by Beth Martin
“I want you,” she confessed. She leaned in and kissed him again, a little longer this time. He didn’t kiss her back, but he didn’t move away either. “I thought a baby would fix things between Irene and me, but our relationship is already fundamentally broken. You’ve been so nice to me. You’re the reason this whole show is happening, because you believed in me. I’m so ready to move on with my life and start the next chapter, but I just don’t know how.”
He placed a hand on her cheek. She couldn’t help it as a tear fell from her eye onto his thumb. “God,” he said, “you’re even beautiful when you cry.”
She chuckled, which came out as a little sob. He leaned forward this time and kissed her.
She couldn’t help herself. Heat radiated from her core. She slipped her hands onto his shoulders and pulled her body close to him. Wrapping his arms around her, he placed his hands on her back, and she could feel the electricity between them as he moved his hands upwards to the back of her neck. She crept her hands to his chest and found the top button on his shirt with her fingers. She undid it, then moved to the next one.
He pushed away. “Stop,” he whispered.
“What?” she asked. She was ready to go. All she wanted in that moment was to feel his skin against hers.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come over here.” He pushed her aside as he got up and walked out of the lounge and through the gallery.
“Wait,” Jamie said, following him. “Just wait a minute.”
He took his coat from the front desk and shrugged it on. “I should go.” He opened the door and disappeared, jogging into the pouring rain.
She watched him through the door until she couldn’t see him or where he had gone along the dreary street. Turning the deadbolt, the door made a clanking sound as it locked.
There were wet footprints glistening against the smooth, white marble floor. She leaned down and touched a puddle of water from Aiden’s wet entrance. Tears fell from her face and splashed into the water he had left behind.
fourteen
Irene read through the profile a third time. Without a doubt, this was Jamie’s profile. Using the ranking system, she qualified as a savant due to her artistic abilities.
“Hey, Bobby,” she said. “Why hasn’t this woman been matched yet?”
He pushed up his navy frames and looked over the profile. “Hmm, female, mid-twenties. We should be able to find her a good match.”
Irene’s heart skipped a beat. This was wonderful news. If they could match Jamie with another AQD member, they wouldn’t need to rely on Aiden.
“Oh, here it is, see this code right here,” he said, pointing to some random character jumble near the bottom of the page. “She’s been selected for a quality DNA match. Do me a favor and file it away.”
Irene stared at the character code. Figured that Aiden considered himself ‘quality’. “Of course. Where does it belong?”
“The middle cabinet. It should be labeled female QD.”
Irene brought her wife’s profile over to the filing cabinets and found the correct drawer. She opened it and rifled through some of the other profiles. One of them caught her eye, and she pulled it out.
“We’ve got a special project today,” he said. “Let me show you.”
She quickly folded the profile she held and tucked it in her pants pocket before returning to the long work table. “What do we have?” she asked.
“We get to design a layout for new promotional material. Our recruitment pamphlets are getting a little dated, so Aiden wants us to come up with something fresh to attract new members.”
“Great,” Irene said, faking her enthusiasm.
··OOO··
When Irene got home, the apartment was quiet. Jamie was having another late night at the gallery. She had spent much of the previous evening there as well. Irene couldn’t even begin to understand what went into an opening and all the artistic considerations it entailed. If it took hundreds of hours to get her show ready, Irene would just have to trust her.
Irene sat at the dining table and unfolded the profile she had stolen. She spread it flat, reading over the details. Identifying information including name, hair color, and eye color were always left out, but through other clues it was possible to determine who each person was. They still collected information like height and weight, race, age, and occupation.
“Cha cha cherry, lookup Rose Clark, actress,” she said. Reading over the actress’s profile on her device, she knew without a doubt that the member profile she held coincided with the star.
Originally, the profile had been rejected for use as a donor. She read through the responses and could see why. Although Rose did well in school and excelled in English and History, she was deficient in math and analytical thinking, making her unfit as a well-rounded donor. Even though she was successful, she wasn’t particularly talented, and didn’t qualify as a savant either.
What was interesting was a note under the match section. She was an elite benefactor. Irene knew that AQD subsisted on financial donations from members, but those donations weren’t suppose to influence donor matches. The ‘unable to match’ comment had been crossed out and annotated with the same code from Jamie’s profile. Rose had been selected to receive ‘quality DNA’. Somehow, Aiden had orchestrated for her to conceive using her husband’s sample through an affair with a model working as an extra.
What happened to the men who were selected as quality DNA? From what Bobby had said, it didn’t matter how many children they had already fathered when they were found. And judging by Annette’s baby, it also didn’t matter if they were already dead.
“Cha cha cherry, call Annette.”
The line rang a couple time before a breathless Annette answered, “Hello?” Ophelia was screaming in the background.
“You free tonight?” Irene asked.
“I’m up to my eyeballs in baby shit and still wearing my pajamas. What do you think?”
“You want some adult company? I could bring over dinner.”
“That would be amazing,” Annette gushed. “Wait, is Jamie working late again?”
“Yeah, she said she’ll be at the gallery all evening.”
