The Best Laid Plans Read online

  “I know how much you guys want a baby.” I struggled to hold eye contact with him, though I wasn’t sure why. “And I want to help.”

  “But you’re talking about…” He chewed his lip. “I mean, either conception method is, well, it’s asking a lot of you.”

  I laughed softly. “Well, I could always close my eyes and pretend you’re someone else.”

  Gabe burst out laughing. “Gee, thanks.”

  I shrugged. “You’re the one who said it was asking a lot of me. I’m just letting you know I can cope if need be.”

  Still chuckling, he glanced over at the kids—possibly to make sure they were still out of earshot—but when he turned back to me, his humor had faded. “You’re really serious, aren’t you?”

  “Completely.” I paused. “I’ve got a whole mental library of guys I can think of instead of—”

  “Bitch,” he muttered, and we both laughed.

  “To be serious,” I said, “I’m not joking. Artificially, naturally—either way. You’ve both been there for me, and I’m happy to help you guys out. I think it’s bullshit you haven’t been able to adopt, and I want you guys to have your family.”

  He held my gaze. “My God, Kendra.” He blew out a breath. “I’m completely floored. Like, that’s an amazing offer. We couldn’t ask you to do that, though.”

  I nodded. “I understand. But the offer’s on the table if you reconsider.”

  He met my eyes and swallowed. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  Chapter Two

  Shahid

  I heard my husband come in downstairs but didn’t go down to greet him yet. I was still kneeling after my evening prayers, which I’d just finished, and needed a few more minutes. The day had been a stressful one—certainly not one of those boring shifts everyone in an ER hoped for—and though my prayers had calmed me and cleared my mind, I wasn’t ready to leave the tranquility of my salat room quite yet.

  Gabe would understand. He always did. He knew what my job demanded of me and that this part of my day kept me sane. It was why he’d remodeled this room for me in the first place. When I’d come back from my Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca last year, he’d surprised me with the addition to our bedroom. With the help and guidance of my imam, he’d built the tiny room, and he’d even had a well dug specifically to supply water to a small fountain for wudu, the washing ritual that preceded salat.

  I smiled in my quiet, dimly lit room. Despite the struggles, I was a blessed man. Had been for the last eleven years.

  Eyes closed, I took a few more slow, relaxing breaths and then rose. I left the room, paused for a moment to adapt to the hallway’s brighter light and then went downstairs.

  He was in the kitchen, pulling empty plastic containers from his lunch bag, and smiled when I came in. “Hey. How was your day?”

  I groaned.

  “That bad?”

  “That bad.”

  “Well.” He set the dishes down and smiled as he wrapped his arms around me. “You said you wanted an interesting job.”

  “And that’s exactly what I got.” I kissed his forehead. “I had to reset the counter, though.”

  “What?” His eyes widened. “You were almost to a new record, weren’t you?”

  “Yep. Two more days, and I’d have beaten the old one, but…” I shook my head. “Some guy came in today and started ranting about how he knew Obamacare was bad, but he didn’t think he’d be seen by al Qaida.” I rolled my eyes.

  Gabe smothered a laugh. “I’m sorry.”

  I chuckled. “Sure you are. But yeah, counter’s back to zero.” A few years ago, my coworkers had put up a chart that said “Days Since Shahid’s Been Called a Terrorist”, and each day, we updated the number. I’d almost had a new record this time—twenty-two consecutive days. Oh well. “What about you? How was your day?”

  Gabe shrugged, resting his hands on my waist. “Nothing terribly exciting. Someone in my fifth-period chemistry class managed to sacrifice an eyebrow to a Bunsen burner, and one of my cross-country runners turned an ankle, but otherwise it was a quiet day.”

  “How bad is his ankle?”

  “I’ll know for sure tomorrow, but I suspect it’ll be fine after a few days of ice and taking it easy.”

  “Good.” I eyed him. “You’re not supposed to break them, you know.”

