Baby of the Family

"It's my Body, so it's my Decision! I already made this choice a long time ago. We're doing this for them. It's GOING to happen. That's just the way it is." I heard the words coming out of my mouth and tried to feel as determined as I wanted to sound.

My husband looked at me like there was a storm raging in his mind and in his heart. As if being married to me had shackled him to a destiny he wasn't prepared for and couldn't accept. Looking back on things now, I can see that I was wrong not to have told him about my Promise, but I honestly never thought this would happen.

I'd steeled myself for his response. I was showing my defiance, leaning slightly forward, arms akimbo. I had him on the ropes. He didn't have to like it, but he had no choice but to go along with it and support me. I'm his wife. This is my family. He promised. So I kept pressing my attack.

He came to some decision. I saw his resolve awaken in his eyes. Now he was just calculating how to say it. I felt a bucket of cold slime flow from my shoulders into my guts. Oh, no. No no no. Don't say it. Please, please, Carl, honey, don't say it.

"So that's just the way it is, huh?"

"Carl..."

"How I feel about it doesn't fucking matter. You're doing it, so I just have to suck it up and deal, is that about right?"

"No, honey. You're a part of it, too. You're my husband. I'm going to need you. Now more than ever."

"Oh, sure, it's about YOUR needs. Never mind MY needs. I'm 'Your Husband' when you need me, but I guess I'm shit outta luck when I need you to be My Wife, is that it?"

"It's not like that."

"I need you to be my wife. MY wife. The mother of MY children. Not HIS."

"I AM your wife! I will be all that and more! We'll have our own kids, of course we will! This is just something I need to do first."

"Oh, I get it, Pamela. I get it. Your Body, Your Choice." His voice was full of venom. "I have NO say, but you still expect me to show up and do my part for YOUR family. Well. Sorry to disappoint you, but NO. I do NOT agree. I will NOT go along with your plan. And THIS...," he pointed at his own chest, "Is MY body. THIS is MY choice." He stood up, turned his back on me, and headed towards the door.

"NO! Don't LEAVE! Carl! Honey, we have to talk about this! We have to work this out!"

"Talk?" He wheeled back around. "Talk about WHAT? You're not going to LISTEN to me! Nothing I say is gonna fucking matter! You just want to get me under control, under YOUR control! Fuck That! Fuck YOU! If you REALLY wanted to 'talk,' don't you think you should have talked to me FIRST, not LAST!?!?"

I don't remember him leaving. I only came back to my senses when I heard the door slam.

***

I was ten years old when we learned my older sister Stella could never have children.

She'd been crying for a week. We'd learned that she wasn't going to die, so that was good news, right? She'd always been sickly. I could barely remember a time in our lives when she actually felt GOOD. When I was eight and she was thirteen, puberty hit her like a natural disaster. She cramped and bloated and bled and bled and BLED. When she wasn't having female troubles, she always complained that she was dizzy or sick. She never had any energy and was always depressed or asleep, except for those times when she was raging and screaming and crying. Even when she was "okay," she still wandered around in a daze and would forget where she was or what she was doing.

I didn't understand what was going on. My parents explained to me that she was facing the same kinds of medical problems that claimed the life of her mother. Technically, we're half-sisters. Dad's first wife died when Stella was three. He married my mom when she turned up pregnant with me two years later. I'm what they called a "happy surprise."

My sister suffered from a witches' brew of endometriosis, ovarian cysts, and early stage endometrial and cervical cancer. Her hormones were a torrent of pain and chaos and acne. Her thyroid was battered and worn. She had to drop out of school for weeks at a time. When she was fifteen, the decision was finally made to perform a partial hysterectomy, remove the most afflicted ovary, and put her on hormone therapy. It worked, at a cost. Her life was out of danger, but her fertility was gone and her growth was stunted, taking her confidence and most of her self-esteem with it. She'd go on to spend her teens and twenties being the awkward skinny little weird girl. She never had a boyfriend or social life.

But to me, my big sister was a goddess. When we were little, I followed her around EVERYWHERE I could. Most children would probably not have tolerated me the way she did. If Stella had been anyone else, she'd have called me an annoying pest and yelled at me to leave her alone. But that's not the way it worked. I was literally the golden child, favoring my fair-haired mother, and the two of us had given my father a new lease on life. Our presence pulled him back from depression and dysfunction while he struggled with the grief of being a widower and the strain of newly-single parenthood to a troubled girl. It might have gone wrong; Stella might have been disregarded as a painful reminder of what he'd lost, I might have usurped her as the apple of my Dad's eye, or Mom might have become Stella's Wicked Stepmother. But I wouldn't let any of that happen. I LOVED Stella and insisted on elevating her and including her in everything, putting her back in the center of the family where she belonged. As much as my parents wanted to dote upon me, I pushed most of that attention away from me and onto her, where it was needed.

Stella seemed to understand what I was doing, and she was genuinely touched. I had become her patron, and she became my protector. Dad was trying to paper over his pain and loss, Mom was desperate to make our patched-together family function as best she could, but the bond Stella and I created was the core of our family. I was never "Pesky Pamela," I was "HER Pammy." In spite of our five-year age gap, we were closer and so much stronger than we ever could have been if we'd had the same mother.

Maybe it was because we knew 'us kids' made our family work; each of us grew up wanting children of our own when we were old enough. That was SO important, it was nearly all we talked about. Husbands were a secondary concern, a means to our desired goal. The babies were the whole point of our 'grownup' play. That's what hit Stella so hard when her nascent womanhood went off the rails and tried to kill her.

***

"Stella Bella." I was at the door of her room. She'd come back from the hospital after her operation and had done nothing but sleep and cry.

"Go away."

I went in and was at the side of her bed. "Never." I grasped her hand. She tried to yank it away, but I held on too tight.

"Go AWA... hu-uh-uh aaa..." She finished the word by just bawling.

"Stella. I'm going to have your babies for you."

She said nothing. I didn't have to ask if she heard me.

"It doesn't work like that." She sniffled.

"Yuh-huh, it can. It's called Circusy. I'm gonna have your babies for you when I'm old enough."

"Sur-oh-gah-cee. Surrogacy." She always corrected me without judgment.

"Surrogacy."

"I'd never ask you to do that, Pammy."

"You don't have to ask. I'm gonna do it. When it's time for you to have babies, when I'm old enough, I'm getting preggers for you. For our family. For my baby niece or nephew. For all of us."

"You're going to want your own babies."

"I'll have them, too. I'll have four babies. Two for you and two for me."

"It's not that simple."

"Is too."

"They wouldn't be my babies," she said. "My baby-making parts are gone. I'm not gonna have any eggs. I've only got one ovary now, and it doesn't work. Genetically, they'd be your children."

"They'll be your future husband's children and you'll be their mommy. Mom and Dad will be gramma and grandpa. I'll be Aunt Pammy. They wouldn't even know. We could tell them when they're grown if you want, but it wouldn't change anything." I squeezed her hand harder. "Our babies would be brothers and sisters for real, just like you and me. They wouldn't even be cousins. Or yes they would be. They'll be both. We'll all be one family. Together. Forever."

She was quiet for a while again. I knew I'd reached her.

"Different families work different ways. That's what mom and dad always say, and it's true."

"You're ten years old. You're too young to make a decision like that."

"Then I'll make it again when I'm not ten anymore. I'll be fifteen and twenty and twenty-five and thirty and on and on, but I'll decide the same way every time. You know I'm telling the truth."

"You might change your mind."

"But I won't."

"We don't know what's gonna happen. Things might change."

"They might, but I'm giving you your babies."

"What if I don't want you to?"

"Tough noogies."

She snorted. Then she started crying again, still holding my hand in a death grip. Then she suddenly pulled me onto the bed, threw her arms around me and held me so tight I couldn't breathe.

"Thank you," she whispered in my ear.

***

Puberty is always hell, and having seen what Stella went through, I was terrified. When my period first arrived, I had some spotting, but no pain. The next day the ketchup bottle came unplugged, but Stella and my mom had me all set up with supplies, and we were ready. I was a little moody, but that was the worst of it. Then it was gone and I was back to normal. The next month, I was regular. The breast fairy came right on cue and gave me some curves that started getting me noticed in seventh grade. The boys weren't shy. Mom and dad eventually started letting me go on dates and I did that all through high school. I was the social butterfly that my sister never was or could be. I lost my virginity at eighteen, on Prom Night. It was okay.

We didn't talk about my promise again for years, but I made sure that conversation was never forgotten. The subject of children seldom came up when Stella was around, since everyone knew it was a delicate topic, but whenever it did, I would wink or nod or nudge her, to remind her that my promise was still in place. I made a point of saying so out loud once when I was fifteen and again when I was twenty. My sister seemed to acknowledge it, but she never dated anyone, so it was kind of a moot point.

I met Carl in college, and we hit it off right away. He was my fourth experience with a serious relationship, and I somehow knew he was the one. Besides those three other guys, I'd done enough semi-casual fooling around to know my body and figure out how I felt about a guy pretty easily. He was two years older than me, strong, confident, charming, and he proposed right after I graduated. I knew it was coming- we'd planned to get engaged before we actually got engaged. We married the next year. I was twenty-two. That week was the first time Carl met Stella. She'd been traveling for her job since she finished college, not tied down to anywhere or anyone. She did not bring a date to the wedding.

Carl worked in sales and was doing okay. I became an elementary school teacher. We didn't have a lot of extra money, but we were saving for a down payment on a house and planning to start our family soon after we found something suitable. Four years went by and we were getting close to that goal, then everything changed.

Stella got married.

She was thirty-one, and eloped with a guy named Jerry. She met him in Quebec, randomly connecting over some old goth song about getting run over by a double-decker bus. He worked in finance and was making really good money, even though he was closer to my age than hers. This was the first guy, the first boyfriend of Stella's that I knew about. And just like that, boom, married. She called me immediately after they signed the papers and then hung up right away. She still had to tell our parents. We didn't see them in person until almost eight months later, when she brought him home for Christmas to meet the family.

Carl always got along well with mom and dad. They weren't close, but my folks seemed to approve of him. And Carl always knew how important Stella is to me, but she was never really part of our relationship. We had little contact with her while she was running around for her career, and it's not like they didn't get along, but they never had occasion to connect. It was like they operated on different frequencies, so it was never awkward.

Carl and Jerry, though, got on like a mongoose and a cobra. When they shook hands in mom's living room, you could smell the testosterone spike and feel the temperature drop. The first thing they did was perform that masculine bullshit "whoever squeezes harder establishes dominance" thing. Jerry appeared to revel in it. Carl recognized it for what it was, and being the salesman that he is, graciously let him win.

"So, Carl," Jerry said, "Es tells me you're a used car salesman."

"No, that's not correct at all. Who's 'Es'?"

"Estella. My wife. Surely you've heard of her." His charming grin lit up the room.

"I've never once heard her called that."

"Well, I suppose we've been a little bit out of step with the extended family, but hey, that's why we're all here, right, to get acquainted! So, tell me, Carl, what IS it that you do? You DO have a job, right?" His friendly smile covered what I thought was a wink in my direction.

I saw a shadow flicker across my husband's face even while Jerry's countenance beamed out 'I'm just joshin' with you, we're all friends here, right?' to everyone present. Carl read the room and didn't take the bait.

