“Not at all,” he said. “They’re very marketable.”
I snorted. “I’m serious.”
“I know,” he said. “And I want them to have your heart. The way you care too much. The way you cry at dog commercials and remember everyone’s middle name.”
“That’s a low bar,” I said.
“It’s the best bar,” he replied, kissing me again, softer this time.
Our mugs of tea grew lukewarm. The room was still. The compass pointed east, or maybe toward something we couldn’t see yet.
“You know,” I whispered. “We’re really doing it.”
Cal nodded, eyes closed, forehead against mine. “Yeah. We are.”
CHAPTER 8
It began,as most terrifying modern rituals do, with a secure login and an ominous user agreement.
“ClickI agree,” Cal said, peering over my shoulder.
“I’m reading it,” I lied.
“You are not reading the terms and conditions.”
“I could be,” I said, squinting at the wall of text. “You don’t know. I might care deeply about clauses and indemnities and fine print.”
Cal reached past me and clicked it himself. “If we accidentally promise our firstborn to a fertility witch, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
He had clicked back into calm mode, undoubtedly in an attempt to balance me out.
We were sitting at our kitchen counter, laptop open between us, the True Path Donor Database glowing in all its lavender-accented glory. We came to a page with the simple heading:Choose Your Perfect Surrogate.There were filters for everything—hair color, height, education level, medical history, even astrological sign. And then there it was…sense of humor… with a drop-down menu.
That last one felt… oddly subjective.
I hovered the mouse over it. “How does this even work? What’s the scale here—Eddie Murphy in a red leather jumpsuit or a mom on Facebook sharing minion memes?”
Cal peered at the screen. “Is there a filter for dad jokes?”
“There should be,” I muttered. “Because some of these profiles are giving serious knock-knock trauma.”
I clicked the menu open and read the options aloud. “Playful. Dry. Silly. Whimsical. Observational.”
“Whimsical?” Cal repeated. “What does that even mean?”
“I think if a donor chooses that option it means she owns a tambourine and refers to squirrels as her ‘little friends.’”
“What’s wrong with that? And why are we obsessing over this already? We haven’t even started looking at potential surrogates yet.”
“Because I want our kid to be funny, notweird-funny,” I said. “There’s a difference.”
“Says the man who once laughed for ten full minutes at a picture of a dog in glasses.”
“That dog was hilarious!”
“So are squirrels!”
I groaned. “Fine. Let’s start with something simple. Let’s opt for dark hair, brown eyes, no criminal history.”
