Nata

The coffee shop on the first floor or the building buzzes with routine orders and conversation. I should be packing up my things, but no one told me I can't have a beverage.  If Samson plans to escort me out, he'll have to wait.

"A mocha and a large vanilla latte for Nata." The barista shouts.

I pick up the large ceramic cups and scan the room. Kate waves me over to the table next to the window. I set the mocha in front of her and sit on the chair next to my friend. The lopsided heart in the lattes Phillip makes is a clear winner to the perfect one in my cup. I take a spoon and destroy the pretty design.

"Now is the time to tell me things." Kate lifts her eyebrows.

I put the spoon with the milky brown liquid into my mouth and keep it under my tongue.

"Is Samson being his usually jerk self, or should I actually be worried about you?" Kate's voice has no trace of her usual ease.

I return the spoon into the cup and stir. The metal hits the ceramic with a satisfying clang. I stir some more.

"I'm going to take your silence as a yes."

I shrug but say at the same time. "I'm fine." My answer doesn't sound convincing even to myself.

"I liked it better when you came up with synonyms for 'jerk.' This fake calmness is giving me the creeps. Where were you yesterday? What are you not telling me?" Kate skewers me with her gaze. "Spill."

I take a large gulp of thankfully not-too-hot coffee and wish I could give her a one-word answer that explained everything. But I have many weeks back to unscroll to show her the full picture. So I begin at the end. "I had a long and werid weekend."

"Werid how?"

How much do I want to tell her? I suck air through my teeth. "I was out."

"You actually went out?" The corners of Kate's mouth rise. "Did that involve a date?"

"Sort of."

"'Sort of means you did have a date." Kate's eye sparkle. "Did you actually have some fun?" Her eyebrows do a wavy maneuver that could be interpreted only as suggestive.

"Kate." I plead. I should've insisted that everywas fine. There's still time to squash this conversation. I sit up. "That doesn't matter. I have to deal with the study and—"

"I'd rather you tell me what happened over the weekend then talk about the hoops your ex is going to make you jump through to get your own project back." She purses her lips and skews them to the side.

"They're going to take my project away from me?" The coffee I just swallowed climbs back up my throat. "This is a temporary restriction. I'm not fired."

Kate waves her hands in the air to stop me. "You tell me about your weekend, answer my questions, and I tell you what I found out so far about yesterday's incident."

"And how are you my friend? Friends don't make friends suffer in anticipation."

"Exactly. I'm dying to know what happened on the weekend." Kate leans back in her chair. "And I am your friend." She sips on her mocha. "I'm taking your mind off the thing you can do absolutely nothing about right now and refocusing it on the gossip I'm very much interested in hearing. You get some separation from the current drama, and I get the juicy long-weekend details." She tilts her head. "Win-Win."

"Fine." I sigh in exasperation.

"I like this 'fine' a lot more than the ones you were dishing earlier." Kate rotates her cup in her hands. "Let's start from the beginning. Who was your date with?"

"Phillip."

She slaps her palms on her cheeks and gives me an exaggerated look of horror with her eyes open wide and her mouth even wider, a pretty accurate imitation of the Home Alone poster. "Mr. Van der Heuvel? The millionaire? Or is he a billionaire? That Phillip?"

"Yes, that Phillip." I watch the circles my spoon is making in my latte. "Happy? Can we move on now?"

Kate raises a hand for a high five. "Congrats on finding your rebound."

"Stop it." I push her hand down. "This isn't a rebound."

"How would I know? You told me nothing." Kate huffs. "You can not withhold vital dating information from your best friend."

Best and only. "I'm not exactly withholding it." I bite my lip to prevent myself from smiling again and find refuge in another gulp of coffee.

"Did it start before or after the flight from San Francisco when the pilot and the flight attendant had to suffer through your pheromone exchange?" Kate might as well take out a pen a notebook and pretend to be a detective. "I wish I could hear what they get to overhear on these private jets. All sorts of insider information, I bet." Her gaze gets dreamy.

"Even if they hear something, they have NDAs. They can't talk about anything," I say. Phillip explained the restrictions on the personnel who work for him.

"At least you didn't need to sign one." Kate rolls her eyes.

I wince. I used to be in the world where NDAs were not a necessity for my private life. "I did."

"You what?" Kate's eyes and mouth somehow grow even wider. "Is dating a multi-millionaire that complicated? No access to his cock until you sign on a dotted line?"

Kate says the 'c' word as if it's just something that she does on a daily basis. Maybe she does. She definitely has more experience with a variety of them. When I say 'cock' even only in my head, my cheeks heat. Penis is much more comfortable and a correct anatomical word for the organ. No reason to complicate things. I squeeze my lips and give her my best version of puppy eyes.