  “Why not? Keeps you in business, doesn’t it?”

  I clicked my tongue and jabbed his side playfully.

  “I’m just saying,” he said. “And besides, it wasn’t my fault.” He rolled his eyes. “Kid was supposed to be watching where he was going, but he was too busy watching where one of the female runners was going.”

  “Typical teenager.”

  “Right?” He kissed me again and then gently stepped out of my embrace. As he continued cleaning his lunch dishes, he said, “Any thoughts about dinner?”

  “I pulled chicken this morning. Hadn’t really decided what to do with it.”

  “Well, chicken is your domain.” He tucked his lunch bag under the counter. “Whatever you want to do.”

  “Fair enough.” I started digging through the refrigerator for some vegetables to go with it. After three solid days of reheated food that had to be reheated again after I got called away, the mere thought of a hot, home-cooked meal that nobody could interrupt made my mouth water.

  Gabe went around the kitchen island, and he hung out while I started cooking. He didn’t say much, though. Now that we’d said hello and asked about each other’s days, he wasn’t so chatty. Which was weird. While I went through the motions of preparing dinner, he sat at the island, loosely grasping a glass of water, but didn’t say much. Whenever I glanced at him, his gaze was fixed on something in the distance—either outside the kitchen window or something unseen on the floor, the counter, the wall.

  Of course I knew exactly what was on his mind. It had been on mine too. Even praying over it and reminding myself to leave things in Allah’s hands didn’t erase how much it had hurt to get that phone call.

  So, I didn’t push him quite yet. Once the pan of chicken and vegetables was ready to go, I put it in the oven and set the timer. “We’ve got about half an hour before I need to check on anything. Want to go sit in the living room?”

  “Sure. Yeah.” Gabe shook himself as if he’d been someplace else and then stood and followed me out of the kitchen. As we settled onto the couch, he was still distant.

  “Hey.” I touched his knee. “You all right? You’ve been quiet since I started dinner.”

  “Yeah.” His eyes lost focus again. “Just thinking.”

  “It’s hard. I know it is. Doesn’t matter how many times we go through—”

  “No, no. It’s not that.” He shook his head. “I mean, it is. Kind of.”

  I studied him. “Huh?”

  Gabe chewed his lip. Then he sat up and turned toward me, pulling his knee onto the couch between us. “So I had an interesting conversation with Kendra after practice tonight. And I can’t get it out of my mind.”

  Well, that wasn’t what I’d expected.

  “Yeah?” I rested my elbow on the back of the couch, and my other hand on his leg. “What about?”

  “Obviously she knows what happened. With the adoption.”

  I nodded.

  “And today, she…” He took a deep breath and met my gaze, his eyes filled with the same bewildered puzzlement as his voice. “She offered to carry a baby for us.”

  I blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Yeah, that was my reaction.” He blew out a breath. “I told her we couldn’t possibly have her go through all of that for us.” He hesitated, then met my eyes. “But the more I think about it…”

  “You’re really considering this?”

  “Well, we’re kind of running out of options, you k
now?”

  Weren’t we ever?

  “I know we are,” I said quietly. “We couldn’t ask her to go through IVF, though.”

  “No. And she’s aware of that.” He held my gaze. “To put it bluntly, she’s offering to do things the, uh, natural way.”

  I stared at him. “You’re joking.”

  He shook his head. “Nope. And apparently neither is she.”

  My gut clenched. “Oh.”

  He took my hand. “We don’t have to make a decision tonight. And if you say no, I’ll understand.”

  Yeah, he’d understand if I vetoed him sleeping with Kendra. I’d struggled for a long time with the idea of being with a bisexual man but eventually accepted that Gabe could still be satisfied being with me and only me. He hadn’t touched a woman in all the years we’d been together and never seemed bothered by that. Would that change after he’d been with Kendra? Especially since I had zero interest in sex with a woman, it didn’t take a genius to see how this arrangement with Kendra would play out.

