This Is 35

by Stacey Wiedower

  Even more depressing was that to have a baby you had to have sex, and she and Ben had barely slept in the same state for weeks, let alone the same bed. They also hadn't had time to discuss family planning, what with all the sexual harassment, employer betrayal, and rigorous travel schedules dominating their conversations these days.

  Erin peeked at Sherri who was still standing beside the window, gazing over the bucolic scene with a hand resting at the base of her abdomen. She didn't seem to know she was doing it, but Sherri's hand flew to her belly any time it wasn't otherwise occupied, sometimes gently circling, already soothing and petting the new life growing inside her, not yet the size of an apple.

  Erin felt a twinge of emotion she couldn't quite place—a pang, a nagging little flutter. She pondered the feeling, trying to pin it down, and realized it seemed a lot like jealousy. The sharpness of it surprised her. Did she want a baby, too? Yes. Goosebumps rose on Erin's arms—the sureness of her subconscious was unnerving. Until this moment she'd never felt a longing for motherhood except in the abstract.

  Was she ready? No. Was the timing ideal? No. Would either ever happen?

  Probably, maybe, almost definitely no.

  Why does everything have to be such a mess right now? Right now, when the timing to have a baby could actually, finally be right. Was this why it felt right, because it couldn't really happen? Was it because her life was in such a mess that she wanted a baby now? Because she wanted the exact thing she couldn't have?

  "Um, Erin?"

  Erin jerked her head up to realize that Sherri had turned away from the window and was now staring at her with a concerned look on her face.

  "Yeah?" Erin's voice was shaky. She crossed the room and puttered around her suitcase, which was open and propped on an old-fashioned wood luggage rack, the lid resting against the floral wallpaper. She tried to look as if she'd been doing something other than staring at Sherri's not yet visible bump.

  "I just asked if you were ready." Sherri paused. "Are you OK?"

  "I'm fine." Erin nodded and spoke too quickly. "Ready whenever you are."

  She closed the lid of her suitcase with a thud, looking around for her mint-colored Converse sneakers. She perched on a wingback chair near the wardrobe and tied her shoes.

  Sherri watched her, looking thoughtful.

  "Everything's going to be fine," she said. "You know that, right? This show thing will blow over, and you'll still have Ben. He knows you didn't have anything going on with Leo, and that's what matters. Who cares what a bunch of people you don't know think about what you did or didn't do?" She leaned against a bedpost on her side of the room, which was very large by European standards. The en suite had both an antique claw-foot tub and a modern shower unit—old world holding its ground as the new world butted in, a metaphor for Britain itself.

  "My clients." Erin didn't look at Sherri. She scanned the dresser for the cross-body messenger bag she carried when she traveled.

  "Yeah, the column situation sucks," Sherri said. "I kind of forgot about that. But that's why I think you need to talk to one of the reporters who's been calling you, get your side of the story out."

  "I can't," Erin said. "Remember? I signed a confidentiality agreement. I can't give away any details of what's going to happen on the show before it airs. I just have to wait this thing out. And in the meantime, my clients are dropping me, and my career is tanking."

  "I don't think you should look at it that way. Thanks to all of this, you're becoming a household name. Sure, maybe it's not true that all press is good press, but you're totally innocent in this situation, and I think that in the long run it might help your career instead of harm it."

  "I hope you're right." Erin slipped her bag over her head so it rested against her left hip and finally glanced at Sherri, who was rubbing her belly.

  She frowned. So much for keeping up appearances. "You know what? Let's agree that you are right. I need an attitude adjustment—that's why I'm here."

  Sherri smiled. "Let's go soak in a hot spring and pay a visit to Mr. Darcy. If anything can improve your attitude, that's got to be it."

  Erin stepped forward and hugged her. "This is why you're the best BFF who ever walked the face of the planet."

  "I try." Sherri squeezed her back for a long moment. "I know you'd do the same for me."

