Perfect Boss

I have everything planned, covered all my bases. It's now or never. This is what I want—a baby. This is what I need to do to get what I want.

Yet now, staring down at my fate—and at Mrs. Henry's fate—I feel my feet moving of their own volition. Not toward the clinic doors, but away, toward the exit, one slow step at a time.

"Rina, what's wrong? If you have any concerns, please, let's discuss them."

"I'm just..." I glance from Dr. Morgan to Mrs. Henry and back again. Mrs. Henry seems to finally notice that there's someone else in the room. She lifts her tear-stained face to mine and frowns at me.

"I'm just not sure I've pursued all my options," I hear myself saying to the doctor.

"Don't do this yet then," Mrs. Henry speaks up, shaking.

"Sweetie, shh," her husband whispers.

She shakes him off and pushes to her feet. "I mean it. If you have no other options, I understand, but if there's another way for you..." Mrs. Henry gazes into my eyes, desperate, suddenly, as though to save me from her own fate. "Don't do this unless it's your last resort."

That does it.

"Rina, let's discuss this in private," Dr. Morgan is saying.

"That's all right. I'm sorry, Dr. Morgan. I have to go." I'm babbling, but I don't care. I need to get out of here, now.

I bolt through the doors, my mind at war with itself. What am I doing? I thought I wanted this.

In the parking lot, I nearly run straight into the mess that Mrs. Henry left behind. The man, her donor, is still shouting and screaming, even as the security guards wrestle him toward the ambulance that's pulled up. "Please!" he shouts. "Please, I just want to talk to her. She's carrying my child! My child!"

The last thing I see are his wild eyes as a uniformed ambulance driver slams the doors to the back of the ambulance in his face, while another tries to wrestle him onto a stretcher inside.

I hurry across the parking lot to my car. Once inside, I suck in a few deep breaths, trying to steady myself. Still, my hands are shaking so hard that it takes me several fumbling tries to start the ignition and put the car into gear. I pull out of there in a rush and make a beeline for home, my heart heavy and my stomach a riot of nerves.

I speed through the drive home, probably faster than recommended. Once at my apartment complex, I leave my keys with the valet downstairs and head straight up to the penthouse loft I share with Cannon—my roommate, my coworker, my close friend since law school. Yes, on our salaries we could have both afforded our own places years ago. But not one quite as lux as this apartment, right downtown, a five minute walk to our office, central to all the restaurants and bars that we love —and the penthouse suite in a luxury building, complete with valets, maids, butlers, the whole nine yards.

Yes, we're spoiled. But we also just like having roommates. At least this way, we joke, if one of us chokes while we’re eating, we have a chance at getting rescued. Or if we slip and fall in the bathtub, someone may find us before our bodies get too gross.

We might have a slightly morbid sense of humor about our roommate situation.

But today I'm not in the mood for Cannon's usual jokes. By the time the elevator dings open straight onto our floor, I'm barely keeping it together. My eyes burn and my throat is tight, and all I want to do is retreat to my bedroom and cry my eyes out, preferably with an enormous container of Ben and Jerry's. But when I step out of the elevator onto our floor, I see Cannon has taken the pint I bought out of the fridge and helped himself to it on the couch. He's more than halfway through the container already, and he's watching that stupid cowboy show I hate.

It's the lightweight straw that broke the camel's back.

Without explanation, without being able to say why I'm so emotional (because as close as we are, I didn't tell Cannon about any of these fertility plans I've been pursuing) I burst into tears then and there.

Cannon spins around, his expression comically surprised. He's handsome as hell, but right now he looks like a goof with the Ben and Jerry's spoon hanging out of his mouth, and his dark eyes wide as saucers beneath his artfully messy black shock of hair.

"Are you all right?" he asks through his mouthful of ice cream, so it sounds more like "Ah oo awright?"

Somehow that only makes me cry harder.

He drops the spoon and shoves off the couch, hurrying toward me. In seven years of knowing each another, and four years of living together in this very apartment, I don't think I have ever cried in front of him. Not once. I usually lock myself in my bathroom on the rare occasion when I get emotional, which isn't very often, and usually over some stupid work spat or problem.

Nothing like this.

He wraps his arms around me, enveloping me in his tight, familiar embrace. Cannon gives the best hugs. I never tell him that because it would only stoke his ego, but he does. He knows just how tightly to squeeze to let you know he's really there, that he really cares about you. I sink against his chest and breathe in his scent. He smells like the lavender detergent we use and the mint body wash he has in his bathroom, the one I always tease him about because he decorated the whole thing in black—black shower curtains, black towels, everything.