"I do inside sales. Business-to-business. Mostly industrial contracts. I've occasionally arranged fleet leases as part of some of the packages my teams have negotiated. Perhaps that's what my sister-in-law was confused about." He gave Stella a slight side-eye. She was staring at a spot on the floor in front of her and didn't catch it.

"Ahh. Bee-To-Bee. That sounds cushy. Not really where the action is, though, is it? I bet you spend a lot of time on the golf course."

"I do, actually. But I have to admit I'm not very good. I've trained myself to lose at golf in order to win contracts. It flatters the egos of arrogant blowhards who need to feel superior. You know the type. They get off on being snide and disparaging, and don't even hide the fact that they cheat."

"Carl, join me in the kitchen," I said, "Let's open another bottle of wine." I took his hand and marched him away before open war broke out. Once we were safely away, I hissed "Do NOT do this!"

"Whatever do you mean." He was wooden.

"Do NOT get into a pissing match with Jerry for no reason! Jesus! Stella has NEVER brought a guy home, let alone a husband! This is her FIRST relationship. This is VERY important to her, and that means it's VERY important to me, and to all of us! So you are NOT going to fuck things up and make things awkward tonight!"

He held up his hands as though I was playing at being a bank robber and pointing a cap gun at him. "It's not me, Pam. You picked up on the vibe, sure. I think the whole block did. But you don't speak man-language. Most of the teachers you work with are women, and I'm sure they can be catty as hell, but in male parlance, that guy just whipped out his dick and slapped me across the face with it."

"So what? Do what you always do. Man Up. Take one for the team. Let him win and enjoy it. Keep the peace. Be the hero. Be the Better Man and leave him alone. Do. Not. Turn. This. Into. A. Shitshow."

"I didn't start it."

"Please be the one who ends it. Just let it drop. For me. Please." I looked at him with what I hoped was irresistible softness in my big eyes.

He bit his lip. "For you."

"For me. For Stella. For Mom and Dad. For All Of Us."

"The guy IS a colossal asshole. You know that."

"He's not that bad. I think he's kind of charming." I turned my back and fumbled around pretending to look for the corkscrew I'd already found.

"Oh fuck that noise. I've dealt with jerks like that my entire life. Do not fall for his alpha-male bullshit. For guys like him, it's ALL about WINNING. It's not even about money, or status, or even actually gaining anything. It's all about fucking over some other guy just because he can. I've seen his type even take a loss if he gets to shit on somebody else."

"Just behave, okay?" I got the wine open and refilled our glasses.

"Tell 'Es' to get her conceited man-child to stop wagging his balls at me, and we'll be fine. There are limits to the amount of abuse I'm willing to absorb tonight."

The rest of the evening was sociable. Civil, if not endearing. The menfolk stopped their one-upmanship and we let Mom play gracious host, driving the conversation into harmless directions. The topic of grandchildren was assiduously avoided... but I really did need to talk to Stella about it, now that she had a husband. I wanted to be discreet, so I waited for a moment when we were alone in the kitchen, having cleared some dishes.

"My decision hasn't changed," I said. She was frozen, unmoving. "I didn't say it again when I was twenty-five because I didn't see you in person that year, but yes, it's still yes."

"Don't." She wouldn't look at me. "Don't bring it up. Don't say it. Just forget it. Please."

"Tough Noogies."

"PAMMY! No!"

"Everything okay in here?" Dad was suddenly behind us with another load of plates.

"We're fine," I tried to look sweet.

"She was just teasing me," said Stella. "An old joke."

"Pamela! You haven't seen your sister in... how long, now? And you're giving her a hard time? You two were always so close, you've loved each other like nothing else I've ever seen. Is that any way to treat her?"

"I'm sorry Daddy. I was just excited that Stella's finally found someone to love. I think it's wonderful! I really am so happy for her! I wasn't teasing!" I looked her dead in the eye. "I wasn't teasing, I promise." She shook her head slightly. I ignored it.

"Pammy," said Dad, "Look, it's no secret that Stella is, ah, a 'late bloomer.' She's new to this. You've been dating since you were fifteen and you've been married, what, four years now? So go easy on her. Be gentle. Be kind. She took care of you while you were growing up, so you could at least do the same." He meant well, but he had no clue.

"I will, Daddy. That's what I was trying to do."

"Okay. Well. Good. Be nice. Remember, we're family." He toddled back out to the living room and left us to it, probably not trusting Carl and Jerry not to kill each other.

"Please just shut up about that," my sister scowled at me. "He knows I can't. We've talked about it. He doesn't want any. We don't want any. It's decided. Just... let it be. Thank you, but no. We're good. Don't bring it up again."

"Okay, okay. Sheesh."

Was that really what she wanted? Was that what HE wanted?

***

It wasn't until a few months later that my parents were having a spring cookout. Stella and Jerry came down from New York and I managed to catch Jerry alone. It struck me for a moment how much taller he was than me.

"Stella probably told you she can't have children."

"Ah. Yes. Well, I never really wanted rugrats anyway. It was never an issue."

"Well. It's technically true, but not exactly the whole story. Did she ever tell you I volunteered to be her surrogate?"

"What?"

"When I was a kid. I meant it then, and I mean it now. If you and Stella ever want to have children, I'll do it for you. Just say when."

"You're kidding." He looked me up and down.

"Nope." I looked him right in the eye, hoping to stop him from leering at my body... even though my kitty betrayed me with a twitch.

"Well. That is... something to think about. Thank you."

"Just let me know." I ended with that and went back to Carl with another beer for each of us.

***

Six months later, Stella and Jerry announced they were closing on a house back in our hometown. They were relocating from New York, claiming it was too expensive and they wanted to be around family. Jerry would keep his finance job and work remotely. Stella could still travel for her career when she needed to. She said it was time for them to 'put down roots.' Privately, she told me she'd be glad that Jerry wouldn't be going out with 'the guys' to the bars in Manhattan and doing shots of sake off of naked sushi girls anymore.

"It seems to me," said my mom, "that they're going into 'nesting' mode. If I didn't know better, I'd say they were planning to start a family. Do you think they're looking to adopt?" We were having a mother-daughter brunch out with a pitcher of mimosas. Carl was on a sales trip. Dad was puttering around out on the lawn.

"She hasn't said anything like that to me."

"I mean, she drifted around for all those years, and now they're establishing a 'family home,' in her old brooding grounds, no less. Not New York. Don't you think that's kind of uncharacteristic? For both of them?"

"I mean, yeah. Um. It kinda looks that way."

"Do you think something's changed? In their relationship?"

"I have no idea."

"Pamela. You two were thick as thieves the whole time you were growing up. Surely you must have some clue what's going on."

"I haven't talked to her about it." That was true. I had, however, texted with her. "Are you SURE?" she asked. "Yes, Absolutely," I replied.

"There's something you're not telling me." She squinched up her brow. "I know you too well."

"Look. Mom. If there's anything going on about Stella and Jerry starting a family, or not, or whatever, I'm sure they'll announce it sooner or later. Give them time. I'm just glad that I'm going to be seeing more of my sister."

***

"No," I said. "In my mouth. I want to taste you." My husband was fucking me. I'd quit taking the pill after my last cycle. I was probably still safe, but I didn't want to risk it. He was just beginning to go a little faster and clench a little harder, I could tell he was close. "In my MOUTH! NOW!" I couldn't push him off me. He was too big.

"Too close, I'm..."

I squirmed out from under him, somehow, and desperately slurped his cock into my mouth right when he began to squirt. Damnit. I hoped his precum hadn't done anything already. I gobbed down everything I could and tried to make a show of enjoying it, but I did cough a little. To be honest, I never really did like the texture.

"God. So good. Thank you." I looked at him hopefully.

"What...? What was up with that? Pammy? You never want it in your mouth. What's going on?"

"Nothing! I just, I, um, I just wanted something different."

"I, uh. Okay." He shook his head and blinked his eyes. "No, actually. Not okay. You hate getting come in your mouth. Even when you go down on me, you make me go on my stomach or on your boobs. What gives?"

"I, er, read it in Cosmo. I thought it would be sexy. Make you feel wanted. And it's got all kinds of vitamins and electrolytes. Supposed to be good for the skin."

"Bullshit."

"No, really."

"Okay, maybe that part is true, but you're still bullshitting me. Why didn't you want me coming in you?"

"Okay, okay. I forgot to start taking my pills. I just remembered."

"You forgot... you NEVER forget. You take a pill every day with your orange juice. Even when you're off your cycle, you take those little dummy pills so you don't break the habit. You've never not taken your pill. Why did you not take your pill? We're not out of OJ."

"I just didn't take it, okay? It's alright, I'll catch up. We'll just start using condoms. Just to be safe. For this month."

"Condoms? Seriously? We've never... that's never been... what the hell?"

"It'll be okay."

"Are you gonna tell me what's really going on?"

"Nothing! Nothing is going on!"

He just stared at me and let the uncomfortable silence do its job.

"Nothing's going on. I promise."

He still wasn't saying anything. Shit.

"I just... I need to stop taking the pill."

"Are you... did you want to start trying to get pregnant?"

The words 'Yes, but not with you' nearly jumped off my tongue but I REFUSED to say them out loud.

"Pammy..." He touched my arm. "We're getting close. We've almost got that down payment together. We talked about this. We wanted to find the house first, then start trying. Did you want to start now? Get pregnant first instead?"

"Kind of. Just not right this minute."

"Is this... does this have anything to do with Stella and Jerry buying that house?"

"Maybe."

"Are you feeling... did you... ah, help me out here. You see your sister and her husband establishing, like, a homestead, and you're feeling, what, left out? Or like we've fallen behind? Is that it?"

"No, it's not like that. Not exactly."

"What IS it like? Exactly."

"It's all jumbled up. I can't talk about it now. Let me get some sleep and get my head sorted out and we'll talk about it later. I promise."

He let it rest. I didn't get to sleep easily. Neither did he.

***

"Okay, so of course, we'll pay for everything. All the prenatal care, doctors' appointments, the delivery, hospital stay, the midwife, the whole kit and caboodle. Jerry's making really good money and he's already put you on his insurance." Stella was beside herself. I'd never seen her so excited and happy. We were in her new house, with her new husband, planning her new baby.

"We've got you covered, babe." Jerry flashed his million-dollar smile at me again. I smiled back.

"We retained a family law attorney. Her card is in the folder." She handed me a thin portfolio like they'd give you when you open a bank account. "The documents are pretty straightforward. There's a declaration that you intend to act as a surrogate for me and Jerry, and will make no claim of responsibility for the child. Jerry and I will assume full parental rights upon live birth. Your name will be on the birth certificate, but the formal adoption will take place simultaneously with that. There's an agreement about the expenses, your health care and compensation, all that kind of thing. You and Carl should retain your own lawyer and go over all this before we sign anything. Then we can all meet up with a notary public and have some lunch to celebrate!"

"Sure. Sounds good. Um. Why does Carl need to be involved?"

"He's your husband. In this state, he may have some kind of potential rights to any children you give birth to, whether or not he's the father, so we need to cover all the bases... OH. Oh, shit. Pammy. Pammy, please tell me Carl's on board with this!"

"Of course! I mean, he will be."

"FUCK. You haven't even TALKED to him?"

"Not yet. It'll be fine."

"PAMMY!"

"Let me worry about Carl. He'll be okay, I promise. And I promised this to you a long time ago. This is gonna happen. Carl doesn't have to be a part of it."

"I think he MIGHT have something to say about his WIFE being pregnant!"

