Chapter 4 #2
The question came slowly. She had no claim to an answer, which made it matter more.
“I don’t know.” I traced the rim of my paper cup. “I guess I always thought if it happened, it’d be after my contract was settled. With a house that felt finished. With someone I knew better than I know you.”
“That’s brutally romantic.”
“I’m at my peak.”
Kate let out a dry laugh. She covered her mouth right away, like she hadn’t meant to give it to me. I didn’t point it out.
“I thought I’d have time,” she said. “To decide if I even wanted it. To have a stable role, a less expensive apartment, a person who wasn’t a one-night gamble.”
“You have a nice apartment.”
“You haven’t seen my basil.”
“I haven’t seen your apartment.”
“Minor detail.”
I saw her realize what she’d just said. Her gaze dropped back to her cup.
“What I mean is, I don’t have a clean answer.”
“You don’t have to have one today.”
“I don’t want that to be a polite way of leaving it in your hands.”
“It’s not. It’s your body. The choice is yours. But if you let me, I want to be in the conversation. Not to push you one way or the other. Just to be in it.”
Kate didn’t answer right away. Outside, a city bus rumbled past, throwing up dirty spray against the curb. The sound arrived muffled through the glass.
“What if I decide not to go through with it?” she asked.
“I’ll go with you, if you want me there.”
“What if I decide to keep it?”
The answer built up in my throat before I spoke. Images flashed that had no business being there: a crib in the spare room, my parents sending up crates of apples, a tiny hand curling around my thumb. I brushed them aside. I couldn’t put those in front of her as arguments.
“Then we talk about how to make it work,” I said. “Both of us. Without pretending it’s going to be simple.”
Kate studied me. Her eyes didn’t waver from mine, but her fingers found the table edge and traced it once.
“You aren’t worried about the money,” she said.
“No.”
“Neither am I.”
“That barely solves anything.”
“No, but it keeps us from calling something ‘panic’ when it’s actually something else.”
Neither of us named that other thing. We didn’t need to. We had demanding jobs, bodies we barely knew, one night together, and lives that had stopped obeying written agreements.
“We’re adults,” I said. “We’re solvent. We have health insurance. We can afford a crib, childcare, lawyers if anyone decides this baby needs a constitution.”
“It doesn’t need lawyers. Not yet.”
“We don’t know that. It could be very ambitious.”
Kate let out another laugh, smaller this time. Then her armor snapped back into place.
“Don’t use humor to steer us around this.”
“I won’t.”
“I’m not saying you can’t make jokes. Just...” She paused, staring down at the mangled muffin. “I don’t want it to look like we’re calm just because we can afford the fear.”
“We aren’t calm.”
“No.”
The coffee tasted like ash. I set the cup down.
“What do you need from me until we have more data?”
Kate rubbed her thumb against the chipped nail.
“Two weeks.”
“Two weeks for what?”
“To think, without either of us turning a first reaction into a promise. I want to go to the appointment. I want to talk to you when I have something more concrete than two plastic lines. I want all options on the table, even if one of us is terrified to hear them.”
The request left zero room for argument. I nodded.
“Two weeks.”
“And honesty. If you research clinics, you tell me. If you talk to anyone, you tell me. If you suddenly decide this is a disaster or good news, you tell me that too.”
“I’m not talking to anyone without you knowing.”
“You can’t promise that for me.”
“No. But I can promise it for myself.”
Kate adjusted her coffee until it lined up squarely with the grain of the wood. I recognized the tic, and I had to stop my own hand from aligning an imaginary salt shaker that wasn’t even there.
“Same here,” she said. “I won’t disappear.”
The words brought me straight back to the napkin tucked under my sun visor. *Don’t look for me.* I’d respected it because it was the bare minimum. Now she was sitting across from me with her coat still on and fatigue in her eyes, offering a smaller, far more dangerous promise.
“All right,” I said.
“It’s not a business partnership.”
“I know.”
Kate closed her eyes for a second. When she opened them, I saw exhaustion, and something close to resolve.
“I’ll call you every night,” she said. “Not to resolve anything. Just to keep you in the loop and give us time to think it through.”
“I can do that.”
“And the appointment. If I want you there, you come. If I don’t, you don’t show up in the waiting room with a binder.”
“I don’t have a binder.”
She looked down at the notebook.
“You have an emotional three-ring binder.”
“Fair accusation.”
“I know.”
For the first time since walking in, she rested her palm flat against the notebook. She didn’t pick it up. She just held it still.
“You don’t have to throw it away,” she said. “Just don’t use it to manage me.”
I wanted to say I wouldn’t manage her. I wanted to say I knew the difference. Saying either one with that kind of certainty would have been a lie.
“I’ll try,” I told her.
Kate drew her hand back. The muffin was down to crumbs between us.
“Is that everything?” she asked.
I checked the wall clock. We’d blown past the agreed hour by fourteen minutes.
“For today, maybe.”
“Don’t tell me ‘maybe.’ It makes me nervous.”
“For today, yes.”
She pulled her coat straight around her shoulders. She hadn’t eaten anything except for a few crumbs. She gathered her bag and her empty cup.
“I’ll text you the appointment date when I have it.”
“Thanks.”
We walked toward the door. There, with the smell of roasted coffee clinging to our clothes and rain slanting against the glass, she stopped.
“One more thing,” she said.
“What is it?”
“That night wasn’t a mistake.”
The shop was still packed. The grinder roared back to life. Even through the noise, I heard every word.
“No,” I said. “It wasn’t.”
Kate gave a single nod. Then she pushed open the door and stepped out into the rain without looking back.
I stayed inside until she rounded the corner. Then I walked back to the table, shoved the notebook into my backpack, and brushed the muffin crumbs into the trash.
In the truck, before turning the ignition, I pulled out my phone. There was a text from Rick asking if we could talk about San Diego this afternoon. Below it, one from Marcus: *Are you coming to Sunday dinner, or do I have to invent another tragedy to get you to show up?*
I didn’t reply to either.
I set the phone face down in the center console and turned the key.