"You could always, oh, I don't know, Google him. I'm sure there's plenty of information."
"Google can't tell me if someone is nice, Jessika. He might be faking it. When I talk to him I'll know for sure. Trust me on this, I'm your mother."
"Right. Bye mom. Love you."
"I love you, too. Be safe."
I hung up the phone and let it fall into its receiver. That hadn't gone at all like I expected, but I was glad it went alright. I thought she'd be more... upset? Maybe not upset, but concerned. Not that she had any reason to be, or not that I thought she had a reason, but still.
"Your mom sounds like a hoot."
Startled, I jumped up and stared at my bedroom door. Jeremy stood there eating a cookie, powdered sugar covering his lips.
"You have something—" I gestured to my lips. "There."
"Yeah," he shrugged. "Saving it for later. You can never be too careful. Who knows when my next meal will be?"
"That was the corniest line I've ever heard," I said.
He grinned. "Let's pack your stuff, Miss Stripper Adulteress."
...
I packed some of my shoes and clothes in an overnight duffel bag. I didn't really need them, since Asher had asked Jeremy to buy me clothes and he'd filled an entire walk-in closet with them, but I liked some of what I owned. It was comfortable and familiar.
"Maybe she has the plans written down," I said, cramming another t-shirt into my bag. "Maybe that's why she doesn't like Asher sleeping in the same room with her. At night, when he thinks she's sleeping, she's actually writing down her evil plan in a notebook that she hides in her bedside table."
"Are we coming up with plots for a YA fantasy novel or are we talking about how to figure out what, if anything, Beatrice is up to?" he asked.
I frowned. "Sorry, I read a lot."
"It's fine, but I doubt she did that. If anything, it'd be on her computer. No one writes stuff down these days."
"True, true. So... we could check that?"
"Maybe. I imagine it's password protected, though."
"She might use a simple one. Did you know that a lot of people use 'password' as their password? It could be that."
"I... I doubt it. I mean, it's possible, but I don't think Beatrice is one of those people. She graduated from Dartmouth." Jeremy rummaged through my drawers and grabbed a cute blouse. "Let's bring this."
"I really like that one. Put it in the bag." He did, then I stared at him. "Can you stop going through my drawers, too? There's..."
"Do you really wear this? Wow." He held up one of my cutest and sexiest pairs of underwear; a frilly pink chiffon piece that always clung tight to my body, with a black silk bow in the front at the top. "This is... wow. I mean, there's sexy, right? But then there's cute, and then... wow. This is really good. How do you not have a boyfriend?"
I snatched the underwear away from him. "Give me that! Stop looking through my underwear drawer!" I shut the drawer on him, nearly slamming his fingers in it as I did. "Also, my last boyfriend didn't even like these. That was awhile ago, but still. He said they made me look like I was twelve and he felt like a criminal whenever I wore them before we had sex."
Jeremy burst into laughter. "Ah, well. Weird. I don't know how anyone could ever mistake you for a twelve year old, underwear or not. Really, I think the appeal to a pair like that is the innocence, though. Like, hey, they're cute, right? But also sexy. It's the best of both worlds, really. You get the hotness, but the demure nature, too, so you're going to have some really good sex, but you won't feel like you're with a slut. That's how I think about it."
"I guess thanks for not calling me a slut? Can we stop talking about my underwear now?"
Jeremy snickered. "Yeah, sure. Sorry. I just... man... if Asher saw those on you, he'd..."
He didn't say more. Why wouldn't he say more? "What?" I asked. "He'd what?"
"Well, you shouldn't wear them around him. Also, why would he ever see you in your underwear? Strictly speaking, this will never happen, so this is all hypothetical, but I think he'd go crazy. In a good way, for you, except maybe not, since, you know, he's married."
"Yeah," I said. "Right, of course. What time do we have to be at the doctor's?"
"We should probably leave soon. Asher's going to meet us there. You both have to sign paperwork or something. Anything else you need besides what we grabbed?"
"Yes, um. Can you grab the other boxes of cookies? I'm going to change quickly."
Jeremy looked at me funny. "Sure, but I think Asher can afford to buy more cookies."
"They're expiring soon," I lied. "I don't want to waste them."
Jeremy shrugged and left to go fetch my cookies. I grabbed the pink panties and rushed into the bathroom to change. Shimmying my current pair of underwear down my bare legs, I stepped out of them and then stepped into the new pair. I lifted them up, holding my skirt above my waist while I did, and fit them into place. And, they didn't match my bra, but who cared? I had plans, delicious and devious plans, and they didn't involve anything to do with a bra.
...
"Are you on birth control?" the doctor asked.
"Yes," I told her. "Is that alright, or...?"
"It's fine," she said. "In a standard procedure, we would have you go on birth control for a month anyways. This insures that we're dealing with a regular cycle. The long and short of it is that we need to know exactly when your period is so that we can plan for egg retrieval. There's medication involved and various shots. You'll have to self-administer those, but we'll show you how. The shots are simple and mostly painless, but after awhile there can be slight bruising and discomfort. I assume you have an OB/GYN you regularly go to?"
