‘I think we’ll just take this one step at a time. One baby at a time,’ Cam said as he kissed his wife. ‘And see how we manage.’
Joe thought Cam’s logic was practical and sensible. There were a lot of unknowns in Cam and Jess’s future. The new baby was only one of them.
* * *
Dinner was finished—steak and a glass of red wine for Cam and Joe, fish and lime-flavoured sparkling mineral water for Jess and Kitty. Cam cleared the plates and said to Joe, ‘Come and join me for a beer while I clean the barbecue.’
Joe followed him over to the grill and took a swig of his beer. ‘Do you think this surrogacy thing is a good idea?’ he asked as he stood watching Cam work. ‘Actually, scratch that. You must.’
Cam didn’t answer immediately. ‘It’s what Jess wanted. I love my wife. I want her to be happy and this is what she wanted. I didn’t have the same burning desire to have children. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against the idea, but if it didn’t happen for us I was OK with that. But Jess wants kids. I’m doing this for her. That’s what love is all about.’
Joe figured he wouldn’t know anything about all that but all the same his gaze was drawn to Kitty. He could see her through the window. She was standing by the kettle, pulling mugs off the shelf.
‘Speaking of love...’ Cam’s voice made Joe jump. He dragged his eyes off Kitty and back to Cam, wondering where he was going with this topic, but Cam was scraping the barbecue, seemingly disinterested in who or what Joe was watching. ‘Kitty tells me you’re seeing someone. Is it serious?’
Joe almost choked. ‘God, no. I try to avoid serious relationships.’
‘Maybe you just haven’t met the perfect girl yet,’ Cam said, echoing the words of so many of Joe’s friends, but Joe thought differently.
‘No one’s perfect,’ he said, ‘and nothing lasts for ever. I don’t see the point in starting something that won’t last.’
Even Cam and Jess’s relationship, as perfect as it might look from the outside, had its downsides in Joe’s opinion. Jess’s cancer and inability to get pregnant was far from their idea of perfect. But Joe wasn’t about to make an example of Cam’s own marriage as his argument.
‘What about Kitty?’
‘Kitty?’
‘Is that so hard to imagine? You and Kitty? You must like her.’
‘Of course I like her, she’s my best friend.’
He’d been trying to remind himself of that every day since he’d nearly succumbed to temptation and almost kissed her. He continued to tell himself he was glad he’d resisted. That would have been disastrous.
‘C’mon, Joe. You don’t think Jess and I haven’t talked about this? We think you guys would be good together.’
Joe wasn’t so sure. As tempted as he had been the other night, he was still convinced that a quick tumble between the sheets would have been a sure way to ruin their friendship. But that hadn’t stopped him thinking about it. And opting to take Victoria home that night instead hadn’t stopped him thinking about it either. But thinking about it was one thing, acting on it was another thing altogether, and there were dozens of reasons why he would steer clear. Starting with the biggest one—he and Kitty wanted different things out of relationships.
‘I’m not the right man for her,’ he said. ‘Kitty is looking for someone who can commit to her, someone who will promise to never leave her. I don’t believe in happily ever after. We’d be a terrible combination.’
‘You think?’
Joe nodded. He’d given this a lot of thought over the past couple of weeks, and no matter how much he might wish things had turned out differently he knew he wasn’t the right man for Kitty. He was not what Kitty needed. ‘Trust me, I’m not the man she needs and I really don’t want to ruin a perfectly good friendship.’
Cam laughed. ‘There’s no such thing as a friendship between a man and a woman. You’ve heard that saying. Men will always muck it up by wanting sex.’
Cam definitely had a point, but Joe couldn’t agree with him. He was desperate to bring this conversation to an end before he admitted to something that had disaster written all over it. ‘Wanting and having are two different things, my friend,’ he said, ‘and it’s the having that mucks things up. Better Kitty and I stick to what we do best. It’s worked for us so far.’
‘OK, mate, whatever you say.’ Cam’s expression was sceptical as he covered the barbecue and knocked the lids off a couple more beers.
Joe knew he didn’t believe him, and he couldn’t blame Cam. Even Joe was not convinced, but he knew he couldn’t give in to his desires no matter how much he wanted to. He really couldn’t risk ruining his relationship with Kitty over his crazy ideas. Surely, given time, he’d get this ridiculous feeling out of his system and life would go on with Kitty being none the wiser.
* * *
Twenty-eight weeks. Only twelve to go.
Kitty was no longer thinking of her life in terms of days of the week or even months of the year—everything had been reduced to weeks of her pregnancy and the associated milestones. At twenty-eight weeks she was two-thirds of the way there. The baby was putting on weight, her skin was filling out and she was constantly on the move.
Last week she had volunteered to be a patient at one of the student sonography clinics held at the hospital and she had asked to find out the baby’s sex. She was having a girl.
But she had hugged that knowledge to herself. She’d had to share every little piece of this pregnancy with Jess and Cam, and for the most part she’d been happy to do that, but it was nice to have something that was hers alone. She felt a little guilty about keeping the secret, and on occasion she’d had to be careful with her language to ensure she didn’t use ‘she’ in reference to the baby too often. An occasional mention could be passed off as a figure of speech but she had to remember to use ‘he’ at times too. But in her opinion there was no harm in having this one secret. It wasn’t going to hurt anyone.
Cam didn’t want to know the baby’s sex and Kitty knew it was better to keep her secret than to risk spoiling the surprise for Cam. And not knowing hadn’t stopped Jess from starting to decorate the nursery. She had gone for a white palette with pretty pale apple green accents, which she said she could team with pink or navy depending on whether the baby was a boy or a girl.
The baby kicked as if knowing Kitty was thinking about her. She put a hand on her belly and smiled. She was happy. She was doing a good thing for her sister, growing a beautiful baby—and she’d even patched things up with Joe. Things were back on an even keel with him since her birthday dinner. As far as she knew, he was still seeing Victoria but she was trying not to let that bother her. She’d avoided going out with the hospital staff since that night. She used fatigue and the fact that she wasn’t drinking as her excuse, but she really didn’t want to put herself in a situation where she would have to see Joe and Victoria together. As long as she didn’t have to see them together she could pretend it wasn’t happening. Ignorance might not be bliss but it was better than the alternative.
And she was finding work tiring. Being on her feet for hours on end while carrying around an extra six kilograms was exhausting. She hadn’t put on a lot of weight but six kilograms was just the beginning and it felt like a lot on her small frame, meaning she was happy to spend most nights on the couch.
She was due for a break and, unlike her pre-pregnancy days when she’d often skipped or shortened her breaks, now she looked