Then Came You - Jennifer Weiner [49]
“You held it,” said Kimmie. “You didn’t drink it.”
I didn’t answer. At parties, I’d ask for a beer, because it was more conspicuous not to have something in your hands, but I never had more than a few swallows, and, other than Champagne, I never drank anything stronger. I couldn’t risk it. Not after what had happened with my dad.
We paused at the doorway to my dorm, Kimmie with her hands in her pockets, and me feeling, strangely, like this was the end of a date, when there’d be the predictable grapple for a kiss, or an invitation upstairs. An odd thought surfaced: that I wouldn’t have minded kissing Kimmie. In the faint glow of the lamp, with her lashes sweeping her cheeks, she looked adorable. I shook my head and told her good night, fishing my key out of my pocket and hurrying up the stairs, wondering what on earth that had been about. Spring fever, I decided. The end of college, the end of childhood, really, with real life looming ever closer—all of that could make anyone behave a little strangely.
In my dorm room, I gave myself my last shot, then carried my plastic bucket of toiletries to the bathroom. I showered, shaved my legs and armpits and bikini line, and brushed my teeth. Back in my room, I pulled on panties and an oversized T-shirt and set my alarm for seven o’clock. I didn’t have a bike, but there were dozens of them, all around campus, left unlocked at the bike racks. I’d ride one of those to the clinic, do the donation, rest for a while, then pedal back in time for lunch.
I lay in bed in the darkness, warm spring air coming through my window, and for the first time I let myself think about the result of what I’d be doing in the morning. If everything went well, in nine or ten months’ time there could be a baby, a baby who was half mine, at least genetically, a little boy or girl in the world whom I would never see, never know. It hadn’t bothered me before. Donating an egg wasn’t like having a baby and giving it up for adoption. The eggs were nothing more than possibilities. But still...
Rolling onto my side, I imagined walking down a New York City street five years from now and seeing a little girl who looked like me, holding her mother’s hand. Or being in an airport or a theater or in line at Starbucks and catching a glimpse of a baby, a toddler, a teenager with blond hair and light eyes and wondering if, maybe, that had been my baby. Would I stare, or feel compelled to say something? Would the mother turn the baby away from me, hustling her down the street or hurrying her out of the store? Would the child know where he or she had come from, that there’d been a girl like me involved, someone who’d given away (or sold, to be honest) part of herself so that he or she could exist? Would the baby grow up and try to find me? Would she look like me? Would she struggle with addiction and never know why?
I finally managed to fall asleep. When I opened my eyes I could see the line of sunshine underneath the window shade. I slapped off my alarm before it could buzz, grabbed my bucket, opened my door, and almost walked straight into Kimmie, who was standing in the hallway, fully dressed, neatly combed, her hair in two pigtails, each tied with a bright-blue elastic. Under the stark hallway fluorescents, I could see the smattering of cinnamon-colored freckles on her cheeks, and I thought she was wearing tinted gloss on her lips, something I’d never seen her do before.
“Hey,” I said. “You’re up early.”
She tilted her head. “I like it when it’s quiet.”
I nodded, knowing what she meant.
“You want to go get coffee?”
Curling my arm around my bucket, I said, “I’ve actually got an appointment.”
“So early,” Kimmie mused. “Bootie call?”
I shook my head, still startled and charmed by this new sense of humor, a raunchiness I’d never suspected when we were filing applications or sharing snacks in the student center. “No bootie for me.”
“So, what?” She gave me an assessing look. “Not a class.”
“No,” I said. “I’m not the only senior in the world dumb enough to take a nine o’clock. It’s a . . .” I struggled