"It's not like that wasn't going to happen anyway. We're just doing you guys first, that's all."

She took the folder back out of my hands.

"HEY."

"No. You need to talk to your husband and make sure you have his support before this goes even one step further. I will not have it creating any kind of marital strife in this family."

"Gimme that," I snatched the folder back. "He needs to read it anyway, right?" Stella acquiesced with a shrug. "I'll take care of Carl. You don't worry about a thing. This is your baby. You've got enough to worry about already."

"Today, Pammy. Not tomorrow, not next week, and you are NOT waiting to have that conversation until after you're already pregnant. Now. Right fucking now. Or it's No Go. Carl needed to be a part of this ALREADY. Of course it's going to affect him. Of course there'll be an impact on his life and his marriage. He is absolutely going to have to participate. He deserves to be in on these discussions. It's inappropriate that he's not here with us in this room now. No, not just inappropriate, it's fucked up. You're talking with us about it behind his back. That is severely creepy, weird, and wrong."

"Okay, okay, I get it."

She took out her cell phone. "I'm calling him."

"NO!"

"Why not?"

"Let me do it, just... just let me do it. I have to be the one to explain it to him."

"That's right. YOU DO. I'm glad you understand."

"I'll do it."

"Today. You'll do it today."

"Alright, alright. Today."

***

And now we're back where this all started. That conversation Did Not Go Well. I took the folder home, and before I opened it for him, I offered a heartfelt explanation of Stella's childhood sickness and the promise I made when I was ten, and how I'd renewed it again and again. I let him know that this had nothing to do with our marriage, or the children we were going to have, and it wouldn't affect us or our relationship at all, but it was something I needed to do for Stella, for our family, and for me. Surely, as my husband, he would support me, right?

Right?

I could still taste metallic bile at the back of my throat while the image of the slammed-shut door burned itself into my eyes.

I took out my phone and called my sister, not entirely sure of what I'd say.

"Stella?"

"Pammy? How'd it go?"

"It's good. We're all onboard now. Let's get these papers signed already and get me pregnant."

The cheer at the other end of the call made the lie worth it, a thousand times over.

***

Things at home were a mess, but Stella and Jerry didn't need to know that. Carl wouldn't even talk to me, let alone try to fuck me, so THAT was a good thing. I'd been off the pill for three weeks and started taking prenatal vitamins prior to our first insemination attempt. I wasn't expecting to get as horny as I did. If Carl and I had exchanged a particularly affectionate hug, he might have knocked me up twice before we parted. Honestly, I was worried about even being in the same HOUSE as his sperm, let alone what might happen if I got any of it in me or on me. That situation had already gotten awkward.

When I was at the right point in my cycle, Carl was away on one of his regular sales trips. The same trip that I lied and said he was on when I arranged to sign all those papers without him. I know, I know, that was shitty of me, but he'd sign them later. It's not like he was going to WANT the baby. Stella was giving me crooked looks the whole time, but I guess she figured she shouldn't push it any harder than she had.

We'd discussed our options. The traditional thing would be an In-Vitro fertilization and implantation, but the main reason for that would have been to use Stella's eggs, and she didn't have any. We could have harvested MY eggs for In-Vitro, but that wasn't the best option unless I'd had trouble conceiving naturally. Since I was presumably healthy, IVF seemed pointless and expensive, so we decided on artificial insemination. Ordinarily, his sperm would have been frozen in liquid nitrogen and thawed prior to delivery, but again, what would be the point? We didn't have to ship it or anything. Freezing would just kill a bunch of the sperm. Our best option for conception, aside from good old-fashioned sex (the mention of which had Jerry wiggling his eyebrows and Stella rolling her eyes), was an in-home insemination with fresh, live samples- better known as the "turkey baster" method.

It's not actually a turkey baster. You can get insemination kits from Amazon for like a hundred bucks. There is no way that three little rubber syringes, a plastic dish, and some sani-wipes is worth a hundred bucks. Honestly, a turkey baster would probably do just as well.

They had me stay over for the three days around my ovulation window. I was taking my temperature and checking my cervical mucus, and at the right time each day, Stella took Jerry to their bedroom and collected his sample personally. Then she wrapped herself in a bathrobe and brought the little dish and syringes to me in the guest room, still flush with her exertions. She insisted on administering the semen herself, rather than just letting me do it. I think she wanted to be a part of the process. Okay, fine, whatever. I could let her have that, even if it meant my sister's fingers all up and around my pussy. It was weird, but what the hell. I kept my hips elevated for thirty minutes, and we'd read that a woman's orgasm can aid conception by flexing her cervix, so I'd brought my little rose suction vibrator and gave myself a good come each time. For some reason, Stella wanted to stay and watch that part, too. She almost offered to use the rose on me, but I ignored her.

The only really awkward part was the way Jerry looked at me afterwards, especially if he thought Stella wasn't looking. It was almost as if he was eyeball-fucking me, silently saying "You've got my cum up in you. That's my sperm, in your pussy. Heh, heh, heh." I tried to silently reply "Yes, and your WIFE was the one who put it there," but I don't know if the message got through. Maybe Carl was right and Jerry is a bit of a creep, but I'd never admit it out loud.

It didn't work the first time. I understand that's normal. Sometimes it takes a while. 80% of women who are trying for a baby are able to conceive normally within the first year. We'd shoot for next month.

Stella and Jerry were nervous about my going home to Carl. They assumed our sex life would resume, and well, that might be complicated. I assured them that Carl understood, and 'special rules' were in place, allowing no possibility of him knocking me up instead of Jerry. My husband and I would resume our normal lives once I was safely pregnant.

I'd just have to make it true, now.

***

Carl was still upset, but hey, he came home. We carefully and neutrally made our way to the Italian place we usually go when he gets home from a trip. Over the salads, he started. He was almost contrite.

"Pam, just... hear me out for a minute. I'm sorry I got angry. I'm sorry I stormed off. I'm sorry we didn't really talk about... what you want to do for Stella, but the thing I was most upset about is that we didn't talk about this any sooner."

I said nothing. He told me to hear him out. So I just gave him half a nod.

"I mean, if this was something you wanted to do, if this was something you MEANT to do even back when you were a kid, I just think... I should have been told about it. Like, before we even got married. Before we officially got engaged. That was something that should have been at least mentioned when we were dating and getting serious. When you were thinking we might have a future together, and that future would include having a baby for your sister, then I deserved to know about it, like THAT far in advance. It's not cool to spring that kind of thing on me after almost five years of marriage. Saying 'oh, by the way, I'm having someone else's children first, so we're just going to have to put our own plans for a family on hold,' well... that's not fair to me. That's going to have a huge impact on our marriage. Can you understand that I'd feel hurt? That I'd be excluded from the decision? I mean, this is NOT what I signed up for."

Goddamnit.

"Carl, I, um, I mean, you're right. You're right, okay? I should have told you. I didn't want to scare you off, at least in the beginning, and in my defense, I never thought Stella would get married. She didn't seem the type. She never even dated anybody growing up. So I thought it wouldn't be an issue."

"But there was always the possibility."

"It didn't seem like it to me. But I suppose you're right, it was technically possible. I just never thought we'd have to face it."

"And yet here we are."

"Here we are."

"I deserved to know."

"You did."

"You should have talked to me."

"I should have. I'm sorry."

"Listen. I know a guy. He's a little older than me. He's been through a divorce, and it was pretty rough on him. His wife was cheating on him the whole time they were married. They didn't have any kids, so that part was pretty straightforward. Anyway. He was messed up. His self esteem was in the toilet and he had boatloads of trust issues. He always wanted kids, but he also knew he had a lot of healing to do before he'd be ready to get married again. He knew it would take years, and he'd already turned thirty, so he figured that any woman he'd end up with would probably already have the kids she wanted. At best, he'd raise stepchildren. But he wanted HIS children to EXIST, y'know? So he signed up to be a sperm donor. And they took him. His family history was good, he was educated, and healthy, and they said he had a 'high-demand phenotype,' whatever that means. As far as I know, he's still going to Atlanta once a week to make his, er, deposits. It means a lot to him that somebody out there thinks he's good enough to be a father."

"Wow. Uh, Okay."

"The point is, he told me that was a 'first date' conversation. Every woman he goes out with, even most of the people he knows casually, they all know about him being a donor. He didn't want to surprise anyone in eighteen or twenty years if any of these kids came looking for him. He's EXPECTING them. He's looking forward to it. Maybe he'll never hear from any of them, maybe he will, maybe they'll just say 'Hi, how're you doing?' and that'll be it, or maybe some of them will have tears in their eyes and call him 'Daddy.' There's a million ways it might go. But here's the thing: He doesn't want to sandbag the people in his life with it, if and when the kids show up. You get me?"

"I... okay."

"I mean, can you imagine how you'd feel if someday, some teenager appeared out of nowhere, claiming I was his or her father? And then I'd say, 'Oh yeah, this is one of my children that I never told you about. This person is now part of our family, but don't worry, it's got nothing to do with our marriage.' Just... COME ON, think of what that would do to you? What would that mean for US?"

"I get it, okay, I get it. I see your point."

"I should have had some input. I should have at least been told about the plan. I deserved to know, to see it coming and get used to the idea."

"You should have."

"And I should get to go first."

"What do you mean?"

"This surrogacy. I might still agree to it. But I want our first child to be OUR first child. I want to put my babies in you before you have Stella and Jerry's baby. If that means moving our timetable up, then so be it."

"But, but, I mean, they're ready now."

"So am I."

"I mean, we need time to think about it."

"It's all I've been thinking about lately."

"I need to discuss it with them."

"The way you discussed it with me? No. This is OUR decision. OURS. They have nothing to do with it. I was the last one to know about your plans. Let them be the last ones to know about our pregnancy."

"That's not fair to them."

"Pamela. I'm your husband. I'm supposed to be the father of your children. Why are they more important than me?"

"She's my sister!"

"Fuck your sister! I never even met her before our wedding! She's had almost nothing to do with our lives, and now all of a sudden, her she is with her asshole husband and it's BABY BABY BABY and FUCK whatever I have to say about it!"

He was raising his voice enough to disturb the others in the restaurant-I had to calm him down!

"NO! No no no. Not 'fuck whatever you have to say about it.' You've made that clear. You're right, and I'm wrong, okay? I get it. I get it. We all have to be on the same page, that's perfectly clear to me now. So, I still owe them what I always owed you. I fucked everything up so far, now is the time for me to stop fucking up."

He drew back. "All right. Well then. Let's just say, from this point on, any discussion or planning about this now has to include all of us, all right? And I get to have a say."

"Yes, yes."

"Don't be all 'yes, yes.' That's condescending. Don't put me off."

"I'm sorry. You're right."

"We'll talk more about this later."

"Yes. At home, okay?"

"What I say has to matter."

"Of course."

"Okay." He settled back in his seat. "Thank God you haven't started yet, at least." He looked straight at me.

Something must have given me away.

"Pamela."

I sat frozen in place.

"Pamela. Look at me."

I couldn't.

"Pamela. Tell me you haven't started trying already."

"I... we're fine. We're fine, okay?"

"That's not what I asked."

"We haven't... I'm not pregnant."

"Tell me you haven't gone to the clinic."

"I haven't gone to the clinic. We haven't seen any doctors or anything." Whew!

"Really."

