22. Natalie
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Natalie
Late that month, Whitney's own life cracked open in the background of mine. She showed up at Claire's one evening looking uncharacteristically undone, mascara smudged, a bottle of wine already half gone by the time she knocked.
"Marcus Reyes," she announced, dropping onto Claire's couch without preamble, referring to the florist supplier she'd been dating on and off for the better part of a year, "just told me he's not sure he wants kids ever, after eight months of very clearly implying the opposite. I feel like the world's biggest idiot."
"You're not an idiot. He's the one who apparently couldn't be honest for eight months."
"I know. I know that logically." She accepted the glass I poured her, staring into it. "It's just humbling. I spend all this time telling you to demand honesty, and apparently I couldn't get it in my own relationship."
"That doesn't make you a hypocrite. It makes him responsible for what he told you and you responsible for what you do now that you know."
She gave me a tired laugh. "Listen to you. Six months ago you would have found a way to make his indecision sound reasonable."
"Probably." I sat beside her. "I'm getting tired of making everybody else's choices easier to live with."
We stayed there most of the evening, trading the kind of unglamorous, half-drunk honesty that had defined our friendship since college. For months Whitney had been the one bracing me. It felt good to be useful to her without turning her pain into a lesson about mine.
She ended things with Marcus the next morning. There was no dramatic confrontation, just a short conversation in which she told him she wanted children and would not build a future around hoping he eventually wanted the same thing.
"It was awful," she told me afterward. "Also weirdly clean. I kept waiting for the part where I had to convince him my boundary was reasonable."
"You don't," I said. "That's the useful part."
Whitney went quiet, then looked at me over her coffee. "You know that applies to you too, right?"
"I know." For once, I did.
Her crisis did not resolve mine, and mine did not make hers smaller. It simply reminded me that loving someone and choosing a life with them were two separate decisions. Both of us were allowed to require a relationship that could actually hold the future we wanted.
When she left, she hugged me hard at Claire's front door and made me promise I would call if Daniel did anything stupid. I made her promise the same about Marcus.
"Deal," she said, and for the first time all evening, her smile looked real.