“How’s it feel to be the neglected spouse while your wife is the workaholic?”
“I’ll tell you all about it when I get there,” Irene said. “How does pizza sound?”
“Brilliant. If you don’t hear crying when you get here, don’t knock. Just let yourself in.”
“See you in a few.”
··OOO··
Jamie hadn’t told Irene about Aiden’s visit to the gallery. She had been so thoroughly rejected she was too embarrassed to talk about it. If only she had some way of contacting him, she could try to change his mind. But she didn’t know where he lived or worked. There was no AQD meeting that Friday since people were out of town for the Thanksgiving holiday, so she couldn’t find him there either.
In a fit she had deleted the SonoSolo software from her device and thrown away all the test strips from the pharmacy. Any reminder that she had once hoped for a baby had been stripped from the apartment.
Instead of obsessing over the loss of her potential child and Aiden’s rejection of her, she threw herself into her art. She wanted a new piece as the focal point of her opening. When first walking into the gallery, there was a feature wall in full view which was the perfect place for an oversized arrangement.
She decided to do three canvases placed side by side. She had the canvases lined up in her studio, ready to go with a base coat of white. They were too bright. Currently, the blank canvases were all optimism and potential.
With black and white paint loaded on her pallet, she’d start with a monochrome effect. After she got an idea of what she should make, she could add more color as necessary.
The prim white taunted her. She loaded a wide brush with black, adding a little white to get a charcoal color, and marked a horizon through the top half of the middle canvas. Creating art was
violent, each added brushstroke forever changing the piece and taking away the work’s innocence. She painted in a dark sky. Switching to a smaller brush, she added some Indian yellow to her pallet and mixed it with white to make ominous clouds.
Although the dark, cloudy sky matched her mood, she didn’t like it. It needed rain. She would need to wait until she added the foreground before adding a rain effect.
Taking a slender brush, she added a lightning bolt using tense jerking motions. She couldn’t wait for the foreground. It needed rain now. Taking the jar of thinner she used for cleaning her brushes, she flicked some onto the painting using a new brush. A few droplets stuck, picking up the dark pigment and dragging it down as they succumbed to the power of gravity. It needed more. She saturated the brush and flung more thinner. Her crisp lightning bolt began to run.
She didn’t like anything about the canvas. Anger welled up as she decided she needed to start over. Nothing was going right, not the painting and not life. She threw the entire contents of the jar at the canvas, and the thinner exploded over the center of the canvas. All the dark sky swirled as the liquid ran down, leaving a dark stripe straight down the center.
The running paint wasn’t enough. She needed to ruin it. Smearing her hand against the palette, she dragged the new muddy-brown color over the canvas. She started with an x, then swiped her hand back and forth over the canvas, destroying her work.
The mess in front of her was a perfect reflection of how she felt. She smeared more paint on her hand, ready to do more damage, when a sharp knock at the door interrupted her. Although she didn’t want to deal with anyone right now, she needed to stop wasting her energy on defacing this canvas. She wiped as much paint off her hand and onto her smock as she could before leaving her studio and opening the front door.
“Aiden,” she said, surprised to see him. “What are you doing here?” She didn’t get a chance to react to his presence before he stepped into the apartment and shut the door behind him. He tilted her head back with his hands and met her mouth with his.
Her mind was burning with questions. Had he changed his mind? Was she getting her baby? She tried to push those thoughts aside as she kissed him back.
She stood on her toes and wrapped her arms around him, and he pulled her body against his. Every sensation of him was new and exciting, the prickling of the scruff on his face, his large, warm hands pressed against her back, and the woodsy scent of his cologne. Opening her mouth just slightly, she let her tongue meet his.
All of her anxieties slipped away as she let go of herself and fully enjoyed the moment. The mess in her studio and her desire to have a baby, along with the friction between her and her wife, all melted away and were replaced with the desire to fill her senses with Aiden.
He lifted her up and she wrapped her legs around him as he carried her into the bedroom. She sat at the edge of the bed and watched him pull off his shirt. There was a dusting of dark hair on his chest and trailing down. She reached out her hand and placed it on his chest. His heart hammered underneath her touch. Hers was doing the same.
As he finished undressing, it was clear he was ready to go. She could also feel the heat radiating from her core, making the tips of her fingers and toes tingle.
Scooting back on the bed, she made room for him to climb on. She was still wearing her smock and overalls. With a quick shrug, her smock came off and he pulled her overalls and panties down past her feet.
She started to feel apprehensive. Shouldn’t she be worried about how this would affect Irene? Just minutes after Aiden arrived at her door, they were already both naked in her bed. She laid back. It was too late to stop now. This was happening.
He spit in his palm, then rubbed it over his erection. Pressing her knee to the side, he forced himself inside her. She yelped in surprise. She wasn’t ready. Jamie was used to Irene taking her time, making sure to warm her up slowly and asking permission before getting even slightly rough. But Aiden was taking what he wanted, starting at full tilt, groaning softly into her neck.
