Chapter Thirty-Two
The Question
Archer
She’s been weird all day.
I noticed it at breakfast when she put kombucha in Lily’s sippy cup instead of apple juice and didn’t laugh when Lily made a face. I caught it again at lunch when I asked about the senior center recital; she gave me a one-word answer and quickly changed the subject before I could press further.
Now she’s chewing her thumbnail in the passenger seat, a habit she only has when she’s anxious about something.
I let her have silence for the first half of the drive, but by the time we hit the bridge, I can’t hold back any longer.
“Syd.”
“Hmm.”
“You good?”
“Yeah, of course.” She tucks her hair behind her ear and turns to look out the window. “Why?”
“You’ve been chewing your thumb since Atlantic.”
Her hand drops into her lap as if I caught her with her hand in the cookie jar. “I wasn’t chewing my thumb.”
“You were chewing your thumb, honey.”
“Fine. I was.” She looks perfectly normal—gorgeous, even—in her pale blue sundress, her hair down.
I glance at her again. She’s still nervous about something.
“Okay,” I say, but I don’t believe her.
I park outside the Italian bistro but make no move to get out. I turn off the engine and face her. “Syd, honey. Talk to me, okay?”
“Now? Shouldn’t we go inside?” She motions toward the restaurant.
I lean against the window across from her and wait, something stirring in my gut.
“Okay.” She releases a long, slow exhale. “I’m going to say it. And I want you to let me get all the way through it before you say anything. Deal?”
“Deal.”
She takes a breath. Her shoulders go up, then come down. The silence in the cab of the SUV is deafening.
“I want a baby.”
Wait. What?
“I want a baby, Arch, and I know—I know—that this is a lot. We have the twins. Your life is full. We’ve barely begun this relationship, and I’m not asking for anything right now, I’m not putting a clock on you, I just—” Her thumb goes back to her mouth.
She catches herself and folds her hand into her opposite palm, pinning it down.
“I’ve been thinking about it since Lily accidentally called me Mommy, and I’ve been trying not to think about it because I didn’t want to be—I don’t know.
Pushy. Presumptuous. Like I was trying to—” She blows out a breath.
“But I can’t really continue this relationship if we’re not on the same page.
And yeah, maybe the twins are enough. But maybe they’re not, you know?
I’ve always wanted a baby of my own and—”
“Syd.”
“Let me finish.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Okay.”
“I’m thirty. I love you. I love your kids. I want one with you—eventually, someday, on whatever timeline you’re okay with—and I know you probably don’t, and I know—I know what you said. After the twins. About the—”
She stops. Her face flushes. She won’t say the word.
I lean forward against the steering wheel. “About the what?”
“You know what.” She raises one brow.
“I genuinely do not.”
“Archer.”
“Sydney.”
She closes her eyes and releases a slow exhale. “The vasectomy.”
I stare at her.
Wait. I—
Oh.
Oh.
“You were set on it after the twins,” she says, eyes still closed, words rushing out now that she’s started.
“I figured it was done, and I’ve been sitting with that for weeks.
I didn’t want to bring it up because it felt like—I don’t know, like grieving a thing that was never mine.
But I just—I love you, and I love your kids, and I needed you to know, even if it doesn’t change anything, even if you can’t—”
“Syd.”
“—and I know you can reverse them sometimes, but it’s a whole thing, and the success rate isn’t—”
“Honey.”
She opens her eyes.
I’m trying very hard not to smile. I’m failing.
“Why are you smiling?” Her voice goes flat. “Archer. Why are you smiling?”
“I didn’t get it.”
“You—what?”
“I made the appointment. Didn’t go.”
“You—Archer.”
“I drove there. Sat in the parking lot. Called and rescheduled. Then rescheduled again. Then I just kind of stopped. I guess deep down, part of me wasn’t sure.”
“You let me think—”
“I didn’t let you think anything. You never asked me—”
“That is information you tell the woman you’re sleeping with. That is—that is a thing a person says—”
“In my defense, I have been busy hiding the fact that I cried during Inside Out 2. I had a lot on my plate—”
“You cried during Inside Out 2?”
“Not the point right now.”
She presses both hands over her mouth. Her eyes have gone glassy, and her shoulders are doing that thing where she’s either about to laugh or cry, and her body hasn’t picked one yet.
I lean across the console and touch her cheek, tilting her face toward mine. Her mascara has smudged. I cup her face with both hands and rest my forehead against hers, and I can feel her breath catch.
“Don’t—” she starts.
But she’s already crying.
“I want a baby with you, honey.”
“Archer, don’t say that just to placate me. I will lose it—”
My brush her cheek with my thumb. “I want a baby with you. I want all of it. Whenever you want.”
“You’re saying that because I cried.”
“I’m saying it because it’s the truth, and I should have made that clear from the start. Yes, I’d want another baby. Lily would be the best big sister, and imagine Luke as a big brother… he’d teach a newborn so much about cephalopods.”
She makes a noise into my collarbone that is half laugh, half hiccup, and she punches me lightly in the chest with the side of her fist, frustrated, then clings to my shirt with the same hand as I pull her into me and hold her tight.
Her face is wet against my throat.
I tip her chin up and kiss her. Slow, this time. Her hands slide up to my jaw. She kisses me back, still half-crying, and laughs once into my mouth, and that laugh undoes me more than the tears did.
I press my mouth to her forehead, the bridge of her nose, and the corner of her jaw, where her pulse is racing beneath my lips.
“For the record,” I say into her hair, “we don’t have to wait to start trying.”
“Arch.”
“I’m just saying. The twins are at Bree’s. We have the whole house to ourselves. I’m a flexible guy.”
“We’re about to go to dinner.”
“I’m a goalie. We can be patient. But, uh—not, like, that patient.”
She laughs into my neck.