  "You've got that right. If you ever get exposed on national TV for fake-cheating on Alex, I'll be standing by with a suitcase packed to whisk you out of the country." Erin smiled with one corner of her mouth as she pulled away and then finally—she couldn't help it—broke into a grin.

  Sherri giggled. "That's what friends are for."

  * * *

  Half a week later, Erin got up the nerve to broach the baby topic with Ben. She was back home with no immediate trips pending, and he was in Fort Myers again up to his elbows in lab work. He'd come home briefly while she was out of town but flew to Florida again the day she and Sherri landed at DFW.

  "I'm ready to start trying," she said. It was around nine Central Time, ten where Ben was. He'd just gotten back to his room after a long day in the lab, or so he said. Erin wasn't sure anymore if he was being honest with her, not because she didn't trust him but because she wasn't sure he trusted her ability to handle knowing he was around Melody. They danced around the subject of Melody without ever actually bringing her up, Ben avoiding her name whenever he talked about work.

  But obviously Melody was still involved in the project—it centered on her cousin.

  "Start trying what?" Ben sounded distracted.

  "I want to have a baby." Erin squeezed her eyes shut as she said the words out loud. They'd sounded strange enough in her head. Now they seemed almost ridiculous, surreal.

  Ben was quiet for a long moment. "You what?"

  "I'm ready to have a baby," Erin said. "Being with Sherri last week made me start thinking about it, and I think the time is right. We can't wait forever." She sighed. "The clock's ticking."

  He paused again. "Erin, I…" He stopped, and Erin envisioned him rubbing his eyes as he tried to put whatever supremely rational thought was bouncing around his brain into words. "Are you sure the time is right?" he finally said. "Because it doesn't seem right to me. We're both so busy and gone so much…" He trailed off again.

  Erin felt numb all over. "I thought you wanted a baby."

  "I do." He paused again, another long, endlessly silent moment. "Are you sure you're ready? Is it just because it's on your list? Or…" Another pause. "Or, are you sure you don't just want a distraction from everything that's going on?"

  Her jaw dropped. "Do you mean, do I want a baby to fix our problems? Like some cliché of an unhappy marriage?" She felt like she could cry, or scream at him. Instead she sat silently fuming, rigid as the granite countertop beneath her elbows.

  Ben was silent for another long moment. "No, that's not what I meant." But his voice wasn't reassuring. He sounded like he was trying to be patient and trying to placate her at the same time.

  "What did you mean, then?" The words came out colder than she intended.

  "I just mean that the timing feels off. I think we need to wait until we're both less busy, until I'm home more, and the YOLO season is over."

  "If we wait until you're home more, it will never happen." She couldn't help that one. "And we really can't keep waiting. The older I get, the harder it might be to get pregnant. And yes, getting pregnant is on my list, and yes, I do want to check it off. If it's going to happen before I turn thirty-five, it's not like we can wait until the day before my birthday to start trying. But that's not the reason I want to do this. I want a baby. Your baby." Her voice broke on the last sentence.

  Ben's breathing hitched. He didn't answer, and she squeezed the phone tight to her ear to hear what sounded like…was Ben crying?

  "Ben?" Her voice was laced with a thread of panic.

  "I just don't know what to think right now." His voice was weird, but she couldn't tell if it was because he was cho
king back tears or if he just didn't know how to deal with this situation. We should be having this conversation in person! She wanted to see his feelings written on his face. If he was upset, she wanted to comfort him.

  A twinge of fear that The Nemesis was there in Florida gripped her. If Melody sensed their marriage was in trouble, would she be there to offer comfort? Was that her new game plan? Erin knew Melody had watched the show. She'd witnessed Erin's shame…with glee, Erin had no doubt.

  She couldn't stop herself from asking. "Who all from your team is down there right now?"

  Ben inhaled sharply. "Why?" The word was laced with dread.

  "I'm just curious."

  She imagined him sitting there with his forehead in his hands, wondering how to answer her. As she waited, she squeezed her eyes shut. Please don't let her be there. Please don't let her be there. But he was taking too long. She was there.

