A Xmas Gift: The Sperm Donor (4 page)

“Abby – ”

Tears squeeze out of her eyes, and he knows this is no cry for attention. The tears are real. Abby is an extremely insecure mess of a human being, and he’s helpless to that, really, especially when he keeps reminding himself that for all her insecurities and flaws, she is a good, kind person who deserves a lot more than he is giving her.

Only she doesn’t seem to want anyone else.

But at least she wanted him for keeps, unlike Elise – who bailed at the first chance she got in their protracted separation.

Longstanding penitence makes him get down on the carpet with Abby and hold her tight. She smells of English roses, a scent he had picked out for her from John Lewis last Christmas.

“Not everyone wants me, Abby,” he murmurs into her hair. “Elise has moved on. She even got married.”

A sniff into his shoulder. Her arms around him are very tight.

“That makes me feel better. Is she still married?”

Smart.

“I don’t know,” he lies. “Probably.”

“And she’s had her closure? She’s never going to see you again?”

He supposes he should be more understanding. Yes, Abby has every right to be jealous of an old girlfriend, especially one as attractive as Elise. He wonders what he should say. He hates lying to Abby, really, and he never had to.

“She’s still on her vacation, and yes, I did say I’d show the sights,” he says semi-truthfully.

“No, no, oh Justin, please, please don’t! Say you’ll never see her again.”

The tears start afresh, and he feels a twinge of irritation. Yes, he intellectually understands her frame of mind, and if they had been married or even a true couple, he would be jealous out of his mind if the situation were reversed.

But there you have it. He is in a situation borne out of his own inability to commit emotionally to Abby as he continues to sit on the fence. He could have at least done her the huge favor of telling her that, but he’s afraid to hurt her.

Coward
.

But understanding it is one matter. He still cannot mask the unseemly irritation he feels with her.

Trust me, for God’s sake! Don’t tell me who I can or cannot see.

“Abby, there’s no need to get your head in a tizzy over this. It’s going to be OK.”

Even as he says it, he isn’t sure it’s going to be OK for Abby. There’s that matter about the sperm donation, of course. And what Abby doesn’t know, she doesn’t need to find out.

Why am I feeling guilty over this?

“Promise me, Justin, please promise me you won’t see her again.”

“It’s not fair of you to ask me to promise that, Abby. She’s an old friend. She did nothing to you. Or to me.”

Abby wipes her eyes. “OK, then tell me I can come along when you see her.”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

“You have something to hide,” she accuses.

They are going around in circles. He’s not going to win this, he knows. It’s extremely distressing to watch Abby like this, and yet, it’s extremely distressing for him to be held emotionally this way.

“All right,” he finally says, unsure if he’s doing the right thing. Elise was right. Abby would have a fit if she moved into his flat. “You can come along.”

Although Abby is not completely happy about this, it seems to alleviate her tears. She begins to rain little kisses on his chin, his neck, and soon, her hands are groping his crotch through his pants, massaging him into hardness.

As he pushes her down gently onto the floor amid the picnic spread from Harrods’ Food Hall, he can’t help feeling like a trapped bird.

7

Elise is not one to wait by the cellphone, and yet she finds herself constantly checking her phone display screen for any messages or calls she may have missed.

Oh, stop it. You are worse than a moon-sick teenager.
You have no claim on him. You have no right to impose upon his life. And he has a life, thank you very much. He has built one of his own without you.

And yet, she can’t help thinking about Justin – how good he looked, how nice he smelled, how his lips curled at the edges when he laughed.

A pang seizes her heart.

Maybe she made a mistake by breaking it off with him without giving their long-distance romance a chance.

No, no, she must never think that. Never look back with regret.

The waitress serves her fish and chips with mushy peas.

“All OK here?” She beams at Elise.

“All a-OK.” Elise beams back.

Just then, her phone rings. Elise darts her hand to pick it up immediately, especially when it flashes JUSTIN. But she forces herself to wait three rings before tossing her head, composing herself (somewhat) and nonchalantly picking it up.

“Oh hi,” she says airily.

Gawd, why is she behaving like this?

“Elise?” Justin’s voice is rushed. “I don’t have long to talk, but I can’t make it tonight.” He pauses. “Dinner with a client.”

“You mean dinner with Abby and she won’t leave you alone?” Elise gives no one in particular a wan smile.

He sighs on the other end. They have always been honest with each other.

Too honest.

“She’s sleeping off four Jim Beams. When she’s upset, she drinks herself silly.”

“You told her about us? I mean . . . ‘us’ as in the past ‘us’?”

“Yeah, but not in great detail. She wants to meet you.”

Elise chortles, causing a middle-aged couple at the next table to turn. “You must have painted quite a picture of us.”

“She’s jealous.”

“She has no reason to be.” As soon as Elise said that, she knows it isn’t technically true. Yes, she doesn’t want Justin back. (
No, no, you really don’t want a boyfriend. Let alone someone else’s boyfriend
.) And yet . . . something about Justin is so appealing, so remorselessly attractive that she can’t help but reminisce about all those years they had together when they were the golden high school couple.

“So convince her,” Justin says.

“OK.”

“But not tomorrow. Tomorrow, I’ve taken the afternoon off to show you the sights.”

“Are you sure you’re allowed to?”

“I have plenty of unused sick days.” He laughs. “OK. We don’t have sick days here. I’ve taken leave for half a day, and I’ve forbidden Ferngully to tell anyone where I’m going.”

“You know, that PA of yours has got you on a short leash.”

“Don’t I know it.”

