At our gender reveal party, years of tension came to a head. Emily, my husband’s best friend, crossed the line — again — hugging him too closely, kissing his cheek, and calling our baby hers. I snapped! Cake flew, secrets spilled, and the fragile peace between us shattered forever.
Infertility is a quiet kind of grief. It’s a pain that lives in whispers, empty nurseries, and the space between hope and despair.
For years, my life had been a constellation of medical appointments, ovulation tests, and silent prayers. Each negative pregnancy test was a tiny funeral, each month a reminder of what I couldn’t do.
And through it all, there was Emily, Adam’s best friend since childhood, a woman as clingy and pervasive as a tick.
She’d show up unannounced after yet another failed treatment, a casserole in her hands and a torrent of condolences on her lips. She always stayed too long, talked too much, and hugged Adam far too often in her attempts to comfort him.
“She’s just friendly,” Adam would say whenever I expressed discomfort. “That’s just how Emily is.”
But “friendly” didn’t explain how she’d touch his arm during conversations, or how her laughter would soften into something almost secretive when Adam said something only they seemed to understand.
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