"Really. No clinic. No blue gowns that leave my ass hanging out. No rubber gloves, no medical procedures. Nothing like that." Technically true. I looked him straight in the eye when I said it.

After a moment, he said "All right." I wasn't sure if he trusted me, but at least he was done calling me out for now.

***

When we got home, having tabled that particularly awkward topic of conversation, we were a lot more relaxed.

"Come here," he said. I did. He pulled me into a hug. "I love you" he whispered it right into my ear. "I'm so glad I married you. You mean everything to me. I thought we'd have our house and we'd have our children and we'd live happily ever after, and all this, well, it really disrupted everything. Do you get that?"

"I get it. I'm sorry. I love you, too."

I kissed him like I meant it, which I really really did. He growled and kissed me back, and I felt his hands around my waist, then drifting up towards my breasts and...

Oh shit.

I couldn't be starting something. Not like this.

"Carl," I pulled away and put my hands on his wrists. "I can't. It's... not safe. I can't take any chances."

I could not read the look on his face.

"Well," he said dryly, "so much for 'This Doesn't Affect Us Or Our Relationship At All.'"

"Don't be like that, baby. It's just temporary."

"Right. I just temporarily don't get to make love to my wife because she wants to get pregnant with another man's sperm. Can't have Carl's stupid unwanted gunk getting in the way of Jerry's Superior Seed, can we?"

"Carl...." I was just shaking my head.

"Pamela." He was just looking at me. "Hey, this is great. Let's just say each others' names. Pamela. Pamela. Pamela."

"Stop that." I shuddered. "It's not that I don't want to. I'm not rejecting you."

"As a matter of fact, yes, you ARE rejecting me."

"But it's not like that. Come on. There are other ways for me to make you feel good."

"Never mind. I'm not in the mood anymore."

"Carl!"

"Just leave me alone." He turned away. I heard him say, mostly to himself, "That's what you're gonna do anyway."

If he was going to slink off and go sulk somewhere like a baby, I wasn't going to chase after him. I decided to go to bed and wait for him to come to me and apologize. Then I'd make it up to him with a handjob or something.

He never came to bed. He fell asleep in his recliner.

***

The four of us met at Stella and Jerry's later that week. Carl and I had settled into a kind of detente. Stella put out drinks and snacks this time. I think she wanted to be on Carl's good side.

"I'm so happy you could come," she said, embracing him warmly. "I gave Pammy absolute hell for not having you here earlier."

"So did I," he replied, returning her hug.

"Thank you so much for agreeing to this."

"You're... wait, what?"

"You, you already agreed. Didn't you? Pammy said..." All the color had drained out of her face.

"I'm here to talk. That's it." He firmed up. "I haven't actually agreed to anything yet. I told MY WIFE that I wanted her first child to be OUR first child. We're getting pregnant first."

"Yeah, well," Jerry said with a swagger in his voice, "You're a little bit late on the draw there, pal. Pam's already had her first few doses of Jerry Juice. Hell, she might already have our little one brewing in there."

"WHAT?!?!?!?"

"PAMELA!" Stella was screaming. "YOU SAID YOU TOLD HIM! YOU SAID IT WAS ALL RIGHT!"

"It's Okay! It's Okay! It's Okay! It's not too late! Everything's Okay! I'm not pregnant! Sorry, Jerry. Carl, we can still make this right. Stella, I'm still going to have your babies. Everything's FINE!"

"Everything is most assuredly NOT fine." Carl was seething. "Pamela. What the fuck. When, where, and HOW did you get... your first FEW doses of 'jerry juice'? And more importantly WHY did you do it BEHIND MY BACK?!?! Why did you LIE TO ME?!?!"

"I never lied!" Shit, maybe I did. Mostly I'd just never told him the whole story.

"It was two weeks ago," said Stella. "A little more. You were on your trip. She said you were on your trip."

"Stella," Carl turned to her and away from me. "I don't think my wife has been very forthcoming. I'm not inclined to believe one single goddamn word to come out of that woman's mouth. Would you please be so good as to let me know just what the fuck has been going on?"

"Carl..."

"Shut the fuck up, Pamela. Stella? This is your show."

"Hey man, I don't think you should talk that way to your wife OR mine."

"You can also shut the fuck up, Jerry!"

"You're not gonna talk to me like that in my own goddamn house."

"No? Well you're not gonna talk about knocking up my wife in this house or any other. I am her goddamned husband and you're just an asshole."

"Talk? Heh. Talk is cheap, pal. I'm actually doing it. We're gonna swell her belly up with our kid and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. The papers are signed and notarized. Even on the remote chance that one of your junior-grade swimmers does land on the beach, it's still gonna be mine."

"Papers? What the fuck are you talking about? What papers?"

"JESUS PAM! You didn't even show him the papers?" Stella scrambled around and found the folder with her other copies of the papers I never showed Carl. "Shit, Carl, I'm sorry, she swore up and down that you were okay with all of this."

"It's FINE! Stella, it's fine. Carl, it's okay, yes, there are papers. Jerry, cool it, it's fine. Everybody please just calm down. Nothing's happened yet. It's fine. It'll all be fine."

"You keep saying that, Pam. It is most definitely NOT 'fine.' I don't know what planet you're living on, but it sure as hell isn't this one." Carl accepted Stella's folder, looked at some of the pages inside, and frowned.

"You still owe me an apology, dude." Jerry puffed himself up to his full height. "The ladies, too. Either that, or get the hell off my property."

"Not a problem." He closed the folder, turned on his heel and marched towards the door with the papers in his hand. "Pamela. We're leaving."

"We just got here. We haven't even talked."

"Fine. I'M leaving. Stay if you want." He hadn't broken his stride. "Just remember, if you do anything else behind my back, if you keep going with this insane plan of yours, we're done. I absolutely WILL divorce you. Figure your shit out. Don't talk to me until then." He called it over his shoulder, the last of it on the way to our car. He got in, slammed the door and drove away.

"He didn't mean that," I assured my family.

Jerry gave me a ride home later that night, making sure to tell me what a jerk Carl is and how a real man should treat a woman as beautiful, and kind, and generous as me. He suggested that maybe Carl was having trouble getting it up these days because he was insecure and felt threatened. It wasn't true, of course, but then again, we hadn't been intimate in weeks. It was awful stuff to say about my husband, but Jerry had a way of making it playful and funny and I found myself laughing and appreciating the attention. Things had been so stressed between me and my husband that it felt nice having an attractive, confident man flatter me for a change. When I got home, Carl still wasn't speaking to me. Maybe Jerry was right. Maybe Carl really is an insecure jerk.

***

Ten days later, in the conception window of my next cycle, I spent another three nights at Stella and Jerry's house. They'd been worried, of course. They were concerned that I wouldn't keep trying, that Carl might knock me up just to settle the issue, and that my marriage was on the rocks. I told them not to worry. Of course I'd have their baby. Carl wouldn't lay a finger on me, and our marriage was solid as could be. Carl would never risk losing me over something so petty as his pride. Still, Stella was agitated.

"I'm not sure we should be doing this." She'd just brought in the little dish of Jerry's come. Her robe had fallen open and I saw her nude body for the first time since we were kids. Her breasts were small and pointy, and they were different sizes, unlike my nice round ones. Her belly was sloped and plain, and I think I saw a trace of a scar from her surgeries. Her ribs and hip bones stuck out, and she was shaved bald as a baby, not a trace of hair below her neck. Nor did she show me a trace of self-consciousness. She'd been squirting her husband's jizz up my gooshy wet cooter and watching me get off on my rose, after all, so what's a little full frontal between sisters?

"Of course we should be doing this. How else am I gonna get pregnant? C'mon, get it in there while it's nice and fresh." I'd made a point of teasing myself to get wet and ready for insemination. I'd use the rose for my O again once it was up in my cervix.

"If you do get pregnant, Pammy, I really am worried about your marriage. You're taking Carl for granted. That's not something a woman should do with a husband."

"Don't worry about that. Carl loves me. I'll make it work."

"Pammy. Look at me."

I did.

"What?"

"Now look at you."

"What?"

"Maybe you DO have your man wrapped around your little finger. You're so beautiful, and so sexy, and so... so YOU, maybe you can get away with treating him like crap. Even if you can't, I'm sure you could attract another husband just by snapping your fingers. But I'm not like you. I'm not pretty. I'm shy. Men don't talk to me. Jerry was my first and only boyfriend. He's the only man I'll ever have. No one else would ever want me."

"That's not true, Stella, you're..."

"JUST... Just listen, okay? I've learned to be honest with myself, because I have to be. I don't have the options that you do. I need to be very careful, and play it safe. I give Jerry whatever he wants, because I have to, if I want to keep him. That's all I've got going for me. I hope to god it works, because if it doesn't, that's it, I'm done. So I'm telling you this because I love you, and I want you to have the perspective of someone in my position: You're playing with fire. You're risking your relationship with your husband. I don't know where the breaking point is, and neither do you. You could easily burn down your marriage, and maybe your entire life."

"I'll be fine."

"Maybe. Maybe not." She tilted her head. "Carl's not going to be completely helpless, you know. He'll have options, too. He's a good looking guy. He's tall, he's got a decent job, he takes care of himself. He's smart, and he knows how to be charming. Strong hairline, good teeth. He'll make beautiful babies. If he finds himself back on the market, it won't be for long, especially at his age. Some other bitch will snatch him up before you know it."

"Why, Stella, you sound jealous."

"I kinda am. The thing is, you need to start taking your husband seriously. He's a good man, a real catch. He knows it, too. He deserves better from you. It would be foolish for you to disregard him."

"Okay, okay, fine. I get it. Sheesh. Now give me the sperm already."

"I said what I had to say, Pammy." She opened my labia with her fingers and used her syringe. I was just working up a nice come with my clit-suction rose when I heard him.

"Didn't realize we were having nude night. I figured I'd join the party."

Jerry was in the doorway, naked and still glistening from the sex or whatever he'd had with Stella a few minutes earlier. He was... groomed. I think he must have waxed. His pubes were sculpted into a kind of sharp triangle with razor edges, short, like a two-day beard. His balls were smooth and pendulous. I didn't think his still-heavy cock was any bigger than Carl's, but on his smaller, tighter, well-manicured body, it looked impressive. To my embarrassment, I came from the vibe right as I opened my eyes to the sight of him.

"Uuuuuunhh," I grunted. "Uh. Uh. Uhuhuh."

"Good Girl." He gleamed at me.

"JERRY!" Stella was up and at his face. "We agreed!"

"Sit." He held up his hand. She immediately squatted and sat on her feet, palms face up on her knees. Holy shit.

"I'm altering the agreement. Do you understand, pig?"

"Yes, Sir." Her eyes were downcast.

Ohmygod, they were like that? I had no idea.

"This woman is to be the mother of my children. Thank you for providing her to me, pig. I think she, unlike you, will be a worthy breeder. Don't you think she at least deserves to look at my body? Speak."

"I... Sir... this wasn't..."

"Shut up, pig."

She fell silent.

"Not too bad, eh?" He was talking to me, drawing his hands up and down over his body, as if he was displaying a prize on a game show. Stella was still on the floor, eyes downcast, tears streaming down her face. "Better than your dumb lunk of a husband's, I'm sure."

"I... Oh, Jerry... I don't know."

"Shhh. You don't have to say anything, I can see it in your face. And 'Jerry' is just so... ordinary. I really think you should call me... Daddy. Yes. That's much better, don't you agree?"