"What the hell is he doing to you?" She scoots to the edge of her chair. "Is it a Fifty Shade of Grey situation?" she whispers.

"Not quite." I squirm.

"What is the quite then?" She air quotes 'quite.'

"He's trying to get me pregnant."

Kate's eyes narrow into tiny slits. "He's your sperm donor?"

"In a way." I squeeze my eyes.

"Do I need to drag every detail out of you?" Kate sighs and I peer at her. "What way? What is the deal?"

"The deal is he gets me pregnant, and we raise the child together."

"You are marrying Phillip Van der Heuvel and you didn't want to tell me about that?" She lifts off her chair and hovers over the table, her face a foot away from mine.

"You are not listening." As always. I look around to make sure the people nearest to us are not paying attention. They are not but I lean closer to Kate. "We are not dating," I whisper. "We are not getting married. We will co-parent. Our child. If I get pregnant." I speak slowly and quietly overemphasizing every important bit of information. "Which is why we have to sleep together."

"Right. So simple." She plops back into her seat and rolls her head. "How did I not guess it on my own?" She waves one hand to one side. "Perfectly logical." She waves her other hand to the other side, like she is a model on the Price is Right, showing the next item. "Something that happens every day."

I scowl at her. "It's not that unusual." I set my coffee on the table between us. "People use surrogates and sperm donors all the time. This is just a less expensive and less invasive way to get pregnant. It's almost like an open adoption."

"In which way?" Kate scoffs and shouts at the same time.

"I donate my eggs." I move a sugar packet to the center of the table. "He donates his sperm." I move the stirring stick over the sugar packet. "But we know who we are and we keep the child and we raise them together."

"So nothing like an open adoption." Kate makes a long and audible exhale of frustration.

Why do I even have to explain myself? I know what I'm doing. "You know what I mean," I say with an equal or higher level of frustration of my own.

"I rarely do. You puzzle me on the daily. Your brain works in these mysterious ways." She gesticulates violently around her head as if she's mimicking how to wash your hair if your life dependent on it. "That's the only reason I can see for you coming up with this arrangement."

I cross my arms on my chest. "It's practical."

"Until it isn't."

"It will be." I push the sugar packet and stirring stick away. "That' the plan."

She rolls her head again. "And those have worked out so well for you in the past." She's back to the wide eye thing, mocking me outright.

"What do you propose I do?" My arms shoot up in the air and I almost knock my coffee off the table. "Give up?"

Kate catches my hand and holds them in-between hers. "I'm not proposing anything. It's your life. I'm just pointing out the weak spots in your work. Like I would do for any project of yours." She pats my wrist. "Constructive criticism."

"Sounds like plain normal criticism."

Another audible exhale from Kate, but this one is less frustration and more 'oh poor baby.' "Only if you take it as such. You know I love you. I want you to be happy. Babies are a lot of work. And responsibility. But if a baby is what would make you happy, I'll support you. I'll be auntie Kate. The fun auntie. The one who isn't practical and doesn't plan things."

"I'll make sure no one else takes that place. It's all yours. But it might take a while to get there." And I tell her everything else that happened over my long weekend and why exactly I wasn't supervising my brand new employee on her first day of work.

Kate walks around the table and scoops me into her arms. She cradles me into her chest and swings us gently side-to-side. She'll be a great mom if she ever decides to have kids. "I'm sorry you had to go through this, but I think Phillip did everything right. You needed to be away from work. Life is more than work."

"Says a woman who barely does anything else," I mumble into her shirt.

"I swim." She flexes her biceps. "And I try to find the bottom of the barrel that is dating apps."

"That still going well for you?" It's been a minute since I've heard about any latest dating adventure from her.

"We are not talking about me today. We are however talking about you. It's you I'm worried about. You're nothing like Nata who I've worked with these years. And I think I actually like the change, but I want to be sure you are fine. For real. Not as a brush off." She sits me back down in front of my probably cold latte. "Can you look me in the eye an tell me you think Phillip is a good guy?"

"I do. I do thinks so. I wouldn't have committed seeing him for at lest nineteen more years of my life."

"For the rest of your life, most like it."

The phone in my pocket rings. Is Fiona looking for me with the boxes? I pull the phone out but it's not Fiona. It's not a work number or one I recognize, but it has a Chicago area code. I press answer. "Natalia speaking."

"Do you know where Phillip is?" A sharp male voice assaults my ear form the speaker.

I put it away. "Who am I speaking to?"

"It's Tom. Tom Van der Heuvel." His tone is resigned. "Please, tell me you know where my son is."