ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE

l anyone ab

usual and asks if everything is okay with the pregnancy. Not the journal I've kept since I was twenty-two, which currently has four pages o

because writing them makes them

eat and sleep eight hours and drink enough water and do every single thing within my control beca

t do is Goog

it fo

eating a granola bar that tastes like compressed cardboard, and my phone is in my ha

me I go

ments. I find a piece in a financial magazine from two years ago that mentions, in the third paragraph, that

onal

e with different

in a society column from four years ago, the kind of column that covers who attended what event and who w

ed three months late

in an incident described

down on the b

h that fo

r years of that Forbes profile with no romantic history and an inter

ng hands. The way I told myself his loss was d

ht. It is

hanges the shape of him in my head, and I reall

the granola bar an

appointment i

hour inside the forty-eight hour window. I notice this and I tell myself I'm not going to thin

his confirmation

me to know before the appointment? Any

it thre

rritates me slightly, because I had a much easier time when

Heartbeat check, measurements, stand

four minutes:

settle something in my chest th

s back on

earsing something and is no longer sure it was the right thing to rehearse. He's holding flow

," he

ar

Petra told Gio, and Gio told me, and I know y

ause the hallway is n

ecking what's changed. I've moved the couch. I got rid of the coffe

on the counter. I do

ght to ask for that. I know what I did. But if there's any part o

isn't your

sto

ing to hear it eventually and I'd rather it come from me. "The

Something that looks almost like relief before he catches it and

" he

not your

ll

d about my life when you spent two years lying in it. I don't say

he flowers. H

, which is the worst part. He means it

say. "Goodni

lea

That w

. The flowers are yellow. My mother's favorite color. I put t

e buzzes on

ber. Chicag

nurse and unknown numbers a

Gerald Holt. I'm the senior legal counsel for Sinclair Holdings. I need to inform you

ghtens on

of situat

tside the clinic knows about the pregnancy.