The Best Friend Problem

by Mariah Ankenman

  “Oh. I guess this won’t work out, then.”

  For crap’s sake! She came all the way over here to rescue him, and all he had to do to get out of the date was mention his dog? Finn owed her big time.

  “I guess not, but it was nice to meet you. I hope your dog is okay.”

  After making sure his date had a ride home—because even if he couldn’t break a date, Finn never left anyone stranded—they made their way out of the bar and onto the streets.

  “I can’t believe you used my dog as an excuse.” Finn glared at her. “We agreed never to make it personal.”

  “And I can’t believe you still can’t tell a woman ‘things aren’t working out’ like a grown-ass man.”

  “Not all of us are as blunt as you, Pru. Some of us have sensitive feelings that bruise easily.”

  She snorted, rolling her eyes, because if there was one thing Finn didn’t do, it was bruise easily, in his feelings or body. Her bestie was a rock.

  Still, he did care about others to the point of sacrificing his own happiness at times. Finn cared too much. Probably why he became a firefighter. Finn hated seeing anyone in any kind of pain.

  “Fine. I’m sorry for using Bruiser as an excuse.”

  He grinned, the left side of his mouth ticking up higher than the right, as it always did. Slinging an arm around her shoulders, he gave her a squeeze.

  “It’s all good. Thanks for bailing me out. Bailey was nice, but I couldn’t get a word in edgewise with that woman. She talked nonstop from the moment we sat down until you showed up. The minute she said she likes Wes Craven movies I knew it was a bust.”

  “You could have just told her about the time you cowered under the blankets like a big ol’ baby during Chucky.” Pru chuckled. “That would have turned her off in a heartbeat.”

  He glared, nudging her with his hip as they walked. “I didn’t ‘cower like a baby.’ I was checking my phone and didn’t want the light from the screen to affect your viewing.”

  She snorted. “Sure, you were just being considerate.”

  “I was. Besides, that doll is creepy as hell.” He shuddered. “Toys should not come to life, especially with the soul of a serial killer inside them.”

  Her bestie would run into a burning building without a thought about the danger, but that same guy was too scared to watch anything with psycho killers or ghosts. She did not get it.

  “Why’d you go out with her in the first place?”

  He shrugged. “We both swiped right.”

  Charming. Sometimes she so did not understand her generation.

  “So, where’d you park?”

  “Park? On a Saturday night? Are you kidding me?” She shook her head. “I walked.”

  The smile left his face, brow turning down with disapproval. His large, muscular arms, covered with amazing works of inked art, crossed over his chest as he stared her down. Not hard to do, since he stood a good seven inches above her.

  “You walked? At this time of night?”

  “Yes, Dad. I’ve lived in the city for most of my life. I know my way around.”

  Gaze narrowing, he bent until his nose almost touched hers. “So have I. Which is how I know it’s not safe to walk the city streets alone at night. Dammit, Pru, I never would have texted if I knew you were going to walk by yourself.”

  She knew he was only looking out for her, but it still made her angry that he was right. Walking at night in the city wasn’t the smartest move for a woman alone. Another reason why men sucked.

  “Come on, I’ll give you a ride back.”

  He started walking toward the curb where his 2011 Harley-Davidson Sportster was parked. Reaching into the side bag, he grabbed his extra helmet and tossed it to her. She caught the heavy safety equipment, shaking her head as she slipped it on.

  “I still think it’s stupid you bought this thing.”

  The used motorcycle was his pride and joy, second only to his dog.

  “You can’t even ride it half the year.” Motorcycles and snow did not get along.

  “Yeah,” he said, strapping his helmet on and straddling the large bike. “But I can ride it the other half.”

  Solid point. But she still thought it was a silly purchase. Her pragmatic brain couldn’t wrap itself around six-months of idleness for such an expensive item.

  “Hop on, and I’ll take you to get food before I drop you off.”

  “You better.” She slid behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist. “You owe me an extra-large chili cheese fry and a large strawberry shake for tonight.”