"Yes... Daddy." Shit! Why did I say that?

The curl of his grin took on a cruel gleam, and I shuddered again.

"Good girl."Oh God. "I'm sure we're going to have ALL kinds of fun together. You and me and piggy makes three. Until my son arrives, of course. You're going to bear me a son I can be proud of, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"Yes What."

"Yes Daddy." FUCK.

***

Things were surprisingly normal around the house for the rest of the day, and the next morning. Stella and Jerry didn't act any differently than they had any of the other times I'd stayed over, though I'm sure I was more awkward and Jerry might have been smirking more than usual. But everything changed when Conception Time rolled around.

I'd checked my temperature and cervical mucus and gotten myself mildly worked up. Stella and Jerry were in the next room to prepare his sample, but sooner than I expected, they both came in to join me. Neither one of them had bothered with a robe. Jerry was oiled up, nude, and gleaming. Stella was buckass naked, with some kind of collar around her neck and being led on a dog leash.

"We've decided to change things up this time," he said, full of swagger. "We're doing this the old fashioned way. It'll be much better for all of us."

"Jerry, no, I'm married to Carl. It can't be like that."

"What's my name? When we're like this?" He waved his hand, indicating our state of undress and evident arousal.

"Um. Daddy." Goddamnit, not again.

"Very good, Precious. Well. Your so-called husband isn't here right now, is he? He knows you're getting pregnant. He knows my sperm is going into you. How it gets there really doesn't matter, does it? That's none of his business. Besides, if you're having my child, you should at least get to enjoy the benefits. Don't you agree?" He made it clear that I needed to agree.

"I, um, I guess."

"Very good, you sexy momma. Don't you think so, pig? Don't you think your Pammie is one sexy momma?"

"Yes, Sir." She said it without emotion.

"Sexier than you. More womanly. More fertile. More Worthy. Shit, the only thing your skinny ass is good for is knowing your place."

"Yes, Sir."

"Right. So, make yourself useful. Open her up and get her ready for me."

My sister got into position behind me and held my calves above my shoulders, presenting my splayed-open, surprisingly wet cunt to her smarmy husband. Her face was impassive, as though she was preparing to stuff a turkey. I was just another piece of meat in their kitchen.

Goddamn, it was hot.

She leaned forward across my body, and I didn't expect her tongue on my clit, but holy fuckballs, I got ready faster than ever. Jerry grabbed her by the back of her hair and ground her face into my puss, which kind of fucked up the amazing job she was doing, and then he yanked her back and throatfucked her right in front of me. Her eyes were closed in compliance, her jaw distended, and something deep in her neck was making this weird little 'click, click' sound with every thrust. Eventually, he let her go and she gasped a desperate breath, thick trails of gooey drool falling between my belly and her pointy little breasts.

"Enough. Put me in her, pig."

"Yes, Sir." She guided his shaft into me and he immediately started an erratic humping, completely ignoring his wife.

"Thatsittakeitbitchtakeittakemycocktakeitbitchyoubitchtakeitthatsmycuntthatsmypussyfuckfuckyoutakeityoufuckingprenantbreederbitch..." He was babbling out an unintelligible string of filth while jerking himself in and out of my nethers, wrapped up in his own little world. My sister just knelt there, motionless, almost serene.

Before three more minutes had gone by, his spasms degenerated into a desperate thrusting as he dug his fingertips into my hips and I knew he was ejaculating deep into me.

"Ahhhhh," he said, suddenly freezing up, then jerking twice more. "Ahhh. Huh. Yeah. Yeah, bitch. How bout THAT! Got all that cum up in you. Makin' a baby, bitch. Getting this cunt pregnant." He looked back up at me, as if he'd suddenly remembered that I have a face. "There you GO. Hey, way better than that limp-dick husband of yours, right?"

"Uh. Right." Actually, no, dude, not even close. Carl is a way better lover than you.

"Yes, DADDY," he insisted.

"Yes, Daddy." Allright, this is getting kind of fucked up, but whatever.

***

"I'm sorry. I didn't think it would be like that." Stella couldn't even look me in the eye. It was the next day, following another evening of pretending that shit had never happened.

"Yeah. So... what the hell WAS that, anyway?"

"That's... us. That's how we are. That's... that's our deal, okay?" She shook her head in frustration. "I know it's not the usual kind of thing, but I'm not the kind of woman that usually lands a husband. Especially not a young, handsome husband who makes good money. But I can give him this. Not many other women could submit the way I do. Nobody with any functional self-esteem, anyway."

"I'm not gonna judge, Stella. If that's what makes you happy, then more power to you. I'm just... I mean, did you really want to involve ME in your actual sex play?"

"NO!" She threw her hands out, palms up, like she was appealing to some higher power. "I didn't want that! I never wanted that! And I'm sorry I went down on you, okay, I'm not into that, that's his thing. He wants to degrade me, and that's fine. I can do degrading. And I'm sorry he insisted on drawing you into the mix. Dammit. I was worried this might happen. Jerry really gets carried away with this shit sometimes." The tears were pooling in her eyes.

"Why don't you start at the beginning? What is going on?"

She closed her eyes, tears now streaming down her cheeks. She hung her head as started talking so quietly I had to lean in to hear.

"You don't see what other people see when they look at me, Pammy. I'm short, skinny, and weird looking. No, don't say it, don't try to butter me up, it's just the truth. I'm not a conventionally attractive woman. I'm barely a woman at all. I've accepted that. I'm okay with it. So I don't want to hear any 'you're beautiful' bullshit. We both know it's a lie. Some women stop traffic with their looks. I don't. At best, I'm invisible. At worst, I draw pity."

"Stella..."

"You wanted to hear this, so just fucking listen, okay? Some women are 'all that.' I'm 'none of that.' That's the Truth. So when I somehow got Jerry's attention, I didn't figure I had a shot, but he saw something in me he liked. He knew I'd let him do anything. He's not attracted to me, not exactly, but the domination thing? That drives him nuts. That's his oxygen. That's a harem-style blowjob from the Swedish Bikini Team while eating a hot fudge sundae and driving a speedboat while high on cocaine. And I can give that to him. ME. So he took me. He claimed me. If he wants to boss me around and treat me like shit and call me a pig, that's fine, because he still claimed ME. Not some beautiful, confident, high-value woman, but ME. Do you understand?"

"Stella, you don't have to do that kind of thing! You're better than that! You deserve everything!"

"What I deserve doesn't matter. What I can have is all that counts. Those are two completely different things. I could never pull a man. Ever. Not once in my whole life. But I got Jerry, and this is how I did it. And I'm fine with it, I really am. There are even some parts of it that I kind of like, sometimes. But then you had to go straight to him with this whole surrogacy project of yours. I asked you not to, remember? I straight up TOLD you not to, but you did an end run around me. I really wish you'd never told him. He didn't even WANT kids. He's got no interest in raising them, he doesn't have one single nurturing bone in his beautiful, perfect body. But he knows I do. And once he got the idea of knocking YOU up, well, he was like a dog with a bone. He just would not give it up. Not because he wants a baby, but because the idea gives him a rush. He's claiming you, he's MARKING you, he's humiliating me, and now he's fucking you, cuckolding your husband, and making him call you 'Daddy.' He fetishizes his power. That's what it is. That's ALL it is. And you played right into his hands."

"It wasn't supposed to be like this, though!"

"I know! But he manipulated us all into it, didn't he? Buying this house? Knocking you up? That was all HIS idea. Or more like the idea YOU put in his head. I'm only along for the ride. But I will get a child out of it. I will have my family, whether he's in it for the long term or not. And whatever happens with you and Carl, well, that's probably going to blow up in your face, but Jerry doesn't care. He just wants to Breed you and gloat about it."

"It can't be that bad!"

"You don't know him. You don't know the things he makes me..." She shuddered. "I assure you, he is EASILY 'that bad.' He's enjoyed every red flag he's waved at me about this. He revels in my discomfort."

"Stella, I had no idea."

"Just... don't submit, okay? That's MY role. You can be his breeder. Let him lord that over you, enough for him to get his rocks off, whatever. But make it clear that you're not his submissive. You're not his slut. You're not his pig. I am."

"Of course! I mean, of course not!"

"Promise me, Pammy. Promise me. Tell me 'I Promise I Will Not Submit To Jerry.' Tell me 'I Promise I Will Not Be His Submissive.' Say it!"

"I promise, Stella. I promise not to submit to your husband. I am not a submissive. I never was. That kind of thing doesn't do it for me. I could never be like that."

"That's right, you couldn't. Make sure he knows."

***

That evening, right when my fertility window was supposed to be optimal, they didn't even make a pretense about Jerry fucking me. He marched Stella into the room by her collar and leash, both of them naked, and he was erect, his cock bobbing out in front of him like a hungry bird.

"All right, bitches, party time!" Jerry slapped Stella's ass hard enough to make ME wince. "Go to the corner, pig. Face the wall. You can listen, but not watch, while I fuck the shit out of your hot sister."

"Hang on a minute..." I spoke up while Stella wordlessly went to face the corner and got down on her knees.

"Hey, when I want something from your pretty mouth, I'll stick my dick in there. Now shut up and take your fucking!"

"Not to burst your bubble, Jerry, but this isn't what I signed up for."

"You mean DADDY."

"Argh. Fine, Daddy, whatever. Look, I'm doing this for her, not for you. I'm not your submissive, she is. I'm not your bitch, either, and I don't appreciate being called that. This is all about making a baby for you guys. That's it. My body responds to the sex because it's supposed to, but I am not a part of this whole Dommie-Subbie thing of yours, okay? That's between the two of you. Leave me out of it."

"But... that's the best part." He looked like I'd kicked his favorite puppy. Then his face twisted in anger. "Wait a second. Did that worthless fucking CUNT in the corner TELL you to say that?"

"Jesus, Jerry, what did I just say?" I wanted to keep his attention on me.

"Shut up." He turned and grabbed Stella by the hair. She yelped as he pulled her to her feet. "I know what's going on." As she rose, he slammed her face into the wall.

"SHIT! DON'T HURT MY SISTER!" I jumped up, ready to bolt and call the cops.

"This will only take a moment, Pamela, please be patient." He spun his wife around and landed a blow to her stomach. Her breath flew out with a sickening whoof. Before I could say another word, he shoved her face-first at me. "Tell her, pig. Tell her the truth. You know you're getting punished for this, don't make it worse."

"Please," she said, a trickle of blood peeking out the corner of her mouth. "Please go along with it, Pammy. I need this. WE need this. It's the only way he can... it's the only way. Please."

"But you said..."

"PLEASE! I'll do anything! ANYTHING! I..." She turned desperately towards Jerry. "She can top me, too, Sir, if you want. I'll give her my worthless slut ass, and Carl, too, if you say so, Sir, it's not up to me. You own this worthless slut ass, it doesn't belong to me and I can't give it away without your permission, Sir! May I grovel? May I please grovel?"

"Sure. Let's see you grovel." He nodded. She snapped her slowly bruising face back towards me like she was gasping for air.

"I'll be your slave! I'll eat your pussy and make you come so hard! Over and over! I'll eat your ass, too. You can use my face as your toilet, you can do anything you want to me! I'll do it! I'll fuck your husband, if you want. I'll suck his little dick, I'll give him a double blumpkin if you tell me to. I'll clean your house naked and lick your feet and live in a dog crate in the basement, if that's my punishment. Just please, please, PLEASE accept Master's gift of life and make a baby for us! Please take his big cock, please take his precious cum, please, in your pussy, your sweet, fertile pussy, so it's not wasted in my useless fucked up cunt hole or worthless slut anus. PLEASE! Pammy! Pammy! Please!"