  But what if this was our last resort?

  “Shahid?”

  I swallowed. “I’m not sure.”

  “Don’t agree to this unless you’re really on board. Take some time, and, you know…”

  “I’ll think about it.” I had no idea how to feel. What to think. Maybe we were running out of options, but was this an option we should consider? Or one of those wild ideas that should be dismissed and forgotten? My religion would no doubt frown on it, as would his, but I was no more a perfect Muslim than he was a perfect Catholic. We were also getting desperate.

  Technically, this would be adultery. Technically, this would be an illegitimate child, though neither of us really cared about that part. But if we were all on the same page, did it make a difference in Allah’s eyes? It wasn’t like we were taking up swinging or doing this for carnal reasons. We were trying to have a baby without resorting to medical procedures that neither of us—or, arguably, our respective religions—cared for.

  Gabe shifted so his knee was no longer between us and reached for my face. Running his thumb along my cheekbone, he said, “I’m serious. I don’t want you doing this if—”

  “I know,” I whispered, placing my hand over his. We locked eyes. It was impossible to say which way he was really leaning on the subject of Kendra carrying our baby, but also impossible to miss how much he was hurting over this. We both were.

  I slid closer to him on the couch and wrapped my arms around him. “This will work out somehow.” I kissed his temple. “However it’s meant to be.” However Allah intends it to be, but Gabe didn’t share my beliefs, so I didn’t mention that part. We both knew what the other believed, and this wasn’t the time to remind ourselves of that area where we differed.

  Or why we keep getting rejected.

  I closed my eyes, trying not to cringe enough for him to feel it. I made no apologies for my beliefs, but I hated when my husband was hurt because of others’ misconceptions and intolerance. Gabe had always wanted a family. He’d fully expected it to be an uphill battle to adopt as a gay man, but I didn’t imagine he’d bargained for this.

  Gabe sighed, drawing back a little. “Yeah, it’ll work out eventually.”

  Our eyes met. Then I tipped up his chin and kissed him.

  I’d only meant for a brief kiss, just some reassurance and affection, but I hadn’t expected him to sigh and melt against me. I pulled him closer. Cradled the back of his head. Deepened the kiss.

  All the tension in his body seemed to evaporate as we held each other closer. Knowing him, he’d been wound up over this conversation and was relaxing now that he knew I wasn’t angry with him for bringing it up. Despite the fact that we’d long ago mastered the art of calmly sorting out even the most incendiary subjects, he could worry himself sick over coming to me with anything. I could only imagine how uneasy this had made him, and how relieved he was that, regardless of the indecision, we were okay.

  Of course we’re okay. I combed my fingers through his hair. I want a family as much as you do. I’m open to anything.

  Almost anything.

  Maybe.

  He slid his hand up my thigh, and goose bumps prickled between my shoulders. I pulled in a sharp breath as I kissed him harder.

  Abruptly, he jerked his hand back and broke the kiss. “Didn’t you just do your salat? We shouldn’t—”

  I silenced him with another kiss. My husband needed me. Under the circumstances, I had faith that Allah would understand.

  I broke the kiss and moved toward his jaw. He exhaled but didn’t protest, and as I started down his neck, he tilted his head back, running his fingers through my hair and cursing softly. I kissed my way down the front of his throat, nearly to his collarbone, the warmth of his skin beneath my lips turning me inside out.

  “We should go upstairs,” he slurred. “We have time, right?”

  “We do. And we should.”

  I kissed beneath his jaw once more, and then we both stood and hurried upstairs. In our bedroom, we didn’t waste any time—clothes off, sheets pulled back, and…ahh, there. Lying together, naked, wrapped up in each other’s arms and a long kiss.

  The chicken’s going to burn if we—

  Oh, who cares? We’ll order takeout. Don’t want to stop.

