25. Charly #2
Rebecca, who took the man and the whole life and never had to fight for any of it. Who got everything handed to her while I got the spare key and the second-best version of everything. Rebecca had Adam’s baby like it was the easiest thing in the world, because for her it was.
And here I am, getting told I might not be able to give Clarence that same thing.
I twist the ring around my finger, around and around.
The ring he picked. The forever he asked for before he knew any of this.
Because he doesn’t know. He asked me without knowing.
He got down on that couch and promised me a whole future out loud, the grocery trips and the spice drawer and all of it, and not one second of it had this room in it.
I look at the ceiling. At the cold gel I still haven’t wiped off. At the ring.
I just said yes.
What if he wouldn’t have asked if he knew?
***
I wipe the gel off. There’s a little mirror by the door and I use it to fix my face, to get my expression back to normal, back to a woman who just got told it was no big deal.
He’s on his feet before I’m even through the door, magazine left on the chair, already reading me the way he always does.
“Hey. How’d it go?” His hands find my arms. “What did they say?”
And this is the part where I tell him. Where I say there’s damage, where I say reduced chances and years and maybe never. Where I let him hold me in a waiting room full of strangers and we figure it out together, the way you’re supposed to.
“It’s done.” It comes out light and easy, the same voice I used in there. “Nothing exciting. They just want to keep an eye on a couple of things.”
“That’s it? That’s the whole big scary appointment?”
“That’s it. I told you you were being dramatic.”
“See? I knew it was nothing.” He grins, all the worry draining out of him at once, and slings an arm around me to steer me toward the door. “All that fuss and they just want to keep an eye on a couple of things.”
“You’re the one who made me go.”
“And you’re welcome, because now you can stop losing sleep over it.” He kisses my forehead as we walk, easy, happy, not even slowing down. “Come on. I’m buying you the worst lunch of your life.”
“Deal,” I say, and I tuck myself into his side so he can’t see my face.
***
In the car he’s a different person than the one who drove me here. Looser. Lighter. He pulls out of the lot with one hand on the wheel and the other reaching across the console for mine, and he keeps glancing over at me at every red light like he just got back a thing he was scared he’d lost.
“You hungry? Tell me you’re hungry. I promised you the worst lunch in the city and I intend to deliver.”
“I could eat.” A cramp pulls low and mean right as I say it, and I cover it by stretching, arching back against the seat like I’m just getting comfortable. “Somewhere with bad fries. The really bad kind.”
“Now you’re speaking my language.” He squeezes my hand. “See, this is what I’m talking about. A week of you white-knuckling it and worrying yourself sick, and it was a couple of things to keep an eye on. That’s it. That’s all it ever was.”
“That’s all it ever was,” I echo, and my voice holds. Barely.
Then he starts in on the wedding.
It’s not the big stuff, just the little things he gets going on about when he’s happy and his guard’s all the way down.
He’s thinking small, nothing fancy, somewhere with good light, and he’s decided he wants a dog before any of the rest of it because he’s got a whole theory about doing things in the right order, which apparently goes dog, then wedding, then everything after that.
“Then a couple of kids running around tripping over the dog,” he says, easy, like it’s already real, like it’s just up ahead somewhere waiting for us to get there. “And they’re getting your eyes. I already decided. Both of them get your eyes or I’m sending them back.”
And there it is. The exact thing the doctor just told me might not happen, and he’s saying it like it’s a done deal, like it’s the easiest thing in the world to promise.
The cramp twists again, harder, and my breath catches before I can stop it, a small broken sound in the quiet car.
He hears it. Of course he hears it. He hears everything.
“You okay?”
“Seatbelt’s digging in.” I shift, press my hand flat to my stomach under the guise of fixing it, and breathe through the worst of it with my face turned to the window. “I’m good. Keep going. You were marrying off our imaginary dog-children.”
He laughs and he keeps going, and I sit there with my hand pressed to my stomach, smiling at the side of his happy face, letting him build the whole bright future out loud while I sit on the one thing that could knock it down.
I could just tell him. Right now. The words are sitting right there in my mouth. There’s damage, it might not happen, I’m scared. He’d pull over. He’d hold me in some gas station parking lot and swear up and down that none of it changes a thing, and I’d almost believe him.
But how do you even say that to someone?
How do you look at a man who just spent the whole drive home picking out your future kids’ eyes, who wants the dog and the wedding and a couple of little ones tripping over the dog, and tell him the one thing he’s counting on might not happen?
How do you take that away from him when he’s this happy about it?
I’ve given people bad news a hundred times at work and I still don’t have the words for this one.
So I don’t say anything. And it’s not that I want to lie to him.
I hate that I’m lying to him, it sits in my chest like a stone I swallowed.
I just can’t do it yet. He asked me to marry him eight days ago not knowing any of this, and some scared little part of me needs to keep it that way a bit longer.
I need to know the yes was for me first, before it has to be for this too.
“You’ve gone quiet,” he says.
“Just hungry. Feed me before I turn on you.”
“Yes ma’am.” He flicks the blinker and turns us toward food, happy, none the wiser, and I look out the window so he won’t see what my face is doing, and I promise myself I’ll tell him. Soon. Just not in this car, not in this minute, not yet.