looks lit up. “Wait a second... I think Ms. Coachella could be on to something. Why don’t we fake it? We’re always doing that at shoots. Maybe it could work? At least for a little while.”
“Hmm. That’s not bad,” says Brie, lighting up at the idea.
“Do you think she can handle it?” Ford asks, referring to me in third person as if I’m a mental patient.
“Not helping...” I butt in.
“Look, Lizzie, I think it’s your only option. You can fake for one month—until June 6—and use your time to line up enough freelance writing gigs to get a running start. And your first bump will be tiny. No one will have to know besides the key players.”
“Ooh, I’ve got the perfect solution. I’ll ask this guy I’ve been wanting to hook up with to see if he wants to help you create your so-called bump. He’s a stylist at the Naomi Marx Show. Plus, it’ll give me a reason to see him. He’s young, hot, kind of a douche. You know, just my type.” Ford grins.
“What if I get caught?”
“You can do it, Lizzie. You’ve been practically breathing babies since you were twenty-two. You know this stuff cold,” says Addison firmly.
“If I slip up, I’ll be fired.”
“You’ll be fine!” says Addison. “I’ll happily help you screw with that company. They’re my biggest competitor!”
“What if word gets back to Paddy Cakes that I’m looking for freelance?”
“It’s not like travel editors really know parenting ones—they’re like full-fat lattes and Alix—they don’t mix,” says Ford.
“Listen, Lizzie, you’ve got this,” says Addison confidently. “Quick, what are the first set of tests called and what’s their function?”
“Standard blood tests—make sure you’re healthy,” I rattle off.
“When will you know the sex?”
“Easy, as early as the first blood test. Ten weeks.”
“What are the first physical signs of pregnancy?”
“Morning sickness, indigestion, loosening of the pelvis and ligaments—and boobs! Bigger boobs!” I look down at my own size-Cs...the lucky inheritance from my mom’s French-Canadian side, along with absolutely no thigh gap.
The girls keep quizzing me and the answers leap out of me on their own, rapid-fire, like a baby-knowledge-spewing semi. It’s as if I’ve been waiting my whole life for this day.
“How much sleep did you get last night?” quizzes Brie, now having fun.
“Ha, trick question. Not enough.”
“Who’s the daddy?” riles Ford.
“Let’s just say immaculate conception for now...”
“Perfect, since as we know, motherhood is the ultimate way to deify yourself,” says Addison.
“One more. How many weeks are you right now?”
“I don’t know?” I freeze. I look down at the app. Since “weeks” start on Mondays, I’m at the tail end of sixteen weeks. Just a little over five months until October 20. My “due date,” I realize with strange solemnity. My eyes sweep around the room, feeling my brain abuzz with activity. The coffee grinder whirring combines with the sounds of clinking wineglasses as the lounge begins to heat up. Everywhere, the sights and sounds of possibility are brewing. Maybe more is out there than I’ve let myself realize. Maybe my friends are right.
I sit back in my chair and allow the idea of a “meternity leave”—time off for me to really figure out what I want to do with my life—to take hold... Could this be it?
A long-suppressed vision of myself begins to resurface. I picture trading my monochromatic office formulas for sunny tanks and sarongs and sipping strong Indonesian coffee while finishing up an article for Travel + Leisure from a beach in Bali. Maybe I’ll even be spotted by a handsome importer/exporter, who will knock me up for real...
A power surge unblocks something inside me that has been bound up for ages. Looking at my friends, I realize they’re right. I have to see this through—it really is my only option. I place my hands on the table firmly.
“So I’m keeping this baby, is what you’re saying?”
“Yes.” Addison looks me dead in the eye.
“Yes.” Brie wraps an arm around my shoulder.
“Yes,” says Ford, nodding up and down like a puppy dog.
“Okay, then.” I gulp. “I feel sick.”
“You’re supposed to,” giggles Brie.
Meternity, here I come.
By 11:15 p.m. we’ve slugged back some vodka sodas, and somehow my friends have managed to convince me to join them at a packed karaoke bar on St. Mark’s Place. Addison begins to make inroads with a table in the back full of fashion bloggers, model bookers and extremely skinny models from Balkan countries while I try to keep Brie away from checking her phone every three minutes.
At this point, Brie knows not to expect anything besides a friends-with-benefits situation from her forty-four-year-old former ad exec colleague, Baxter. He’s made himself clear about not wanting a “romantic attachment,” as he icily put it one night at Babbo when she mistakenly assumed ample making out might mean he was interested in something romantic. But still she wonders if she’s putting out the wrong “vibe” to the universe if she allows their relationship to continue, since she’s not even sure she’d want him if he actually were into her, as like a potential husband. Ever more ironic is that all she’s been thinking about since turning thirty is finding a PH (potential husband), as she’s started calling every available man with a job.
After text number six, I give her the stink eye.
“I sweeaaaar to you, Lizzie. After tonight, it’s plan Secret-4-the-One.”
“WTF is that?” I respond as Addison goes up for her song.
“It’s new—something I devised at a recent mastermind session. A combination mix of The Secret, The 4-Hour Work Week and Outliers. Basically I’m going to set an intention for the perfect guy, then outsource my flirting on every available dating app to reach my goal of ten thousand hours. I’ll attain dating mastery while using up all available ‘Love RAM,’ so Baxter can’t even take up a kilobyte.”
To me it sounds about as exhausting as faking a pregnancy, but she seems enthused so I go with it, smiling and nodding as she takes her turn on the mic. Inside, though, I’m panic-stricken. This feeling must be what all our younger editors talk about, I think, fighting off waves of anxiety so intense it’s as if the room is swaying. All these years, I’d somehow managed to sidestep the Dark Side that so many editors