"Yes." I swallowed hard. The medication didn't sound bad, but the shots worried me. I was always kind of a wimp when it came to needles.
"So, what we'll do today is preliminary exams. Nothing intensive. I'll need to speak with your OB/GYN about your history, but I assume we won't find anything detrimental to IVF, so everything should be settled in a couple days. Depending on the type of birth control and where you are in your cycle, we might be able to start this sooner than regular. I can't guarantee anything, though. Do you know when you usually have your period?"
"Yes," I said, nodding. "In a few days. Three? What's IVF?"
"In vitro fertilization. Sorry, I'm so used to abbreviating." She hummed to herself, considering my answer. "As long as everything checks out, we might be able to begin in three days. That's a rush, though. Basically, if we do that, you won't have much time to back out. If you change your mind or reconsider, you'd have less of a window."
"What I'd like to do," she continued, "is start you on Gonal-f the day of your period. You'd stop taking birth control then. You'll inject the Gonal-f with an RFF pen—which basically looks like a large ballpoint pen—and that's about it. I'll prescribe you enough refills to last for ten days. You'll also need to take some other medications, but those are easier to handle. It's a good idea to start taking pre-natal vitamins and oftentimes baby aspirin helps, too. On the ninth day you'll come back in and..."
I listened to her, but it all kind of blurred together. Three days? And then what? If everything went as planned, I'd be pregnant in a couple of weeks, right? I didn't really know what I was thinking before this, but it seemed like it'd take longer than that. Months, maybe? I had married friends who'd spent half a year before becoming pregnant, so a couple weeks seemed really quick in comparison. Though I don't know why I thought it would take longer, either. Medicine, advances in technology, and whatever else; these doctors had it down to a science and knew exactly how to manage it.
"Please be aware that the surgery involved with egg retrieval and transplant can be painful and disorienting. We do everything we can to minimize that, though. I know it's a lot to take in," the doctor said. She smiled at me and handed me a pamphlet. "Here's some more information and you're always free to say no. This is kind of a strange case in that usually we perform IVF on either infertile women without other complications or egg donors. I discussed everything with Mr. Landseer on the phone a few days ago and I understand your situation, though. It shouldn't be any different than a regular procedure in the end, so you don't have anything to worry about with that."
"Oh," I said. "I'm not worried. It's just..."
"It's sudden," she said for me. "If you want to think about it more, that's fine by me. Don't let anyone pressure you into anything. We do need signed consent forms from the both of you, though. Whatever your arrangement is with Mrs. Landseer should be discussed with an attorney, too. We don't do that here, though. We'll manage the process between you and Asher, and the rest is up to you to decide. Surrogacy can get complicated very fast with how the laws are in the US. I'm just a doctor, but I'd advise you to look into it carefully so you know what you're getting into."
"Yes. Yes, of course."
She smiled. "I'll be right back with the consent forms. You can look them over at your convenience. I believe Asher is waiting in the waiting room, too. I'll get him, you both can talk things over, and when you're ready to continue the preliminary exam I'll be waiting."
She left me in the doctor's room. I sat on the cushioned table, swinging my legs side to side, thinking. Was I ready for this? If—I checked the pamphlet. Alright, so, if I followed this chart, and everything went as planned, I'd be pregnant in about three weeks. They did pregnancy tests in office a couple weeks after the second egg transplant, and anything after that was too late. About a month, then? In a month I might become a mother.
Or, not really. Technically, yes, but I couldn't keep the child. It was for Asher and Beatrice, except...
Oh my God. I hadn't really thought about this before, but what happened if Beatrice was planning something against Asher? Personally I had no doubts in my mind about what I heard, even if I didn't know the specifics. I did agree that Jeremy had a valid point in needing to figure it out with more certainty, though. But, then, if she was planning something, a divorce or whatever, what happened with the child? If I signed some contract with a lawyer stating that I would give up the child to the Landseer's, could she use it as a bargaining chip in the divorce? How did that work?
I needed to look into it, but I didn't really know how. I didn't have a lawyer of my own, and I wasn't sure if I could trust the Landseer lawyer(if they had one, though I assumed Asher would). Mostly, what if Beatrice talked with the lawyer beforehand. If she was planning on leaving Asher, she, no doubt, had thought of hiring a divorce attorney. Except, why hire one if she had a perfectly good one on hand, one who already knew Asher's situation and any potential ways to screw him over?
A bit conspiratorial, even for me, but I decided it was definitely better to figure out an alternative solution. I'd have to find a way to talk with a lawyer who didn't know anything about Asher, Beatrice, or even me. Hypothetical discussions and... I didn't have the money for this. Was I just going to waltz up to Asher and ask him to pay for it? Why, he would ask. And then what did I tell him? Also, I couldn't do that anyways since it was more than rude.