“So I’ll see you tomorrow?” Elise finds herself really, really looking forward to seeing him again.

“Yeah. We need to talk. I need to ask you a whole lot of questions about . . . you know.”

“You can say it. It’s not a bad word.”

“OK, my
donation
.” The word sounds forced.

“Your Christmas gift to me,” she says.

She can hear the amusement in his tone. “OK. I’ll call it a Christmas gift. But I haven’t said ‘yes’.”

A knot congeals in the pit of her stomach. He’s going to turn her down. She knows it. Ah well, it was a long shot.

“Sure,” she forces her tone to be cheerful. “See you tomorrow.”

“I’ll meet you at the front of Leicester Square station. The one on the side of Chinatown. You know it?”

“I’ll find it.”

“See you.”

“Bye.”

When she clicks off, she realizes how much she has missed him already.

8

Justin tries to shrug off his guilt as he greets Elise outside the Tube station at Leicester Square. She hugs him, and people around them stop to scrutinize the attractive couple.

“Boy, it’s cold,” she says with a laugh. She’s bundled up nicely, but he can feel her body beneath her layers.

“Only in winter.” A light drizzle has come down again. He says, “Let’s get into the station, shall we?”

“Does it rain all the time?”

“Oftentimes.”

He takes her by Underground, Overground, buses and foot to the city’s major sights. He has his cellphone completely off so they are able to enjoy Trafalgar Square in -5 degrees Centigrade, freezing alongside the pigeons and gulls as they stare at Lord Nelson’s statue. They are forbidden to feed the pigeons by the city’s ordinance – unlike a long time ago, before it was found out that the pigeons’ droppings were destroying the statues.

Elise notices a whole lot of circular marks on every pavement – like corrosive scars.

“What are these?” she asks.

“Aha, not bird droppings, for once. These are dropped chewing gum marks. They sink in and become a part of the pavement, would you believe?”

“Ewww.”

“Yeah, they’ve forbidden us to do it ever since.”

It’s a hop to warm up in the National Art Gallery across the Square. They spend time looking at the Canalettos and the Whistlers. He takes her on a guided tour inside the Tower of London, and she happily snaps photos of Tower Bridge spanning across the river.

Spending time with her like this, he realizes how much he has missed her over the years. He has buried himself in his work and corporate climbing, yes, to assuage the loneliness. He told himself he didn’t have time to miss anyone, least of all Elise. But now it’s coming back to him full throttle, like a sixth digit he had excised – not by his own volition – that he didn’t know he’d missed until it grew back.

They stop to have tea in the food halls of Selfridges, where she has her first scone with clotted cream and strawberry jam.

“God, this is delicious,” she proclaims.

“I know. I like them better here than the ones in Fortnum and Mason’s or Harrods. But then, it’s a personal taste. Have you tried the macarons? They’re really good here too. Especially the ones with pistachio.”

“I can’t,” she says, waving a teaspoon. “I’ll get fat.”

“You’re not fat if you’ve seen a day. Tomorrow, I’ll take you out to eat Chinese in Soho. It’s really good here, not like the Chinese takeaways you get back home.”

He pauses.

Don’t make a promise you can’t keep.

She senses this.

“Don’t I have to make the grade with your girlfriend first before you’re officially allowed to take me out?” she says.

“I suppose.”

“But you’re dreading this meeting.”

“She’ll hate you on sight,” he confesses. “I’m dreading the confrontation.”

“What makes you think there will be a confrontation? Don’t you trust me?” She smiles impishly.

He bunches his fist under the table. It’s incredible how easy he finds it to talk to her again, after all these years. It is as though their separation period never happened and they are taking up where they left off.

“It isn’t you I don’t trust. It’s her.” He can’t trust Abby to keep her emotions in check. Wilting English rose she is not.

“Seriously, Justin, why are you with her?” Elise’s expression is solemn. “She’s jealous, she’s possessive, and she seems to want to control you. I’d never pegged you for being pussy whipped.”

He flinches. “That’s harsh. Abigail may be all that, but she’s also kind and caring and loving. She’s a rich kid, but she likes to help people. I’ve never seen Abby walk past a street musician without dropping several pounds into his cap. She cries when she sees animals being mistreated. She volunteers in homeless shelters and AIDS Hospices. I’ve never known anyone back home who’d done that.”

Certainly not Elise, he thinks. That doesn’t make Elise less altruistic, he supposes, and Abby certainly has the time to do all that giving back to the community stuff. But still, when he met Abby and found out she did all that, he was pretty impressed.

Elise says, “So she’s Mother Theresa reincarnate, but you don’t want to marry a saint.”

“Who says I don’t? After all, you haven’t known me for the past twelve years.”

“You are right. I don’t.” She shrugs, even though he can detect the slight flinch in her brow. “Only you can know yourself, and sometimes barely. I don’t want to come between you and Abigail, Justin. I’m just speaking as someone who cares about you . . . yes, even though we’ve moved on and are leading different lives now. She just doesn’t seem like . . . oh, you know.”

She waves her hand.

“You are trying to tell me that she doesn’t seem like my type. Why? Because she’s so different from you?” A grin grazes Justin’s lips.

Elise shrugs again – a graceful movement of her slim shoulders.

“I just hope you’re with her for the right reasons. Such as . . .
not
the fact that she’s your boss’s daughter.”

Oh wow, she’s perceptive. But then, Elise has always read him like a book.

“It’s complicated,” he offers.

It’s true. The reasons why he is with Abigail are myriad and would take probably twelve sessions on a psychologist’s couch to dissect.