I’ve learned through this time with Nicole—maybe because the boundaries are safe and clear-cut—that getting to know someone doesn’t mean giving them your heart to drop into a Cuisinart. Nicole hasn’t chopped and julienned one of my favorite organs.

  I suspect that’s because of the nature of our arrangement. The terms and conditions we set in place created a test lab of sorts. A safe zone for dating. In our test lab, we didn’t launch the rocket of romance into space, but we learned it can withstand the pressure of the atmosphere.

  When we sign off, Jason offers a palm for high fiving. “Great show. Did I ever tell you I took Lizzie geocaching?”

  “Oh yeah?” The geocaching column went viral, and we’ve heard from tons of men and women about their very own treasure hunt dates.

  “Best time ever,” he says as we leave the studio. “Followed your column to a T, even the Whispering Arch.”

  “How’d that go?”

  Jason shrugs sheepishly. “Told her I loved her there.”

  “Wow,” I say, smiling. “What did she say?”

  “Said she loved me, too. I’m a lucky bastard.” He points at me. “And you’re the master. You know your shit.”

  “Glad I could help.”

  As Jason turns the other way, Cal marches down the hall, his long legs eating up the carpet. I draw a deep breath like I can protect myself from his ire. He stops and fixes me with an intense stare. “More. Of. That.”

  I relax. “Thanks.”

  He claps my shoulder. “Keep it up.” He resumes his pace, and finally, the leash he’s had on me loosens.

  I turn the corner in the hall, and when I reach my office, I do a double take. A small box is perched on my desk. It’s blue with a white bow on top. I furrow my brow, but then the color registers. Blue like the Katherine’s jewelry store. Why on earth would someone send me a Katherine’s box?

  But even as I pose the question, the answer arrives, fully formed in my head. This box can only mean one thing. I fight off that tiny wish in the back of my mind that I’m wrong.

  I tug at the ribbon, letting the white fabric fall on my desk, then I park myself in my chair, staring at the box as if it’s a moon rock, an artifact from another planet. Or maybe a relic from another time in my life. Because I suspect that this box marks the end of the best two months I’ve spent with anyone.

  I flick my finger against the robin’s egg-blue cardboard, reminding myself that it may be an end, but it’s the beginning of something else. Something Nicole has always wanted. Her heart’s true desire.

  That’s all that matters. Not that I might miss her.

  I remove the top, fish around in the wrapping paper, and pull out a silver key chain.

  This is no dime-store key chain. It’s not a knick knack you’d leave behind in a geocache. It’s silver and real, and I grin wildly as I hold it up, watching the emblem dangle. I let my happiness for her blot out any unexpected, bittersweet emotions.

  She’s given me a key chain of a tadpole. It’s engraved. “I am eternally grateful for your gift.”

  I swallow past the dry, scratchy feeling in my throat, and let out a quiet whoop of excitement for my girl. I mean, for the woman I knocked up. She’s not my girl. She’s not my woman. She’s not mine.

  I pick up the phone and call her. When she answers, she’s like a whole new woman. “It worked!” she shouts.

  “So I gathered. That’s fucking awesome.”

  “I am so unbelievably happy.”
r />   “You are going to be one hot mama.”

  She giggles. “And you are one sexy . . .” She stops herself from saying dad. “Sexy man. Do you want to come join us? I’m with my mom, and we’re having lunch.”

  “I don’t want to intrude.”

  There’s a rustling sound, then another voice, older and confident. “Ryder, I hereby command you to meet us for lunch. I’m becoming a grandmother, and I must thank you in person.”

  Her tone brooks no argument.

  Fifteen minutes later, I walk into a nearby cafe and scan the tables for Nicole. Her back is to me, and she’s in a booth, seated across from a handsome older woman who looks like what I suspect Nicole will look like in twenty-five years.

  I zoom in on Nicole’s mane of red hair—hair I’ve had my hands tangled in, hair I’ve pulled and yanked, hair I’ve stroked when comforting her.

  That red hair is her signature. She could have a child with that hair color. Or, I think as I drag my hand through my own hair, with mine. The life in her belly, the size of a chickpea or a fingernail or however those things are measured, already has our DNA—my genes twisted with hers to create the blueprint for another human being.

  It’s staggering.

  It floors me.

  I grab hold of the hostess desk. A young woman with a sleek ponytail asks how many in my party. I don’t answer. My world comes to a standstill. Everything’s a blur. I’m not sure how to speak. How to walk. How to talk. The enormity of what we’ve done slams into me, and this must be what shock feels like.

  Like a vibration in your body.

  Like your blood slows.

  Nicole is going to have a baby, and I’m the father.

  But I’m also not the father at all.

  Not in the least.

  Nicole’s mother spots me and says something to her daughter. The woman I’ve spent so many nights with jerks her gaze around. When she sees me, her eyes dance, even from all the way across the cafe.

  She jumps up from the booth.

  I snap out of my slow-motion haze as Nicole rushes across the cafe, weaving through the tables. When she reaches me, she ropes her arms around my neck.