Free She, Myself & I by Whitney Gaskell

running over my body, and felt a shock of excitement.
    “Are you excited about the baby?” Zack asked.
    “Baby?”
    I’d been lost in my embarrassingly vivid fantasy, and so this question seemed to come from nowhere.
    “Your sister. Sophie. She is having a baby, isn’t she? Because if not, I really put my foot in it when I congratulated her,” Zack said.
    I laughed. “Oh yeah. And I’ll be even more excited when Sophie becomes a normal person again and recovers from the estrogen-induced psychosis she’s been in for the past few months,” I joked.
    “How about you? Would you like to have children?” Zack asked.
    I blinked. The question took me off guard, as did the sudden lurch in my stomach, and suddenly I was remembering everything. The baby. Scott. Having to clench my teeth and force a smile when Soph had announced her pregnancy this summer.
    I’m over this, damn it, I reminded myself.
    “I . . . uh . . . why do you want to know?”
    Zack shrugged. “Isn’t that a normal, getting-to-know-you, second-date kind of a question?”
    “It’s just a little personal.”
    “Isn’t that what we’re doing here? Getting personal?” Zack asked. He reached over and grasped my hand. “Did I say something to upset you?”
    “Look, can we just talk about something else?” I asked. Anything else.
    “Sure. What do you want to talk about?”
    “Your house. I love your house. Did you design it yourself?”
    “No. My college roommate is an architect here in town, and he helped me out. I made some sketches on a napkin, and he turned them into blueprints for me. Which is good, because in my enthusiasm, I’d left out stairs,” Zack said, and I laughed, and we were past the awkward moment. For now.
             
    Norah Jones was playing on the radio as we pulled into the parking lot at my building. I was a little tired—wine always made me sleepy—but in a comfortable way, heightened by the pleasant conversation. Zack was an easy person to be with, and in his presence I was relaxing in a way I hadn’t in a long time. So much so that I was surprised when Zack reached over and took my hand in his, and a jolt of excitement shot through my body. And then I remembered: this was it.
    “I had a great time tonight,” Zack said.
    “I did, too. Do you want to come upstairs?”
    “Yeah, I thought I’d walk you in.”
    “Actually, what I meant was . . .” I hesitated and then took in a deep breath. I’d learned that the only way to get what you want in life is to go after it, but I certainly didn’t relish rejection. And while I could tell Zack was interested in me—his thumb was erotically stroking the back of my hand, and he was looking at me with obvious interest—there was always the chance that I was miscalculating things, like I had after our last date. “Would you like to come in for a while? We could have a glass of wine, or watch a video, or . . .”
    Before I could complete my sentence, Zack had leaned over and caught my lips against his. His tongue flickered against mine, and I went warm and woozy. He pulled back and smiled.
    “Or this?”
    I nodded, my eyes large and my appetite whetted. “This would be good, too,” I said. Very, very good.
    Chapter Nine

    The sex was like digging into an incredibly rich, gooey brownie topped with Häagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream and smothered in hot fudge after six months on the Atkins diet. Zack was athletic and commanding, and for once I actually got carried away with things, rather than just waiting for him to finish while I stressed over whether my secretary had filed all of the requisite papers for a case I was working on. Which pretty much summed up my married sex life, surprise, surprise.
    “Are you going to fall asleep?” Zack asked after.
    I was lying on my side, resting my head on his shoulder, my hand on his stomach. In a way, this cuddling felt even more intimate than the sex, and I worried that I was over-indulging myself. I’d heard that the trick