Chapter 7 #2
“Exactly. Usually families come together for the day. People go ‘home.’ When you’re young, that means grandma’s house because your parents are going home too, and you go with them.
Eventually you’re the one going home to your parents.
First alone, then with a partner, then maybe with children, if you choose that path. ”
Eric had no idea where he was going with this.
“The point is, there’s a question people ask. A roundabout way of asking who you want in your life in the future.”
“What question?”
“Who do you want sitting at your Thanksgiving table?”
Eric sat back, as if putting distance between himself and the question could help him escape the gravity.
“The answer doesn’t have to be your children and their spouses.
It can be your friends, a family of choice.
But the question remains. In the future, if you gathered your family, the people you thought of as family, together for a meal, how many people are there?
Who do you picture sitting at the table? ”
Colum. Colum and Annie and Xavier. Maybe their kids. A cute little boy with crooked glasses and a girl with Xavier’s dark hair and Josephine’s smile.
Maybe Regina and her trinity. He liked to think that they’d remain friends even after she finished her time in the Spartan Guard and returned to Hungary.
Walt and his trinity. Which reminded him he hadn’t spoken to the good doctor in several weeks. He needed to call.
And Walt’s sister, Sylvia. She was a sweetheart.
Talya and her cat. Her husbands could come too.
Eric realized he was smiling to himself.
“You’re happy.” Elijah returned the smile. “I’m glad.”
“I need a bigger table.” Eric shook his head mockingly. “Or I need fewer friends.”
Elijah paused in a way that made Eric look at him.
“All those people are friends you consider family?”
“No, but they’d all come if I had a dinner party.”
“This is more than a dinner party. It’s a once-a-year tradition. Deciding who to invite, deciding where to go, is important. Which of those friends is more than a friend but family to you.”
“Colum,” Eric said immediately. “His trinity. Someday his kids.”
“Good. Who else?”
Eric saw it in his mind’s eye—this room, ten years from now.
A bigger table. Chaos as a couple kids ran around.
For some reason, his imagination gave the dark-haired little girl a foam sword which she proceeded to use to whack her sibling until Xavier and Annie got up from the table, Xavier separating them, as Annie disarmed her.
That left him and Colum at the table. Him sitting at one end, Colum on his right.
And across from him, seated at the other end of the table, was Nikolett.
“Fuck,” Eric breathed.
“Care to share?”
He leaned forward, elbows on the table, head in his hands. “Fuck.”
Now, imaginary Nikolett had a wiggling toddler on her lap, the little blonde girl holding a tiny foam sword of her own and baring her teeth in frustration that she wasn’t allowed to join the melee.
Eric jammed the heels of his hands against his eyes, as if that could block out the image.
Imaginary Nikolett stood up, her belly round with pregnancy. “Fuck!”
“I’m going to give you a minute.”
Eric sat at the table, utterly still, though his insides felt as storm-tossed and chaotic as the sea outside.
He tried to erase her from the picture, to put someone else there.
Family.
It didn’t work. Elijah had said family, and the only people he considered family were Colum…and Nikolett.
He loved them, both of them. And though his love for each of them was distinctly different, the love was broad and deep.
They were his family.
More than that, he wanted to start a family with Nikolett. Colum had started an immediate family of his own, and while that didn’t make him any less Eric’s brother, it did push Eric down the list.
Eric wanted to be at the top of someone’s list. Nikolett’s list.
“I hate you,” Eric said after a long silence.
“No, you don’t.”
He raised his head. “I wasn’t supposed to have a future, let alone a future family.”
Elijah looked up from the leftovers he was putting into glass dishes. “What…or maybe I should ask who…did you picture?”
“You know who.”
“It’s more fun for me if you say it.”
“Fun? I thought you were my therapist. Doesn’t that mean you shouldn’t torture me?” Eric shoved his last piece of now-cold fish into his mouth then stood with his plate.
“Like I said, this isn’t my kind of therapy. This is me talking to my friend.” He grinned. “And maybe enjoying his reactions.”
“You know what? You’re uninvited from my hypothetical dinner.”
“Who’d you picture, Eric?”
He scraped the food remains into a compost bin and set his dish in the sink.
“Nikolett.”
“As a friend?”
“No, she was pregnant with our second kid.” Eric scrubbed his hands over his face as Elijah started to laugh. “The first one was a little girl and she had a sword.”
Elijah leaned against the fridge, still laughing.
“So what do I do about it?”
That had Elijah straightening. “What do you want to do about it?”
Eric stared down at the dishes in the sink. This moment should have a more momentous visual memory. Maybe he should go stand on the balcony in the rain.
“Marry her.”
The wash of relief that swept through him took him by surprise. It was as if his body had been waiting for his brain, and now his body could finally relax since his brain was on board.
“Can you?” Elijah asked softly. “She’s a territory admiral. You’re the fleet admiral.”
Eric waved that away. “I can step down. I don’t care about the fleet admiral title.” He grimaced. “They may not let me, but even if they don’t, there’s a solution to the job issue, even if I’m not sure what it is right now. Nikolett is the smartest person I know. She’ll figure it out.”
Eric walked out of the kitchen, needing to move. He stalked to the windows, looking out at the rain, but deciding not to actually go out on the stone patio. Elijah stepped beside him.
“The real issue was always me. My belief that loving her would kill her. I would remember my wives’ deaths, Josephine’s head in the basket. But now I don’t feel that raw terror when I think about them.” Eric looked over. “Thanks for that.”
“You’re welcome.” Elijah put a hand on the glass, which was double-glazed but seemed an insubstantial barrier as rain and wind lashed the glass.
“It’s one thing to admit I love her. That wasn’t a secret apparently.”
“Not from the people closest to you.”
“Admitting I want a family with her. That I want to love her until the day one of us dies…” Eric let the slap and patter of rain lashing glass overtake his words. They stayed there, separated from the rage of nature by thin glass for several moments. “This is a real storm.”
“Think it’s going to get worse?”
“Yes.”
Elijah looked over. “You’re not talking about the storm outside, are you?”
“No, I’m not.”
Elijah just waited.
“Nikolett is the storm.”
“I guessed. The analogy was pretty obvious.”
“You fixed me—”
“You weren’t broken.”
“—and the job issue we can figure out.”
“So what’s standing in the way of you, Nikolett, and a future filled with alarmingly armed children?”
Eric grimaced. “After the way I treated her, Nikolett hates me.”
“And she has every right to,” Elijah said gently.
“But I also think you could both use closure.” Elijah clapped him on the shoulder.
“We’ll talk about how to begin and end healthy relationships.
The Trinity Masters, and I’m betting the Masters’ Admiralty too, is full of people who didn’t bother to learn the mechanics of relationships because of the arranged marriage. ”
They turned away from the storm, and Eric felt a weird mix of hope and dread.
“Don’t worry,” Elijah said. “We’ll take our time and make a plan.”