  He chuckled, the vibrations rumbling through his back and into her chest, which was pressed up firmly against him. For safety reasons, of course.

  “Extra-large chili cheese fries and a strawberry shake coming up.”

  “Large strawberry shake. Don’t get cheap on me, Jamison.”

  Finn started the bike, the engine rumbling to life between her legs. The bike might be useless during the winter months, but it did have its advantages. If she weren’t so terrified of crashing every second she rode this damn thing, she might get one herself just to rev it up and enjoy the ride.

  “Large strawberry shake,” he agreed on a shout, right before he backed them up and took off down the street.

  Pru held tight, eyes squeezed shut as she accepted the terrifying thrill of riding something doctors so often referred to as “donor mobiles.” Her night might have been interrupted, her plans for specimen selection slightly delayed, but it was okay. She was sure that when she was a mother, she’d have to learn to adjust and go with the flow. Besides, Finn had needed her, and she’d always be there for him, just like he was always there for her.

  But will he be there when I become a mom?

  She honestly didn’t know.

  She knew she needed to talk to him about all this, and her roommates, too. She wasn’t the only one affected by her decision, even if she was doing it alone. As soon as she picked a donor, things would start progressing. The people in her life needed to know about her decision before that happened. They’d support her. She was sure of it.

  Mostly sure.

  Pretty sure.

  Didn’t matter. She wanted this, and she was going to do it no matter what anyone said. So yes, she’d tell Lilly and Mo and Finn. Just maybe not tonight.

  Tonight was all about those delicious chili cheese fries.

  Chapter Two

  The blare of her cell phone’s morning alarm woke Pru from a deeply restful sleep. She always slept better once she’d made an important decision. And last night, after scarfing down Bruiser’s weight in chili cheese fries, she’d come to one. She had to tell her friends about her plans now. No more putting it off. She had narrowed her list of potential donors to ten, and once she made her final decision, things would move quickly.

  Of course, she knew the chances of becoming pregnant on the first try were slim, five to fifteen percent, at best. But she had enough saved for four tries. Eventually, hopefully, one would stick, and it wouldn’t be long before she started showing.

  She had to tell Lilly and Mo first. They’d be the ones most impacted, since Pru would need to take some time off after the baby was born. Thankfully, most of her work for the business involved budgeting and collecting and distributing payments, work she could easily do with her laptop and wifi.

  After she told her roommates, she’d tell Finn.

  Finn.

  For the first time in all their years of friendship, she was nervous to share something with her best friend. She knew he’d support her—Finn always had, even when she’d declared a major in business and accounting instead of pre-law like her great aunt had encouraged her to do. Finn had her back. Always.

  So why was she scared to tell him her plans?

  Maybe because it had to do with babies, and babies usually meant sex, and sex was one topic they’d silently agreed never to discuss. They might be friends and rescue each other from bad dates, but she and Finn never, ever discussed t
heir past sexual experiences. That would just be…weird.

  Tossing off the covers, she hopped out of bed, threw on some clothes, and headed out to the kitchen. The strong, rich scent of coffee hit her nostrils the moment she opened her door. Lilly must be up already.

  Not a surprise. Lilly coined the term “early riser.” In college, Pru and Mo never needed to set an alarm because they knew Lilly would be up and on their butts at the crack of dawn.

  Sure enough, as she stepped into the kitchen, there sat Lilly, coffee in hand, paper on the tabletop in front of her. “Morning,” Pru said.

  “Good morning. Coffee’s ready.” Lilly didn’t glance up from the paper she was perusing, just pushed her black-framed glasses up her nose when they slid down. Pru made her way to the pot, grabbing the cup filled with cream and sugar Lilly had already prepared for her and pouring the sweet nectar of life into it. Her roommate spoiled her, and she loved the woman for it.

  “What’s that?”

  Lilly answered, nose still turned down, eyes focused on her paperwork. “The Mendez-Franklin wedding. They want to push up the date by two months, so we need to shift some things around. Difficult but not impossible.”

  “Ugh! Please don’t tell me you’re working already.”