  We were both out of breath, both trembling, and I was so turned on I could barely stand it. I’d been itching for some time with him anyway, since we were seldom intimate during my work rotations, but this was even more than I’d anticipated. This was the way we touched whenever one of us had been away for any length of time—fingers digging into flesh, kissing until my head spun, rubbing together until body heat forced us to kick the sheets off.

  What’s gotten into you tonight, Gabe?

  What’s gotten into me?

  Didn’t matter. I wanted him.

  I rolled him onto his back, and he took me with him, never even breaking the kiss as he settled gently on the mattress. If dinner burned, it burned—now that I had him, I couldn’t make myself rush.

  Gabe reached for the lube bottle we kept on his nightstand. I lifted myself up a little, and he put some lube onto both of us. Then he closed his fingers so he was stroking us both, and I started thrusting against him, and even with the lube, the friction was delicious. Kissing Gabe, moving against him, feeling his skin against mine and his sharp, hot breaths across my cheek—this was perfection. All these years together, and the sex was still as amazing as it had been in the beginning. Even better than it had been back then. Didn’t matter how much life threw at us or took from us, we still had this.

  He was matching my thrusts now, lifting his hips in time with mine until we were grinding almost painfully despite the lube. I tried to keep kissing him, but I was struggling to breathe as it was, so I gave up and focused on keeping this rhythm up, giving him exactly what I knew he loved.

  Gabe arched beneath me, his grip tightening as a shiver ran through him. “G-gonna come.”

  “Not yet. Not—” I shuddered. “Not…”

  “Fuck, Shahid.” He shuddered hard, brow pinched and lips apart, his face and throat flushed. “Gonna—”

  All the breath rushed out of my lungs, and just like that, we both came, gasping and moaning and trembling, and even as my hips forgot how to move, Gabe kept stroking us until I collapsed on top of him. I held myself up on my forearms, head spinning and heart pounding, and brushed my lips across his.

  “I needed that,” he said.

  “Me too.”

  He kissed me again and murmured, “I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  After another long kiss, we separated, cleaned ourselves off and lay back on the bed. Somehow I wound up on his side, and he was on mine, but whatever.

  Gabe laced his fingers between mine. “I, um, hope it’s not too weird that I brought up K
endra’s suggestion.”

  “No. It’s not.” I rolled on my side and faced him, resting my hand in the middle of his chest. “I’m still not sure how I feel about going through with it, but I’m pretty floored that she suggested it.”

  “Yeah. Me too. And she’s not the kind of person who’d throw something like that out there and then back out.”

  I nodded. “I know. To be honest, out of all our female friends, she’s probably the one I’d trust the most.”

  “Ditto.”

  We fell silent again. Then he squeezed my hand. “I’ll understand if you don’t like the, uh, method, though.”

  “I like it better than putting her through IVF.” I sighed. “But, yeah, it’s a little…” I chewed the inside of my cheek. “I’m not sure how I feel about you and her in bed together.”

  “I know.” He mirrored me, turning on his side so we were facing each other with our hands clasped between us. “And I get why. It’s okay.”

  Still, I winced. It had been the subject of many of our earliest fights—his bisexuality and my insecurity were harder to cope with than our religious differences had ever been.

  “Maybe we should talk about this,” I said finally. “All three of us. Together.”

  Gabe nodded. “Do you want me to invite her over? You’re off tomorrow evening, right?”

  “Well, I’m on call, but that should be fine. Let’s have her over on Saturday.”

  Gabe nodded. “Okay. I’ll talk to her at work tomorrow.”

  “Perfect.” I glanced at the clock beside the bed. “I should probably check on dinner.”

  “Yes, you should. I’m starving now that I’ve worked up an appetite.”

  I laughed and kissed the tip of his nose. “Then let’s get back downstairs and eat.”

  “I like the way you think.”

  Chapter Three

  Gabe

  At school the next morning, I tapped my fingers impatiently on my desk and listened for movement in the back room that connected all the science classrooms. There were four science teachers, and both Jim and Felicia had gone into their respective classrooms already.