The Knocked Up Plan(16)

He smiles, and that’s another feature I can add to the list. The man has a great smile. It’s warm and exhilarating at the same time. “Some women are checking out Plenty of Fish. You’re checking out plenty of tadpoles,” he says, then makes a keep-talking gesture with his free hand. “Go on.”

“And the reality is pretty stark.”

“You mean the pickings are slim? Or there’s no one you want to bring home to mama?”

“Let me tell you all about sperm banks.”

A soft flurry of laughter falls from his lips. “Words I never thought I’d hear tonight. Or any night,” he says, and oddly enough, this conversation is going better than I expected.





Eight





Ryder

Before she can utter a word, the waitress returns with Nicole’s chopped salad and my burger. We say thank you, then I eye the lettuce, tomatoes, and carrots in Nicole’s dish with suspicion. “You sure about the burger thing?” I lift the top bun on mine. “Eat me. I taste soooo good,” I say in a cartoon character voice.

She laughs and shakes her head. “Thank you for the offer. But I’m cutting back on food that talks.”

“Tell me everything I ever wanted to know about sperm banks. But wait. First, can we just agree that the word sperm is up there with moist, pucker, and slacks?”

“It so is. We should call it cupcakes instead of sperm,” she says, and I’m glad we’re keeping it as light as we can, because this is such a serious topic. I meant it when I said never in a million years did I expect her to hit me up for some of my swimmers. I figured she had a crazy column in mind, too, or that she’d also been slapped with a new assignment from Cal—we’ve heard from a sexual researcher in Indonesia about five newly discovered sexual positions. Can you test them out and report back on their pleasure potential, please?

But this? She’s given me a bona fide, certified case of complete flabbergastedness.

I’ve no intention of becoming a dad, considering I don’t have a wife nor do I want one, since wives—in my experience—have a habit of spreading their legs when you’re not home.

Mine did at least.

With several men.

Yeah, that’s Maggie for you. The sweet little pastry chef had quite a secret life.

The woman who stood next to me in a church and took a vow before God and all our friends and family to be faithful wasn’t loyal at all. To top it off, she was unfaithful in spectacular fashion. That’s how she did everything. With panache. With exclamation marks. When Maggie made a decision, she was all-in. She didn’t just cheat. She cheated seven times. With seven men.

But she was sorry. She was so very sorry. She didn’t realize she had a problem. She didn’t know she was addicted. Would I please stand by her while she sought treatment for sex addiction? Because she wanted nothing more than to conquer her addictive behavior, change, and remain my wife.

As if that was ever going to happen.

Look, I’m sympathetic to addiction. I have a cousin who has battled the demons of alcoholism. I get that addiction is a beast, and it can wrap a person in its clutches. I understand the painful toll it can inflict on a family.

But as a man, I couldn’t bring myself to look beyond what Maggie did to us. She admitted everything one evening in our living room after I’d just finished a report for a client.

“Honey, I need to tell you something.”

She kneeled beside my chair, clasped my hand, and then spewed forth her confession like vomit as she came clean and begged for forgiveness.

I was shocked. I was hurt, and I was, frankly, disgusted. “Whatever forgiveness you seek, you’ll need to find it with God. It’s not coming from your soon-to-be ex-husband,” I told her, and then I kicked her out.

Two years of marriage, nine months of engagement, three months of courtship. That’s 1095 days of my life flushed down the drain.

All of them a lie.

In retrospect, the signs of her extracurricular activities were there all along. Too much time on her phone, too many unexplained hours away, too many distracted moments. I’d chosen to look the other way because I’d loved her. But it’s amazing how quickly you can fall out of love with someone when they smash the vows of marriage and fidelity, stomping on them with steel-toed boots.

It didn’t take long to get over her. The ending of our marriage was like a crash course in how to un-love someone. I don’t have any feelings left for her except perhaps . . . mild pity. I’m also so damn grateful she chose to cheat early on—before we had kids.

But Nicole’s not asking to have kids with me. Her proposition is a horse of an entirely different color. It’s also one I understand to some degree. My brother Devon and his partner couldn’t have kids the old-fashioned way. They chose to adopt, and my niece Simone is the cutest creature alive.