  "Me, Nate, Blake, and…Melody."

  The lump in Erin's throat was suddenly hard to swallow over.

  "Why?"

  Erin was silent for a long moment before whispering, "You know why."

  It had been four weeks since the YOLO premiere. Three more episodes of the show had aired, and Erin and Ben hadn't been together to watch a single one of them. Thankfully, her coproducers hadn't done anything else—yet—to insinuate that she was cheating on Ben. So far they'd only shown one segment from her list, Erin learning self-defense techniques at a Krav Maga studio. Very tame, which made her very nervous about what was lying in wait.

  They'd been heavily promoting her next segments—the Tahoe rock climb and the wedding. She was praying with all her might that her co-workers wouldn't throw her under the bus again, but with Jarvis it was all about ratings. When she'd talked to him, he'd seemed incredulous that she was upset. ("Are you kidding me? Our numbers were huge!") Even if she threatened to sue, which so far she'd been careful not to do, she had a feeling Jarvis would give her threat less consideration than a fly buzzing around the rim of his boba tea. It was Hollywood. Litigation threats were standard operating procedure…and considering her contract, any lawsuit was sure to damage her bank account more than his or the show's. He knew that, and more importantly, he knew that she knew that.

  Erin shook off the thought—she couldn't handle one more worry right now, not with Ben acting this way. He still hadn't responded, and her heart was in her throat.

  "Has Melody tried something else with you?" she choked.

  Ben sighed. "All she's done is apologize."

  "What? When? What did she say?"

  "She said, 'I'm sorry about what happened in my hotel room that night.' I told her not to worry about it, that we didn't need to bring it up again. I said I knew she'd been going through a tough time, and that was that."

  "That's it? When did she talk to you?"

  "It's been a few weeks now. Nothing else has come of it, and nothing is going to. She's embarrassed about her behavior and knows how inappropriate it was—"

  Erin cut him off. "A few weeks? Why didn't you tell me?"

  He sighed again. "We had bigger fish to fry at the time."

  So she'd done it right after the show aired. That sounded about right. She'd waited until she'd sensed vulnerability in Ben's marriage and then rushed in and painted herself as the wounded damsel. It was textbook treachery, but Erin knew it was totally lost on Ben.

  "We said we were going to tell each other everything."

  "Yes, we did."

  Erin's jaw dropped slightly. "I did tell you everything. I've told you every single minute of every single significant interaction between us. Do you think I had some torrid affair with Leo that I'm not telling you about?"

  "Of course not. I just don't understand why you waited to tell me until after the fact. Until I had to see it on-screen with a million other people."

  "I knew it! I knew you were still angry about the premiere." Erin fumed as she counted back in her head. "How many weeks has it been now? How long have you been holding this in? If you were still upset, you should have talked to me about it. I didn't tell you more about Leo because there was nothing more to tell. I couldn't have predicted the way YOLO was going to use that footage…no, spin that footage. And there's absolutely nothing I can do about the show—they're going to air what they're going to air. All I can do is tell you the truth about what happened and what didn't happen. And I can promise you that it's going to get worse before it's all over."

  Ben made a choking sound. "You mean there's more? What else am I going to see happen between you and Leo on TV?"

  Erin's voice was quiet. "Not between me and Leo," she said. "Between you and me. I have a very bad feeling they're about to zero in on how much you didn't show up while we were filming the show."

  He sucked in a sharp breath. She was relieved to finally have expressed this fear to him, but on the other hand she wanted nothing more than to put a stop to this arguing—she'd called to do the opposite of argue. But at least now she knew. Now she knew why Ben was resisting the idea of a baby.

  "Look," she said. "Maybe you're right about trying to get pregnant. I wasn't using that idea to 'fix' our marriage"—she made air quotes with her fingers even though Ben couldn't see them—"because I didn't realize it needed fixing. But clearly we don't trust each other as much as I thought we did."

  "I trust you."

  "You just demonstrated that you don't."

