Chapter Twenty Two #2
He came into the bathroom and closed the door although there was no one else in the house. For a moment they stood too close, unable to move around each other without deciding where they were going. Summer looked at the collar of his shirt because his face was too much to manage.
“Say something,” she told him. “Please don’t just stand there.”
He put his hands on her arms. “I’m trying to work out what you’re thinking,” he said. His voice was uneven enough that she looked up. “Are you all right?”
“I don’t know.” Tears came so suddenly she was angry with him for seeing them. “I wasn’t expecting it.”
“Neither was I.” He drew her closer when she began to shake. “Come here. We don’t have to stand in the bathroom.”
They sat on the edge of his bed, with the test on a folded piece of paper beside them.
She had slept in that bed often enough to know which side she liked, but it was still his room, his clothes in the wardrobe, her overnight bag tucked beneath the chair.
She looked at the bag and imagined taking it home as if they had reached the end of a visit.
“I’ve got a bakery,” she said. She heard how ridiculous it was as soon as she said it. “I know you know that. I just mean, I can’t stop. I don’t know how any of this works if I can’t stop.”
Jonah looked toward the bag too. “You’re already thinking about opening tomorrow,” he said. “We haven’t even sat here five minutes.”
“Somebody has to open tomorrow.” Summer pulled her hands out of his. “Please don’t tell me everything will be fine. We don’t know that.”
“I wasn’t going to.” He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “I don’t know anything yet.”
Jonah rubbed both hands over his face. Summer opened the calculator on her phone; she could work later in the evenings, put some money aside before she got too big to stand all day. She began explaining, and he turned before she’d finished.
“Do you want the baby?” he asked. He looked at the test beside them, then back at her. “Have you thought about it?”
Summer pressed her lips together. She’d stood outside the pharmacy with the bag in her hand, watching a woman fasten a child into a stroller. She could still see the child’s tiny red shoes.
“Yes,” she said. She wiped her cheek with the heel of her hand. “I think I do. Is that terrible?”
“No.” His answer was immediate, and something in his face changed when she looked at him. “No, sweetheart.”
He put his hand on her knee. Summer covered it, then looked toward the overnight bag beneath the chair.
“What about you?” Summer asked. She could see how tightly he’d closed his free hand against the bed. “I haven’t even asked you.”
He laughed once, without amusement, and shook his head. “I’m terrified,” he said. “I keep thinking I should know what to do because I’m old enough to know. Then I look at you and—” He stopped, smiling now in a way that made her cry harder. “I can see it.”
Summer caught his wrist. “You can see what? Tell me.”
“You. With our baby.” His mouth tightened as if the words had surprised him. “I want that. I didn’t know I wanted it this afternoon, but I do.”
She leaned into him, the test forgotten on the bed. He began to laugh again as she pressed her face against his. They sat there until he asked whether she’d eaten, and she told him he wasn’t starting that already; he went downstairs and came back with bread anyway.
They ate it on his bed. Summer spilled crumbs down the front of her sweater, and Jonah brushed them away with his palm before leaving his hand there, just above her stomach. The touch was so tentative that she covered it with hers.
“There isn’t anything to feel,” she said. She looked down at their hands. “I don’t think.”
“Let me,” he said, leaving his palm where it was. “I haven’t got used to it yet.”
She kissed him because he looked so happy, and for several minutes there was no reason to discuss anything beyond the next morning. Then he drew back, took both her hands, and spoke with an earnestness she would later remember before she remembered the exact words.
“Marry me,” he said. He saw her expression and went on too quickly. “I know this isn’t how you’re supposed to ask. I haven’t got a ring. But I want you here. I want us to do this together.”
Summer stared at him. She had imagined that question in foolish, private moments on the way home from his house, never soon enough to have to answer it. Now she wanted to say yes so badly that she distrusted herself.
Summer glanced at the test. “We don’t have to get married just because of this. I know people will say things, but they will anyway.”
“I’m asking you,” he said. “I want to marry you. Forget what people will say.” He held her hands tighter when she tried to take one back.
“You only met me in October.” She was still holding his hands. “We only started dating in January.”
“I know when I met you.” His smile came unevenly. “I asked you out. You made me wait while you served two more customers.”
She laughed and cried again, angry at both reactions. He brushed the tears off her cheeks, then waited while she looked at the little overnight bag and imagined taking her things out of it for the last time.
“Yes,” she said. She moved toward him before he could ask if she meant it. “Yes, I want to.”
For the next week, the happiness returned at ridiculous moments.
She would be checking an invoice or putting her key in the bakery door and remember that he had asked her, that she had said yes, that there would be a baby.
Once she went back inside after locking up, just to look at the date she’d written in the calendar.
Jonah called from downstairs, asking whether she wanted tea.
Summer went downstairs without changing and stood beside him while he poured.
She told him she’d been remembering the night of the test, the bread they’d eaten on his bed.
He said he’d found crumbs beneath the pillow for days, and she smiled against his shoulder before carrying her mug into the sitting room.