  Pru glanced up as Mo shuffled into the kitchen. Curly blond hair streaked with bits of red and blue dye frizzed around her head in a multicolored poof, and her robe hung off her shoulders, open to reveal her sunshine and rainbow pajamas.

  “We have an emergency,” Lilly answered, still focused on the work before her.

  “We also have an office,” Mo replied. “Downstairs. That we pay rent for so we don’t bring our work home.”

  She had a point. Four years ago, Pru had managed to convince Lilly an office space was in the budget and a good idea. They couldn’t bring clients to their apartment for consultations; no one would take them seriously. Luckily, an office on the first floor had become available for a reasonable price, and since they lived in the building, the owner had knocked off another hundred bucks a month. Sometimes it paid to be a new urbanite.

  “Yes,” Lilly agreed, “but you rarely get dressed before nine, and as I said, we have an emergency.”

  “Who the hell gets dressed before nine?”

  Lilly finally glanced up, raising one dark brown brow and pointing to herself and Pru.

  “Et tu, Brute?”

  Pru simply shrugged and smiled at her very non-morning friend.

  “I’ve only been up and dressed for about ten minutes if it helps.”

  “It does not,” Mo said. “Not when arguing with the queen of punctuality.”

  “Get your coffee and get over here—we have things to discuss.”

  Mo rolled her eyes and made a gagging motion. Pru chuckled into her coffee, crossing the tiny kitchen to sit at the table. The women shared a small three-bedroom apartment. Well, actually, it was a two bedroom with a glass-door office, which Lilly had strung curtains across and claimed as her room. No one would wake her with their morning noise, since the woman woke before the sun.

  No one right now, anyway.

  She supposed she would have to move out once she had the baby. She, Lilly, and Mo had roomed together since freshman year of college. They’d been through late-night cram sessions, all-night crying jags, and sock-on-the-door sleeping in the common area evenings. And of course, her sweet friends had been there with gallons of ice cream during the abandonment by Terrence the Terrible. But they’d never had to deal with a crying baby waking them up at all hours of the night, something Pru was looking forward to, in part, but that her friends hadn’t signed on for.

  She knew her friends would never kick her out, but what single twenty-eight-year-old woman wanted to live with a crying baby?

  I do.

  Her heart clenched with the inner whispered confession. But that was her choice, her decision. Not her friends’. She had to give them the opportunity to express how her decision might affect them. It wasn’t like the women planned on living together forever. She knew Lilly was saving for a house and Mo, the eternal optimist, believed she’d find her one true soul mate, settle down, and live happily ever after before her thirtieth birthday.

  “Hey, guys, I have something I need to tell you.”

  Both women immediately looked up from their tasks. Crap, had her tone sounded too doom and gloom? This was meant to be happy news, but the thought of leaving her friends struck a melancholy chord.

  “Oh my God, you’re dying!”

  Mo, ever the dramatic one.

  Pru rolled her eyes. “No, I’m not dying. This is good news. Or it will be, but it will change some things.”

  Mo hurried to the table, coffee in hand, and sat next to Lilly, who watched Pru with focused interest. Pru took the seat by Mo, facing Lilly, and glanced back and forth between her friends. Nerves fluttered in her stomach like a swarm of angry bees. Better to just put it out there, like ripping off a bandage. Let it go and hope for the best.

  “I’m going to have a baby.”

  Two jaws flopped open, green and brown eyes going wide as her friends stared at her.

  “You’re pregnant!” Mo’s excited scream nearly burst her eardrum.

  “You shouldn’t be drinking coffee in your condition.”

  Lilly reached for her mug, but Pru pulled it back. No one deprived her of caffeine.

  Besides, she’d gotten assurance from her OB-GYN that a cup a day was perfectly safe during pregnancy.

  “I’m not pregnant. Yet.”

  Mo scrunched her nose, the tiny freckles crossing the bridge folding together. “What do you mean, yet?”