What the hell is a 'double blumpkin'?

"Uh..."

"PLEASE! This is the way it IS! This is how it's got to BE! This is the ONLY WAY!"

"Ah. Uhm. Okay, look, Jerry, if this is your deal, I'm never going to do any better than that, okay? I can never be like anything like this, not for you, not for anybody. I'm just a girl, just a regular, boring, plain vanilla girl, all right? You've got a genuine submissive slut-slave on your hands, here. This is a, um, a servile cunt to be proud of. Clearly. Well-trained, and, uh, properly broken in and everything."

"How about topping her, then? You wanna take the reins? I might feel charitable enough to loan you the pig for a night. You and noodle-dick can use her as a cum rag."

"Uh. No thank you. We're good. Very, um, generous of you, though."

"'Daddy.' Very generous of you, 'Daddy'."

"Yes, Daddy. Very generous of you, Daddy." I scowled a bit. "That's as far as that goes, okay?"

"Still gonna breed you."

"Yeah, okay. I mean, er, yes, Daddy." I turned around and got on all fours, presenting rearward. "Is this okay? Daddy?"

"Are you gonna take my cock like a good girl?"

"Yes, Daddy."

"You're gonna take my cum? You're gonna breed?"

"I'm the breeder. Daddy."

He got behind me, got his dick in, and started humping.

"Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckyougonnafuckyoufuckingyoufuckyoucuntfuckyoubitchbreederbitch." On and on. It didn't really do anything for me. Especially the 'bitch' part. Didn't I ask him not to call me that? It took him about two minutes to get his nut off, then he grabbed my sister again and dragged her out of the room.

"You're gonna pay, you stupid piece of shit slut. You're gonna pay."

"Yes, Sir."

***

Carl was there when I got home, and he was not happy.

"Honey! I... I thought you were off on one of your sales trips."

"No."

"No? Just... no?"

"No. I was not. Maybe you were just hoping I was. More of your wishful thinking, totally disconnected from reality. I'd ask where you've been for the last three days, but I think I already know the answer, don't I?"

"I... I was..."

"It's your fertile window. It's on your calendar."

"I... look, honey..." I was hoping for him to interrupt me again. He just glared at me. "I don't know what to say."

"How about 'I was trying to get pregnant again with that motherfucking homewrecker sonofabitch's baby.' How about that?"

"Jesus, Carl, it's not like that!"

"HOW is it not like that?"

"Surrogacy is a good thing! It's a gift! It's noble, okay?"

"There is nothing noble about what you're doing. Running around behind your husband's back. Telling lies. Expecting everyone to go along with your half-assed hairbrained schemes. I mean... who the hell do you think you ARE? What the fuck is the matter with you?"

"There's nothing the fuck the matter with me! I'm the woman you MARRIED. I've been the same person since I was a kid! Why can't you just accept it?"

He shook his head while staring at me.

"Maybe I never knew you at all. If this is what you're like, maybe this whole thing has been one big mistake."

"How can you even say that? I LOVE you! I married you! You and me, we are FOR EVER. This is just, just one thing I have to do, okay?"

"Not Okay." He stood up. "I've won a contest. Top sales in my division. It's a cruise for the two of us. Five days, four nights, on Royal Caribbean out of Miami. Ports of call in Turks and Caicos, St. Thomas, and Key West. We sail in three weeks."

"Wow. That's, that's amazing. Wow. I haven't, uh, I haven't arranged any vacation days. I'll have to beg them to change the schedule and hope it works out."

"If it doesn't, then quit. You can get another job."

"I guess. I mean. Shit. What if, um, what if I'm not pregnant yet? That will conflict with my next window."

"Pamela. I am asking you to give up on this whole goddamn surrogacy thing and come away with me, as my WIFE, on a dream vacation of a lifetime. We are doing this to try to repair the damage you've done to our marriage. You are continuing to damage it further by waffling around. Say Yes."

"Yes. I mean, yes, of course. Wow. Just, wow, I mean, that's a lot." I tried to smile. "Wait. How are we going to get to Miami?"

"We'll fly."

"We'll... you mean, in like an airplane?"

"No, I mean we'll sprout feathers and flap our arms. Of course I mean in an airplane. What the hell? Why shouldn't we get on an airplane?"

"Can we afford it?"

"Tickets are included. I can even pay for an upgrade. Didn't you just hear me say I won my division? My numbers are great. We're doing all right."

"If you say so."

"Jesus, if I didn't know better, I'd say you didn't want to go."

"It's just... it's not the best time."

He glared at me.

"God. Pam. I'm trying to Give You A Chance. For the love of god, for the sake of our marriage, in the name of everything good and decent in the world, just TAKE IT. Okay?"

"Okay, okay."

That was the end of it, at least for the moment. There was still a chill in the room that night. I googled "double blumpkin" and immediately wished I hadn't. Ew! Do people even DO that? That can't possibly be real. Nobody would do that.

***

I was pregnant.

Jerry fucking me must have done the trick. I hadn't had sex with Carl since this started. It's the longest we've ever gone without touching each other. A lot of it had been because I'd been dodging him. A lot of it was because he was still mad at me.

I tried to tell him like it was good news.

He did not think it was good news. He stopped speaking to me.

Stella and Jerry, though, were ecstatic. They moved me into their house full time, and both of them doted upon me. Stella had arranged a whole program of vitamins, diet, exercise, and all the doctor appointments and childbirth classes she could find. She went with me to absolutely all of it, hardly ever leaving my side. Jerry was prancing around like a proud peacock, always rubbing my belly and telling me what a good, fertile breeder I was, how I was so much prettier and sexier than the pig.

He kept fucking me, too. What the hell. I figured he wasn't going to get me any MORE pregnant, and I'd heard that sex is good for the pregnancy. He was the father of my child, after all, so why shouldn't he be fucking me? It felt natural. The only weird part was having Stella there, naked, kneeling in the corner while he fucked me, telling her what a worthless, useless, dried up cunt she was. I don't know how she endured that, but it didn't seem to bother her.

It surprised me when Carl showed up at our house two weeks later. Stella had answered the door and asked me to step out onto the porch.

"Carl!"

"Pamela."

"Wow. Um. Why don't you come inside?"

"I don't want to go into that house, and I expect I'm not welcome there, either."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Yeah, I'M the one who's ridiculous. Whatever. I needed to talk to you. You haven't returned any of my calls."

"What are you talking about? You haven't called."

"Fine, be like that. I just needed to hear, face-to-face, from your own lips, about the cruise."

"The...?" SHIT. I forgot all about that. "Of course. The cruise."

"Are you coming, or not?"

"Can we reschedule?"

"No. It doesn't work like that."

"We don't have plane tickets."

"Yes, we do."

"I shouldn't fly."

"Why not?"

"Because, I'm pregnant!"

"Pregnant women fly all the time. It's safe, up to thirty-six weeks. I checked."

"But what if something happens?"

He lowered his head, closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing it a few times.

"I imagine that they'd declare a medical emergency, land the plane somewhere, and get you into an ambulance. Same as if 'something happens' to anyone else."

"I... I can't take that chance."

"Let's not pretend it's about the goddamn airplane, all right?"

"I... okay. What about the boat? What if something happens on the boat?"

"They have doctors and medical facilities on all those ships. They carry a thousand people at a time. Of course they're equipped for that."

"But those doctors aren't MY doctors. What about my OB-GYN? What if I get morning sickness and seasick at the same time? What if I get cholera from the contaminated water supply? Those boats are full of germs. What if I get COVID?"

"Oh, for fuck's sake."

"We can do it some other time, okay? Just you and me. But I need to be here, now. Stella and Jerry are taking care of me. They want to see me through the whole process. I can't just take off and leave them, not with their baby still in me!"

"Pam, there is no 'some other time.' This is IT. If you're not going, just fucking say so."

"I'm... I'm sorry, okay? I can't."

He stood there, saying nothing. There was something behind his eyes.

"I'm... I'm sorry." I tried to look contrite. "I'm sorry I'm ruining it for you. I, I, I guess you'll have to give away the tickets. I'm sorry you'll be missing out."

"I won't be missing out."

Something cold happened in the middle of my head.

"What... what do you mean?"

"I came here to ask if YOU were going. I'm going with or without you."

"You wouldn't go without me!"

"Watch me."

"You CAN'T. That's, that's something we should do together!"

"I agree. We should. But you've apparently decided against it."

"You... no, no. You wouldn't just leave me."

"If you're not coming, that's on you."

"You wouldn't waste my ticket."

"Who says I'd waste it? I'll ask one of the girls in my office."

"WHAT?!?!?"

"Pamela. I gave you every opportunity. You don't have to be doing this, any of this, at all, I begged you to give me a chance, to give US a chance. I begged you to have MY baby. But you wouldn't listen. You lied, you went behind my back, you got pregnant without me ever agreeing to anything, and now you've got the, the, the GALL to act all possessive towards ME? You turned your back on this marriage! You moved out of the apartment and abandoned me. I haven't heard ANYthing from you for weeks! Since you're so busy being a surrogate mother, I figure I'm entitled to a surrogate wife. Someone who'll do all the things a wife should do on a romantic vacation cruise. She'll bounce around in a bikini and smile at me, we'll dance at the clubs and trade body shots of tequila, make love on the balcony overlooking the water... hell, maybe SHE might want to have my baby."

"YOU CAN'T DO THAT!"

"Why not?"

"BECAUSE I SAID SO! I'M NOT LETTING YOU DO THAT!"

"LETTING me!?!? So NOW you think that's how things work? We LET each other do things? I thought we just fucking DID them and fuck whatever your spouse thinks. Isn't that the way YOU decided to play it?"

Jerry came out onto the porch.

"Hey, man. I can't have you upsetting the mother of my child like this. I think you better leave."

"No problem." He turned to leave while Jerry smirked.

"CARL!"

"Go fuck yourself, Pamela!"

"She's got ME for that, now, Carl!"

FUCK, Jerry, why'd you have to say that?

Carl spun on his heel and looked at me with utter contempt.

"It's not LIKE that, Carl!" I was screaming. "It was only to get me pregnant!"

"And all the other times! Just for fun!" Jerry had his arm around my waist, smiling like he'd won a gold medal.

"SHUT THE FUCK UP JERRY!" I pushed him away.

"You mean 'Daddy.'"

"AAAAAAAAAGH!"

"What the hell is going on out here?" Stella joined us on the porch.

"The Cuck was just leaving," said Jerry.

"NOOOO!" I was still screaming.

"She's all yours," said Carl, turning away again. "Your problem, now."

They took me back inside. Stella made me a wonderful cup of herbal tea while I curled up into a ball and cried in her lap. Jerry joined us on the couch and regaled us both with all the ways that Carl was a pathetic piece of shit loser and how I was better off without him.

***

I guess he went on that cruise. I don't know who he took with him, or even if he took anybody. I didn't hear from him. It was funny, I was so busy running around with my prenatal care and arranging maternity leave with my job and Stella always being at my side, I somehow let all that time just slide right on by.

Things came to a head when I went back to the apartment to collect some stuff I'd been missing and my key didn't work. He locked me out? What the fuck. I rang the bell and some woman I'd never seen before answered.