He also smells, underneath all that, like him. Like our apartment, like home. Like my familiar, safe, reassuring best friend.

I wrap my arms around his neck and cry harder.

Cannon rubs my back in slow circles, whispering shh over and over until my sobs finally diminish into hiccups, and then deep breaths, and then finally stop enough that I can lean back and wipe my eyes dry, composing myself. I've left a tear-stained patch on his shirt, and the moment I see it I gasp out an apology, which comes out half words half hiccups.

In response, he simply shakes his head and laughs. "Not a big deal, Rina," he insists, even as he reaches for the hem of his shirt and tugs it off over his head.

Not like I haven't seen him shirtless a million times before. Half the time he lounges around this apartment in his boxers, sometimes even when he has his latest one-night stands over, cooking breakfast in his briefs. But there's something different this time, after I just spent a solid minute in his arms, crying on his shoulder. It makes me look at him with fresh eyes: at his chiseled abs, his strong pecs, and the way his biceps bulge as he tosses his shirt over the back of the couch.

"See? Problem number one solved." He catches my hand and squeezes it lightly, drawing me backward with him toward the living room. "Now, talk to me. What on earth has got you this riled up? I didn't even know you knew how to cry."

I elbow him in the side even as I let him pull me down onto the couch, right beside him, his warm arm grazing my shoulder, his strong fingertips curled through mine. His thumb brushes the back of my hand, gentle and reassuring. It feels good. Better than good. It makes my stomach, already upset from everything I've been through today, tense all over again.

But for completely new reasons.

Cannon? I think to myself. Then I have to shake myself out of that thought. Ridiculous. We've been besties for years. We've lived together for years.

I've seen how he treats women. He hooks up all the time, practically any night we go bar-hopping together, we wind up back here with a new girl tagging along. But he never sees them again. I don't think I've ever seen the same girl in this apartment twice. He is not exactly the serious dating type.

Then again...

Neither am I. I've had all of one long-term boyfriend ever, and that didn't go as planned. Every other relationship I've had has just been a series of casual hookups that go on for a couple weeks or months at most, before we decide to call it quits.

We're similar, Cannon and I. It's why we get along so well, as roomies, as colleagues, as friends.

He wouldn't freak out like that guy in the parking lot, part of my brain comments. He's calm, chill, co

llected. I've never seen him get ruffled, not once, not ever. Not even when shit explodes at work and he's drowning under stress. He handles everything with his usual casual grin, like the world is one big funny, occasionally frustrating joke that he's in on.

"Hello? Earth to Rina." He nudges me again and I blink, startled back to reality. To our living room, to the couch we've shared for a million and one movie nights since moving in here. To my roommate, who I've walked past every day for the last four years, but who I'm suddenly seeing through whole new eyes.

He's hot, he's smart, he's responsible. And he's uncomplicated, just like me. He doesn't develop feelings for people, same way I don't. He'd be the perfect donor, so to speak.

Maybe I don't need a clinic's help after all.

"Are you going to explain what all that was about?" He waves toward the door in general, then at my face. I wipe my cheeks again, sure that I still look a complete mess. Really attractive. Great way to bring up this topic.

"It's... kind of a long story," I admit, biting my lower lip. Then my eyes snag on something I hadn't noticed before. A bra hooked over the back of the couch. I laugh and lift an eyebrow at him, nodding with my chin. "Another souvenir?"

"Part of the down side of NSA. Girls never come back for their things." He groans and reaches for it. "I'll add it to the donation bin downstairs tomorrow."

"NSA?" I say, frowning.

"No Strings Attached, you know. My MO."

I laugh and roll my eyes. "Didn't know it had an acronym."

"I'm thinking of trademarking it."

"What, in your forthcoming novel, How Not to Get Attached?"

"Hey, pot calling the kettle black, much? You can co-author it with me. Nothing wrong with this lifestyle." He stretches his arms over his head, which draws my attention somewhat confusingly to his abs once more. What's wrong with me? I know what Cannon looks like. I've seen him every day for years. But suddenly the sight of those washboard abs are turning me on in new and confusing ways.

Must be the hormones.

"We like sex," he's saying with a shrug. "We don't do relationships. So no strings attached makes the most sense, to get us what we enjoy without leading anyone on or giving anyone the wrong idea about things potentially getting serious."