The Donor

The Morning After

"You told him."

Cherish did not look up from her coffee. "Good morning to you too."

"On a construction floor. After one site walkthrough. You told him about the clinic."

"I was tired."

"You are never that tired."

"Sable"

"In seventeen years you have not told your sister. You have not told your mother. You dated a man for two years who thought he knew everything about you and you never told him." Sable sat down across from her. "You told this man on floor eleven of an unfinished building after one walkthrough."

"I know what I did."

"Then you know what it means."

"It means I was tired and I made a poor decision."

"It means you trusted him." She held her gaze. "What did he do when you told him?"

Cherish looked at her coffee.

"He put his hand over mine," she said.

Sable was quiet for a moment.

"He didn't flinch," Cherish said. "Didn't reach for the bright side. Didn't make it about himself. He just sat with it and then he said I didn't have to carry it alone."

"And you believe him."

A long pause.

"I don't know."

"Yes you do."

"He is twenty-eight years old."

"You keep saying that."

"Because it keeps being true."

"It also keeps being true that he rewrote a fourteen page brief overnight because you said the word showroom once. It keeps being true that he had the right coffee on a construction floor at seven in the morning without being asked." Sable leaned forward. "How old was Marcus when he left?"

Cherish went very still.

"That is not relevant."

"Thirty-four. Seven years older than you. Every box ticked." Sable's voice went quiet. "And he still looked at you on his way out the door and told you that you were too much and not enough at the same time."

"Sable. Stop."

"Is Adonis Vael behaving like a man who finds you too much?"

The office was very quiet.

Cherish said nothing.

Which between the two of them was already an answer.

"What are you going to do," Sable said.

"I don't know."

"Yes you do."

"I cannot just"

"What. You cannot just do what."

"I cannot call him and ask him to" She stopped. Pressed her fingers to her forehead. "There is a process, Sable. A medical process. You cannot just ask someone to"

"You are not just someone to him. That is the entire point." Sable sat back. "Call him."

"I don't even know what I would say."

"You would say exactly what you told me. That you have a fifteen percent window and a plan that stopped making sense and you don't know what to do next."

"That is a terrible opening."

"It is an honest one. Since when are you afraid of honesty?"

Her desk phone rang.

Priya's voice. "Ms. Auton. The clinic is on line two."

She looked at Sable.

Sable looked back and said nothing and was somehow saying everything.

She picked up. "Ms. Auton."

"Good morning. We have a cancellation that opens a stimulation window in the next three weeks. Given your numbers I wanted to reach you before we offered it elsewhere."

"Three weeks."

"Yes. It would mean beginning the protocol as early as Monday. Have you made a decision about the donor?"

She looked at the bottom left drawer of her desk.

The folder was in there.

Four names that were not his name.

"I need until the end of the day," she said.

"Of course. I'll hold the slot until five."

"Thank you."

She put the phone down.

"End of day," Sable said.

"End of day."

"That is seven hours."

"I know how long a day is."

"What are you going to do?"

"I don't know."

"Cherish"

"I said I don't know." Not sharp. Just honest. The kind that only came when she had run completely out of room to be anything else. "I have a fifteen percent window and a three week slot and a man who held my hand on a construction floor last night and I genuinely do not know what I am doing."

"I think you do."

"Sable."

"I think you have known since last night and it is frightening you."

"Of course it is frightening to me. He is twenty-eight years old and we have a professional contract and I have known him for less than a week and I am sitting here considering" She stopped.

"Considering what," Sable said quietly.

Cherish looked at the drawer.

A long pause.

"Calling him," she said.

Sable said nothing.

"You are not going to say anything?" Cherish said.

"I already said everything I needed to say."

"You are insufferable."

"I am right. Those are not the same thing." She stood. Smoothed her jacket. Picked up her coffee. "You already know what he is going to say. That is exactly why you are scared to make the call." She moved to the door. "Five o'clock, Cherish. Seven hours."

She walked out.

Cherish sat alone.

She opened the bottom left drawer.

Looked at the folder.

Four names.

She closed the drawer.

Picked up her phone.

His name was there. She had saved it under Vael Studio so she would not have to look at his first name every time the screen lit up.

She stared at it for a long time.

Pressed call.

It rang twice.

"Ms. Auton."

Warm. Steady. Completely unsurprised. Like he had been expecting her call and had already decided how to answer it.

"I need to talk to you," she said.

"I know," he said. "I'll come to you."

She closed her eyes.

"Okay," she said.

She put the phone down and sat in the quiet of her office and told herself she was not hoping and believed none of it.

Outside her window Chelsea was doing what it always did. Moving and indifferent and completely unaware that Cherish Auton had just made a decision that had nothing to do with a folder and everything to do with a man she had known for less than a week and could not stop thinking about.

She opened the Hargrove file.

Stared at it.

Closed it.

Looked at the drawer.

Looked at her phone.

Okay, she had said.

Just that one word.

It was the smallest thing she had said in years and it felt like the most significant decision she had made in a very long time and she sat with that and did not try to talk herself out of it and that, she was beginning to understand, was new.

That was very new.