Her body’s response quickly caught up, and she gasped with each frantic thrust. She clawed at his back with her fingernails and he responded by digging his teeth into her shoulder. After how caring he had been when they first met and his gentle touch when removing her implant, she had expected him to be tender in every situation. A groan escaped from her throat, partially from pain, partially from pleasure. He smiled, pleased with her reaction.
The unapologetic thrusting almost made her feel almost numb, so she was surprised when she felt the familiar build up of pressure. She gripped him tightly against her, willing her body to meet its end. There it was. She tipped her head back and let out a moan of release.
He groaned in return. Seeing her orgasm must have been enough to send him over the edge. Since he hadn’t used any sort of protection, he must have been alright with the chance of her getting pregnant. Spent, he rolled to the side, breathing heavily. Jamie watched his chest rise and fall as he caught his breath.
“Hey,” he said. It was the first word he had said since arriving at her apartment.
“Hey,” she returned. Although she felt tingly right now, she knew she’d be sore later. She seldom had that problem after making love with Irene.
She could feel the warm fluid from his finish dripping down her thigh. The wetness reminded her of the paint. Holding up her right hand to look at it, she muttered, “Shit.”
“What’s wrong?” he asked, turning to look at her. There was brown paint on his cheek and next to his ear. Sitting up, she saw that her smock was on top of the bed. When she lifted it up, there were smears of paint on the pillow and sheet beneath.
“Fuck,” she said as she collapsed back into the bed. “I got paint on the sheets.”
“Can’t you just wash them?” he asked.
“No, I use oils. The only solvent that will get the paint out will melt the fabric in the process.”
Aiden seemed unfazed by the ruined sheets. She’d need to replace them before Irene got home from work to keep her afternoon activities a secret. But how would she explain away new sheets?
She waited silently for him to say something. He must have had some change of heart in order for him to even be here in her bed.
Sitting up, she grabbed her shirt. As she was about to put it on, he reached over and touched her arm and said, “Please don’t, not yet. Just lie with me a little longer.” She dropped the shirt and lied back down. He turned toward her and cuddled against her, breathing into her hair. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been with anyone. I just want to enjoy being next to you.”
“Of course,” she said. It was surprisingly easy to get lost in the moment while lying in his embrace. She should be worried about… everything. But for now, she focused on the warmth of his breath on her neck and the muskiness of his smell.
“Promise I’ll always be in your life,” he said.
“I promise,” she said as she rolled over and embraced him. She was so happy; he must have changed his mind about fathering her baby.
“When I first met you, the only thing I could think about was how beautiful you are,” he said, looking her in the eyes. “But you’re so much more than a pretty face.”
She smiled. “I thought you were perfect. I still do.”
They lay there for a while longer before Aiden finally got up and pulled his clothes back on. “I need to get back to work,” he said.
“So do I,” she said, finding her own clothing.
Only half dressed, she followed him back to the front door. “I’ll come back in a few days,” he said.
“I look forward to it.” She kissed him, and then he left.
Returning to the bedroom, she pulled on the rest of her clothes and her smock. She tried to straighten the covers, then messed them up again. She’d tell Irene that she got tired and took a nap, forgetting about her smock. Irene would believe that.
Back in her studio, she looked at the canvas she had been destroying just
an hour earlier. The brown smudges and black drips looked almost like a tree trunk. She took a fresh palate and squeezed some cobalt green from a small tube onto it. Grabbing a clean, fine brush, she painted a slender vine snaking around the tree. Adding little leaves, the canvas started to come to life. She dipped a finger in her white paint and dotted on some petals for a flower. The canvas may be salvageable after all.
··OOO··
Annette’s parents, Gerry and Tom, hosted Thanksgiving at their apartment every year. Annette hadn’t made it to any family gatherings since she had given birth, and she particularly looked forward to seeing how huge and fat Clara had gotten.
Normally, Irene and Jamie spent the holiday with Jamie’s family, but they had won a cruise and were enjoying the Caribbean for the week. Annette invited the couple to celebrate with her family. It would be like when Annette and Irene were in college and Irene spent every holiday with Annette’s family.
Except Annette wasn’t in college. She had a baby now.
“I can hold her,” Jamie said, stretching out her hands for the screaming baby. Annette gladly handed Ophelia over. With her hands now free, she went to the kitchen to get a drink.
Gerry had Thanksgiving down to a science. She had an oven schedule posted on the fridge to make sure she had plenty of time to slow-cook the pie, turkey, rolls, and green bean casserole. Right now she was mashing some potatoes in her giant mixer.
Annette knew better than to get in the way, and stood behind the bar-height counter dividing the kitchen from the dining room. “Drink me.”
“Wine or beer?” Tom asked.
“Wine.”
“I’ll have a beer,” Irene said. Tom poured Annette a glass of white and tossed a can of beer to Irene. They returned to the living room where Jamie was cooing at Ophelia.
“Hey sweetheart,” she sang. “You’re just the cutest thing. Auntie Jamie loves you.”
“I guess now’s not a good time to ask about the donor search,” Annette whispered to her friend.