"Can I help you?"

"Who the hell are you?" This is the bitch Carl wants to replace me with? Seriously?

"Excuse me. Who the hell are YOU?"

"Honey, who is it?" A man's voice from inside the apartment. Peeking through the door, I saw that everything was all different. None of our furniture. None of our stuff. Even the pictures on the walls were different.

"Some pregnant woman who wants to know who the hell I am."

She shut the door.

I rang the bell again. This time the guy answered. He was tall, maybe six-three.

"What do you want?"

"I'm sorry, I think we got off on the wrong foot. This... is my apartment." I re-checked the number and looked up and down the familiar hall. "Or, at least, it was, I guess. How long have you lived here?"

"Almost a month. It was empty when we moved in. None of your things are here. Is there anything else?"

"I... I uh, I guess not. I'm sorry to intrude. Please enjoy your evening."

He nodded and shut the door. Shit shit shit shit shit! What the fuck? What the ever living fuck? A month? That can't be... well, shit, maybe. Yeah. Fuck. If Carl... Did he break our lease? When does it renew... FUCK. He didn't renew. But he'd have to give notice... that had to have been... Ah, shit. Probably right when I told him I was getting pregnant with Jerry's baby. Fuck.

I called Carl.

"What."

"Carl, I'm at our apartment. Someone else is living here now. When did you move out?"

"Three weeks after you did."

"I never moved out!"

"Yeah, you did. Where have you been sleeping for the last ten weeks?"

"Ten... it hasn't been ten weeks!" Fuck, maybe that's right. "And I never moved out. I'm just staying with them, temporarily, because of the baby."

"Whatever. What do you want?"

"Where are you?"

"I'm at home."

"Where's that?"

"Fuck you."

"Jesus, Carl, I don't deserve that! What did I ever do to you?" Besides lying to you and cheating on you and having another man's baby and expecting you to roll over and take it while smiling and being happy for me? Shit. Okay, he's got a point. "Don't answer that. I just wanted... Never mind. Where is all our stuff?"

"My stuff is here with me. Your stuff is in the storage unit."

"What storage unit?"

"The one I moved all your stuff into when I vacated that apartment. I made sure you knew where it was and gave you the key."

"You sure as hell did not. I never knew anything about a storage unit."

"Well, you weren't taking my calls, so I eventually gave up. I gave your sister the key and told her to give it to you."

"What do you mean, I wasn't taking your calls? You NEVER CALLED ME."

"I never... oh, FUCK YOU."

He hung up. I was about to call him back and give him a piece of my mind when my phone rang in my hand. It was an unfamiliar number.

"Hello?"

"It's me. I just called you from my phone and it went straight to nowhere. I called you again from this one and it rang right through. Do yourself a favor- check your blocked numbers list and see if I'm on it."

"I never blocked your number!"

"Maybe you didn't. But you should check and see anyway, because I CANNOT call you on my phone. You think I haven't been calling you? Bullshit. I'm not so petty that I wouldn't keep you informed of the details of our estrangement. You know that."

"Estrange... we're NOT estranged!"

"Jesus, Pam. Listen to yourself. You planned a pregnancy without me. You cut me off sexually. You wouldn't even talk to me. You could barely look me in the eye. You fucked another man, your shit-eating brother-in-law, no less, and for all I know, you're STILL fucking him. You told me to go to hell when I wanted you to come away with me on the cruise. Then you moved out of the apartment and went zero contact with me. HOW the fuck are we 'Not Estranged'?"

"I... I never said... I didn't..."

"Yeah. You never said. Message received and understood."

"It's not like that. We can figure this out."

"Huh. Well, figure THIS out: Who could get into your phone and block my number? Who has the address and key to your storage unit and hasn't told you about it? Who would want to keep you away from me, and why?"

I staggered backwards and nearly fell over. NO!

I don't remember ending the call. I don't remember driving home. 'Home'? Stella and Jerry's house is 'home'? Shit, I guess I DID move out. I do remember walking up to Stella. She smiled warmly, until she saw my expression. She dropped her smile and replaced it with a look of grim resolve as she stood up a little straighter. She said nothing.

"Sooooo... I was just back at my apartment. Wanted to pick up a few things."

She gave me the barest nod. Maybe she gave it to herself.

"Aaaaand I found someone else living there. Would you care to tell me what the FUCKING FUCK is going on in my life? Pretty please, Stella Bella?" I couldn't hide the venom in my voice.

She went to the little desk by the door where everybody throws the mail and stuff. She opened the top drawer and came back with a key and a piece of paper.

"Carl is living in a studio apartment in the Green Woods complex on the way to the airport, by where all those shops are. I think it's three-fourteen B. I've never been there. Your things are in a U-Store-It locker on fifteenth street. Here." She handed me the key and a site map marking my locker with an X. The gate code was written in a little box.

"And that's it? Just like that? When were you going to tell me any of this?"

"As soon as you asked. I'm surprised it took you this long."

"YOU HAD NO RIGHT!"

"I wasn't hiding anything from you."

"The fuck you weren't! You BLOCKED him on my PHONE!"

"Okay, I admit, that may have been across the line. I didn't want him harassing you and upsetting you needlessly. I should not have gone into your phone without permission. That was bad. But I didn't block YOUR number from HIS phone, did I? You could have called him any time you wanted. It's not my fault if you didn't. Honestly, it seemed to all of us like you just... forgot about him."

"I Did NO such thing! He's my HUSBAND. I LOVE him!"

"Tell me something, Pammy. Why did you go back to your old apartment?"

"I... I wanted my can opener."

She stood there, just looking at me. The silence was... uncomfortable. I kept talking.

"Your can opener sucks, okay? It's all gunked up and it's not sharp, it punches through the top and doesn't go straight, you have to start over in a different place and it makes a ragged edge. Mine is smooth and it cuts from the side of the rim, nice and neat."

"Your can opener. You went back to the apartment for a kitchen gadget. Not because you live there and got homesick. Not because you missed Carl and wanted to see him. Not because that's your real life and you're just 'visiting' us. You wanted your can opener? Seriously?"

"That does not give you the right to go behind my back!"

"Pammy. Let's be real. You TURNED your back. You turned your back on Carl, on your marriage, on the home you shared with him. Now, more than TWO MONTHS later, you've finally gotten around to noticing! I wasn't sneaking around. I didn't have to try. I did everything out in the open, while you have been deliberately ignoring the entire situation."

"Fuck you! You lied to me!"

"You made all your own choices. You had every chance to make it right. You didn't have to do any of this, but you INSISTED upon ALL of it. And yes, I lied to you. Do you want to know what I lied to you about? Do you have any clue? Are you curious, at all? THE CRUISE. Carl didn't win anything. I paid for that cruise! I booked it in your name and his, I bought the plane tickets, the hotel, everything. I spent Jerry's money on it. Carl lied, too, he knew what I was doing. We were giving you a chance, Pammy. We were hoping you'd run away with your husband. We wanted you to get out of Jerry's clutches, refocus on your own marriage, and give up on this whole surrogacy plan of yours. We GAVE YOU A CHOICE. Carl BEGGED you to come back to him. And what did you do? You brushed him off."

"It's not like that! I just learned I was pregnant! With YOUR baby!"

"Not true. Carl came to you before you tested positive. You hemmed and hawed and begrudgingly agreed to go, then you forgot all about it. When he came here to give you one MORE last chance, you not only said 'no,' you and Jerry flaunted your affair at him."

"That's not... That's... I..."

"That is precisely what happened."

"But I COULDN'T go! I'm pregnant! I'm doing this for YOU!"

"You could have gone on that cruise, even while pregnant. You could be living with your husband, even while pregnant. You could have kept up your sex life with him, even while pregnant. You do not have to be living here, in MY house, STILL fucking MY husband, and making me listen and watch while you both insult me. None of this had to happen. You could have had Carl's baby first. You didn't need to get pregnant at all. I asked you not to do this. Hell, I did everything I could to STOP you. You are responsible for this whole entire mess, and now you're just rationalizing it."

I felt dizzy and sank to the floor. The words "No, No, No" and "She's Right About All Of It" took turns swirling around in my head. Stella helped me up into a recliner, where I soggily existed.

"Why." It wasn't even a question. It was what came out of my mouth.

"Why what?"

"Why did you beg me to do it. The groveling, with Jerry, after, he, he hit you."

"Oh. That's just how that kind of thing has to play out. The way I act in front of him, when we're like that, that's for him. I thought you understood that."

"I don't understand anything."

"Clearly."

"Did you really do a double blumpkin? With Jerry?"

"Ah. Yeah."

"Gross."

"Yeah." She shuddered. "That's not even the worst thing. Trust me, you don't want to know anything more."

"I didn't even know what that was. I had to look it up."

We were quiet for a while. I had to think about the next one.

"Why'd you let Carl go on the cruise?"

"I paid for it. I couldn't take it back. Besides, that's part of how it was supposed to work."

"What do you mean?"

"It was a test. For you. A tipping point. Carl gave you a choice- you could either save your marriage, or end it. If you went with him, mission accomplished. You'd salvage your marriage and stay out of mine. If you didn't, I'd keep you and I'd get a baby out of the deal. Either way, you'd be fully committed, one way or the other. That's what Carl needed. That's what I needed. And it's what you needed, too."

"What are you talking about?"

"You were trying to have it both ways. You ALWAYS try to have it both ways. You're a peace-maker, a people-pleaser. You keep one foot in and one foot out. You mean everything you say, trying to play both sides of incompatible scenarios, and you end up not meaning any of it."

"That's not true!"

"Of course it's true! It's the MOST true thing about you! We're sisters, but we're also not. Your mom is my mom, but she's also not. Remember when you had two boyfriends, the summer between high school and college? Neither one of them knew about the other. You were going to buy a house and have a kid with Carl, but really, you had other plans. Your husband is your husband, but you're sure as hell not treating him that way. My husband isn't your husband, but you're living with him and fucking him and having his baby. You say you're fully committed to your marriage and your family, but you threw Carl under the bus to create another family which isn't even yours. You're the most conflicted person I've ever even HEARD of, and yet you prance around saying 'it's fine, everything's fine' while making everything worse."

"That's..."

"That's the way EVERYTHING is with you! Well, I'm sorry to be the one to say it, but motherhood is NOT gonna be the sort of thing where you can do that. You're either all in, or you're out. You give it everything, or you give it up. We had to force a decision from you, and you made it."

"I didn't choose to give up on my marriage!"

"Yes, you did. Maybe, just maybe, you might have convinced Carl to let you have our baby, and he could have helped and been a part of it, too, but no, you shut him out from the very beginning. It wasn't fair to your husband, or to you, or to us, for you to put your marriage on some kind of time-out for a pregnancy he didn't want, had nothing to do with, and which you went ahead with OVER his objections. When was the last time you had sex with him? I don't mean sex play, I mean full-on penis-in-vagina sex?"

"Um. Well, I didn't want him to get me pregnant while I was trying for this."

"So... what, almost five months ago?"

"Something like that, I guess."

"So, five months of the most brutal and personal rejection a man can suffer."

"I wasn't rejecting him! I could still get with him... like that, I guess. But, but, you blocked him from my phone!"

"Did you call him?"

I was quiet. We both knew I hadn't. She pressed the issue.

"Did you offer to 'get with him like that,' Pammy?"