  “I’ve decided to go it alone and use a donor. IUI.” At her friends’ confused looks, she explained, “Intrauterine Insemination. And if that fails, I’ll move on to In Vitro Fertilization.”

  At their continued silence and baffled looks, Pru pressed on.

  “You both know I’ve always wanted to be a mom. And while I’m sure there are a lot of nice men out there, I’m just not sure there’s one out there for me—”

  “Don’t say that, Pru.” Mo held a hand to her heart, a stricken expression scrunching her brow. “Everyone has a soul mate. You’ll find yours; you just need to keep looking.”

  She’d been looking. For years. At one point she’d thought she found him, but then he’d found something else. Something more important than her. Terrence hadn’t even informed her he was looking for work out of state. What did that say about their relationship?

  She’d misjudged him, misjudged their relationship. And yeah, maybe she’d been a little reluctant to trust since then. A little wary of what guys said versus what they actually did. Could anyone blame her?

  She was tired of looking. Tired of relying on someone else to fulfill her dream. Though women were having babies later and later in life, she knew the older she got, the harder it would be. For her, especially, according to her doctor and the results of her fertility test. Maybe she would meet her one and only someday—she wasn’t going to hold her breath—but she didn’t want to hold out for that slim hope and miss her chance of becoming a mom.

  A piece of her was missing. She had an emptiness inside, a part of her identity not yet realized. One that could only come to light when she held her soft, sweet child in her arms, raised them with all the love she had in her soul, kissed their boo-boos and wiped their tears away.

  She wanted a baby more than she wanted a man.

  “I’m not hanging my dreams on a possibility,” she answered honestly, a heavy weight in her chest at the thought of all the years of hoping to find her prince charming only to face frog after frog.

  “There’re plenty of fish in the sea.”

  Raising her mug, she skewered Mo with what Finn called her bullshit glare. “There’s also a lot of garbage.”

  Lilly snorted into her coffee mug. “Amen to that.”

  “I promise this won’t affect the business,” she told them. “Obviously, I will have to
take a little time off when the baby is born, but I can still manage my full workload and be a mom.”

  “Well, of course you can.” Lilly set her mug down with a sharp smack. “Women can be CEOs and single mothers. We’ve been raising babies on our own since the dawn of time. I have every confidence in your ability to manage a work-life balance.”

  “Yeah.” Mo scooted her chair around, slinging her arm over Pru’s shoulders. “There was a reason we called you ‘mother hen’ in college. You already take care of us all the time. Fixing us soup when we’re sick, watching sappy rom-coms with me after a breakup even though I know they’re not your fave. You’re going to be the best mommy ever! Who needs a man?”

  “Aren’t you Team True Love?”

  Her roommate shrugged. “Who says your true love has to be a romantic partner? Why can’t it be your baby? Or your two awesome best buddies?”

  Moisture gathered in her eyes, but she blinked back the tears. She had known her friends would be supportive, but she hadn’t expected to get this emotional over their enthusiasm. Too bad she couldn’t blame it on pregnancy hormones yet.

  “Thanks, you guys. And I promise to start looking for a new place right away. Hopefully, I can find something before the baby gets here. Y’know, once I actually get pregnant and all.”

  “What?”

  At Mo’s stricken expression, she explained, “I’m sure you don’t want to be living with a baby who wakes you up all hours of the night screaming and crying.”

  “And I’m sure you don’t know what I want, Prudence Carlson.” Removing the arm from around Pru’s shoulders, Mo crossed her arms over her chest. “I happen to love babies, and I’m a very heavy sleeper.”

  She snuck a glance at Lilly. The polished woman, hair coiled in a perfect bun, clothes ironed with nary a wrinkle in sight, wearing three-inch heels at their kitchen table before nine in the morning, took a small sip of her coffee before adding her thoughts.

  “It would be better if we moved you into my room, as the office is bigger. We might need to get a better curtain for the doors. Something thicker and more insulated. The sheer ones I have don’t hold heat very well, and I’ve read that babies need to be kept warm. Plus, if you two are in the front of the apartment, any noise shouldn’t bother us too much.”