  "I didn't mean it that way. I believe you that the show is manipulating what happened to turn it into sensational garbage TV." He paused. "But you don't believe that Melody is leaving me alone."

  "I believe she's lying in wait."

  "I will not cheat on you."

  Erin did believe that. "And I did not cheat on you. Nor will I, ever."

  "Well, there you go." He sounded relieved, which was both reassuring and annoying—annoying because he'd clearly been harboring some doubt on the subject. Erin wished she'd known how much he'd been holding inside, but Ben was very good at hiding his feelings…he'd hidden his feelings for her for almost twenty-three years.

  "Yes, there you go." Erin squeezed her eyes shut. "So what now?"

  Ben blew out a breath. "Now you let me get through this gene therapy trial, and we'll get you through the rest of this damn show. And then to celebrate we'll have sex three times a day every day until we make a baby."

  She burst out laughing. As tense as she'd been, it was unexpected, and a confused tear escaped and rolled down her cheek. Her stomach muscles began to slowly unclench.

  "That sounds like a plan I can get behind," she said after a teary pause. "So get yourself home to me."

  "As soon as I can."

  Erin nodded, knowing it was the best he could do. In the meantime she still had to live in dread of the show's coming episodes and Melody's next seduction attempt. Even though she felt better to have things finally out in the open between them, when she ended the call, the ball of tension reappeared at the base of Erin's stomach. How would she get through the next six weeks?

  And then it hit her. The list. She'd throw herself into completing the items on her list—kill two birds with one stone and alleviate her other very real worry—that she wouldn't complete the list items on time. After all, thirty-five was now only four and a half months away.

  Erin rose from the kitchen barstool and jogged through the living room to her office where a hand-written copy of her list was stuck with a magnet to her white metal bulletin board. By now, she should know the list by heart, but she couldn't remember what was up next. When she saw it, No. 26: Give away half my wardrobe, she let out a hysterical giggle. So many of her list items had had serendipitous timing, and this was no different. How could she possibly have known when she made the list that at this moment in her life what she needed most was a cathartic task to complete?

  She turned toward her bedroom and marched to the closet to unleash twelve tons of frustration on her poor unsuspecting wardrobe. As she flung garments to the floor, not even bothering to r
emove the hangers, one thought kept popping up in Erin's mind.

  And here I thought my twenties were hard.

  That was kid stuff.

  Pictures of things she hadn't seen but couldn't stop herself from imagining kept flashing through her head. Melody apologizing to Ben, looking far more sultry than repentant. Jarvis rubbing his hands together with glee over the show's improved ratings. Leo with that damn smirk in place, gloating over the trouble he'd managed to cause in her marriage.

  Nope, compared to the thirties, her twenties had been a cakewalk…sweet and comforting as a smooth layer of caramel frosting. Who knew grown-ups would turn out to be more childish than children?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Hard for Me to Say I'm Sorry

  February 13, four months to thirty-five

  Over the next week, Erin threw herself into her list with a vengeance. After amassing a giant pile of castoffs (She realized she hadn't cleaned out her closet in…well, ever, it seemed.), she went beyond the call of her list and donated more than half her clothes and shoes to a women's shelter near her old school in North Dallas. The next two items had to wait for Ben to come home, so she jumped ahead to start researching No. 29: Finally buy new living room furniture. After a Google search for sofas led to clicking on articles about interior design, she wound up surfing Houzz.com pages for Dallas designers. When it came to shopping, she viewed it as nothing more than a necessary evil. When it came to interior design, she had no eye, no vision of what could be, no imagination.

  Two hours and countless websites later, she called a designer, a sweet-sounding woman with a honey-laced, money-laced Dallasite drawl. Erin typed the appointment into her calendar with an immense feeling of relief. She wished she'd thought of hiring somebody to help them before now. She knew Ben didn't care what their house looked like, but with his position at the hospital, he needed to be able to invite over colleagues without feeling embarrassed of their shabby post-grad collection of hand-me-downs and Ikea holdovers.