"He wasn't speaking to me."

"Did you ever, even once, tell him that you were sorry?"

FUCK.

I broke down in tears.

I never went to him because I was scared, because of what I'd done. He probably would have turned me away, called me a whore, wanting nothing to do with my pussy if it had another man's semen and another man's baby in it. FUCK. I could never face his rejection. That would destroy me.

Shit, if I couldn't deal with that kind of rejection, why on earth would HE?

I torpedoed my marriage. I didn't mean to, but I did. I totally took him for granted, and I pushed things way beyond anywhere a marriage could be asked to go.

***

We settled into a routine. It wasn't an arrangement, or an agreement, or a negotiated peace. It was just kind of where we ended up. Stella and I were conspirators and co-mommies for the baby. Jerry was his usual arrogant self, friendly and fully clothed most of the time, except for when he'd bring Stella in on her leash and fuck me for two or three minutes while gibbering profanities at me and telling my sister that she was useless, dried-up garbage, only good for bringing him her fertile sister to fuck.

At twenty weeks, I was starting to show pretty well. My ass ballooned out farther than I ever thought possible and I developed a big round moon face atop my thick-ass neck. I felt more disgusting and ugly than at any time before in my life... but Jerry was into it. Like, he was getting off on what he'd done to me. Like he owned me now. Like he could do anything. My tits were starting to blow up even bigger and my nipples were fucking electric, and he couldn't leave them alone. It actually hurt how much he played with them. Stella became less and less prominent in our sex play, as if that were even possible. Jerry had taken to locking her up in her doggie crate in the basement while we fucked above her in the living room. She'd be able to hear us through the ductwork but was forbidden from making a sound.

The divorce paperwork arrived around then. Carl had backdated our separation from the time I moved in with Stella and Jerry. He filed under irreconcilable differences, although I suppose he could have invoked my adultery. Even though I saw it coming, I'd kept myself in denial about the whole thing and I had the papers scattered across the kitchen table when Stella caught me crying over them.

"Pammy." She sat down and took my hand. I let her.

"This... this isn't how I wanted it. It wasn't supposed to be like this." I was snuffling. I couldn't even look at her.

"True. But every step you took led us here. You knew it was coming."

"I never thought it would go so wrong."

She snorted. "Maybe because you didn't stop and think. Pammy, you made your choices. You walked through these doors all on your own. Carl's doing nothing but closing them behind you. Leaving them open would be careless. That's why he took Amy on that cruise. He had to let you go, because you'd already gone."

"Who the fuck is Amy?"

"The girl he took on the cruise. He had to change the name on the reservation, and Royal Caribbean let me know because I was the one who'd paid. They aren't together now, as far as I know. I think that was just a fun thing, what do you call it, a transition, a rebound."

"Fuck."

"I'm sure they did. I'm also sure he also spent a lot of time crying over you."

"I didn't want that. I never wanted that. I don't want any of this."

"Well. Choices have consequences. Now it's up to all of us to figure out how to live with them." She picked up a few of the pages. "Do you have a lawyer?"

"No."

"Of course not." She put down what she was holding and began sorting through the stuff. "I'll ask Marjorie to have a look at these and consult with you. It seems pretty straightforward. You don't have any kids or real estate. You've got your car and he's got his. You just need to separate your bank accounts and call it a day, really."

I just sat there and let that soak in, like my tears absorbing into the paperwork in front of me.

Wait a minute. What was that...?

"Who's Marjorie?"

"My divorce attorney."

"You're divorcing Jerry?!?!?"

"Not yet. But it's inevitable now. You've stolen him away from me."

"I have not!"

"You just don't see it yet. But yes, you have. Maybe not on purpose. But you're a shiny new thing, you're a thousand times sexier than I am, and you've captured his attention. He will stray away from me. If he doesn't claim you, it'll be someone else. My days with him are numbered. I know this."

"I would never take your husband away from you."

"Too late. I could never keep him, anyway." She stepped back. Then she stepped in again. "It went about as well as it could, for as long as it could. And I'm getting a child out of it, which is more than I ever thought would happen. The worst part is what it's doing to us, to you and me."

"What do you mean? It's brought us closer together! I mean, it's been years since we've spent this much time together!"

"Yes. For now. But it won't last. The real fireworks haven't even started yet."

"What are you talking about? Are you blind? Carl is trying to divorce me!"

"Correction- Carl IS divorcing you. There's nothing you can do to stop it. The only thing you can do is waste money trying to delay it, but there'd be no point. Carl's done with you. Please just let yourself admit that much."

"No! That'll be a cold day in hell. Carl and I are forever. He's going to forgive me and he's going to want me back!"

"Jesus, Pammy."

"Look, look, even if you're right, which you are NOT, we're still having this child TOGETHER, you and me and Jerry, and nothing's going to break that up!"

"You're wrong. Jerry will be enchanted with you as his new plaything, and he'll use the child as leverage to keep control over you, since you've agreed to sign over your parental rights to me. Then he'll kick me out and divorce me, just to be cruel, since he'll have you. He gets bonus points for the sheer sadism of fucking up your relationship with me. Once you're sufficiently miserable and there's nothing else to do with you, he'll cheat on you and drop you for some other chippie, since you're not going to play submissive with him properly."

"You CANNOT be serious."

"As Death. At least, that's what Jerry is going to try to do. He's not going to keep the child; I am. He's not interested in being a father, and losing the kid is going to hurt you even more, so he'll give me that much in the process of dumping me. I'm also going to walk away with a lot of his money. Marjorie and I have already made sure of that. Believe it or not, he won't care. He can always make more, and he'll still count it as a win."

"None of that is going to happen. Now, I'm still really upset about all this and what I really need is for you to make me some of that herbal tea."

Stella shrugged and went to put the kettle on.

***

All of it happened.

I love my sister to pieces, but she's incredibly annoying when she's right, which is most of the time. She's really smart.

Carl divorced me. Any roadblock I tried to throw at the process got steamrolled by all the evidence that I'd lied to him, denied him marital relations, abandoned our home, and cut off contact for months. Also, I was embroiled in a filthy sexual relationship with my brother-in-law and was pregnant with an extramarital child. My petulance was legendary, but it couldn't stand up to all that.

Like a fool, I signed all the papers about the adoption and waived my parental rights exactly the way we'd set everything up. Stella was in the delivery room with me and the team was graciously calling HER "the mother." That hit me like I didn't expect. They also took measures to exclude me from the jouissance of immediate post-partum bonding with my baby girl.

Her baby.

Not mine.

My breasts ached. I had a lot of colostrum. They made me pump. I wasn't expecting that. I also wasn't expecting the tears. I couldn't stop crying and I wasn't sure why.

They sent me home in a bulging fat-ass diaper with Jerry, fresh stitches, and aftercare instructions. Stella had little Abigail and all the baby paraphernalia in her own car, since they'd driven separately. I did not know that would be the model for how everything else would go.

Stella didn't last another week in the house, fawning over the baby and ignoring Jerry and me, while Jerry treated her AND the child with complete contempt. He was trying to win me over, calling me his "breeder" and still insisting that I call him "Daddy." Things cooled off quickly while I was recovering and he couldn't just keep fucking me. I was in a mental fog, not having any of it, and I hardly noticed when my sister and her child moved out. She'd already lined up a job and a condominium with on-site child care in Tampa. She'd been preparing for months, knowing he'd "kick the pig back into the streets." She'd timed it almost to the hour.

Maybe Jerry thought I'd be impressed or terrified by his ditching my sister. I wasn't. All I felt was depression. All I did was mope. It turns out you can't dominate someone who's just miserable and doesn't care about what happens to them. If Jerry had ever actually bothered to learn anything about his BDSM bullshit, he should have known that's not how it works. I wasn't providing a whole lot of fun for him, so right on cue, he ditched me for a rope bunny he found on some kinky sex app, and moved back to New York. The divorce from Stella prompted the sale of the house, which he never cared about anyway, but it left me homeless.

I moved back in with mom and dad. I kept mostly to myself and they gave me miles and miles of space. They weren't okay with anything that I'd done- the loss of our family, the estrangement of their oldest daughter and first grandchild, and the destruction of two marriages.

They did get me on the phone with Stella, just once. I was begging her to come home, or to let me come and live with her and little Abbie. I promised to take care of the baby and take care of her and be their full-time nanny and servant, desperate to be with them and share in the love that we'd once had as a family.

That conversation will haunt me for the rest of my life.

"It's not a good idea, Pammy."

"PLEASE, Stella! It's all I want. It's all I've got. Being with you is my only hope!"

"No. I'm sorry, but it's just not healthy."

"It's not healthy for us to be APART!"

"Yes, it is. Look. I'm sorry. This will be hard for you to hear, but you need to hear it. I can forgive you for taking Jerry away from me. He wasn't a good guy, and that lasted longer than it probably should have, anyway. I can forgive you for blowing up your marriage to Carl, too. You clearly weren't invested enough in that relationship to make it work. I can even forgive you for ignoring me and doing all the things I specifically and repeatedly told you NOT to do. If it was just you and me, as sisters, there would be no problem. You could come and live with me and you'd be my Pammy and I'd be your Stella Bella. But... the thing is... it's not just me. I've got my daughter to think of, too."

"Our daughter. We made her together. She's WHY it's going to work!"

"You're not a good influence, Pam. You don't make good decisions. You're not a good role model. I... it kills me to say it, Pammy, it really does, but I don't want you near her. She deserves a better mother than you."

All the color drained out of the world.

I couldn't move.

I couldn't speak.

I couldn't breathe.

I tasted copper in the back of my mouth, a subtle tingling around the roots of my teeth.

"I'm sorry, Pammy. I really am. I wish things were different. I wish I could trust you. I love you, more than anyone else on this earth, I really, really do. But I HAVE to make the right choices. For her as well as for me. You understand that. Right?"

I couldn't answer.

"Besides... I... I don't want anything getting in the way of me bonding with Abbie. If you're around, and she feels that whole biological thing, it might confuse her. Especially while she's young."

She 'deserves a better mother' than me. The words ricocheted around in my mind like bullets, wounding and killing everything they hit.

"It's not like you're never going to have ANY relationship with her," she said, as if I'd been speaking. "You're still her Aunt Pammy. She's going to know about you. I'll tell her all the family stories. She'll see the old pictures. And, um, when she's old enough, she'll know the truth. The whole truth, all of it. In an age-appropriate way, of course. When she's ready. Not before."

The world around me had disappeared. I was floating in nothingness. The only thing that existed for me was her voice on the other end of the call. Flat. Digitized. Lifeless.

"We'll come around for Christmas sometimes. Thanksgiving. Things like that. Mom and dad are going to want to see their grandchild. So... there will be something, okay? It, uh, it might be a few years. But it'll happen. And we'll be, uh, in touch. Okay?"

I might have actually died. I don't know.

"Okay? Okay? Pammy, are you still there? Say something. Pammy?"

"I understand." Was that my voice? Did I say that?

"Okay, okay, good. Well. Take care of yourself, Pam. I really do mean that. I think... I mean, we both know you've got a lot of work to do on yourself. Get into therapy. It helps. And I want you to be better. For Abbie. For me. And most importantly, for yourself. So please... I mean, PLEASE. Yeah. I'll... I'll talk to you next time."

She disconnected the call.

She disconnected me from the only thing that meant anything in this life.

What have I done?

WHAT HAVE I DONE!?!?!?!?