Chapter 24 #2
“I haven’t even processed it myself,” I say. “I walked around the city for three hours after the appointment. I just… I’m still in shock.”
Andie gets serious again, picking at the edge of her cup. “Do you want to be a mom? Like, for real?”
It’s a good question, and I let it settle. “Yes. But I just started my master’s, and—”
She nods, lips pursed. “Yeah, that would be a lot.” She leans in. “But whatever you do, you don’t have to do it alone. I’ll help. Hell, I’ll be the cool aunt. I’ll teach your baby to swim before they can walk.”
The sincerity in her voice almost breaks me. I look away, blinking hard.
Andie, in true form, switches tracks before I can spiral. “Speaking of babies, you’ll love this,” she says, her tone slipping back to its default: chaos. “Remember Stella, from down the hall?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, I’ve been boinking her dad.”
I squint at my pretty friend. “Yes, you told me. He’s the older man you’ve been hooking up with.”
Andie smirks. “Yeah, and it’s amazing. We go at it like rabbits. Middle-aged men are so much more fun. They’re all, like, hardened and throbbing.”
The visual almost makes me choke. “You’re out of your mind.”
“Not really. Thomas is divorced and knows a lot about life. Plus, he gives me better relationship advice than my therapist.” She winks. “But we’re careful. Don’t want a surprise baby myself.”
The irony is not lost on me, and I can’t help laughing. The tension dissolves, just a little.
I give her a look. “You use condoms, right?”
Andie rolls her eyes. “Of course, Mom. But honestly, we do anal a lot to be safe. Not all the time, but, like, a lot. So I’m fine.”
The way she says it—so airy, so matter-of-fact—makes me crack up for real. “That’s your plan? The back door is birth control?”
She deadpans. “Worked so far. Besides, it’s fun.”
I shake my head, smiling despite myself. “You’re insane.”
She reaches across the table and grabs my hand. “You love me for it.”
I squeeze back, and in that moment I do. I love her for always bringing spark to our conversations.
We finish our drinks in silence. The world outside glows with the blue hour, everything saturated and surreal.
Finally, she breaks it. “So what are you going to do about Liam?”
I don’t answer right away. I watch a group of undergrads pass the window, all limbs and laughter. I think about Liam, about his face when I tell him, about the mess of wanting and not wanting.
“I’m not ready to tell him,” I say, quiet.
Andie nods. “You don’t have to be. Just let me know when you want me to tell him for you,” she jokes.
I grin. “Deal.”
She stands, collects our cups, and heads for the trash. On her way, she shoots me a look—half-conspiratorial, half-mother hen.
“You’re going to be okay,” she says, and for a second, I almost believe her.
I linger a while after she leaves, letting the hum of the café seep into my bones. I listen to the clink of spoons and the low murmur of strangers, and for the first time all day, I feel like the ground under me is solid.
When I finally get up to go, I check my phone. There’s a message from Liam:
Miss you. Come home?
I tuck the phone away, let the question hang in the space between heartbeats.
I don’t know where “home” is, not yet.
But for now, I walk out into the warm blue dusk, letting the possibility of it pull me forward.
The house smells like garlic and panic. I’m standing at the butcher block, chopping onions that don’t make me cry, but my eyes are still wet anyway.
The knife thunks against the wood in staccato, a nervous, arrhythmic beat that matches the jitter under my skin.
The countertop is littered with the detritus of dinner prep: zucchini coins, tomato guts, two cloves of garlic mashed into a resinous paste.
I’ve set the table with his favorite placemats—mid-century modern, abstract lines in navy and orange—and the cloth napkins I always iron, even though neither of us cares.
It’s not even a big deal. People get pregnant. People have awkward conversations with their boyfriends about “the future.” But standing in Liam’s kitchen, three months into my master’s program, I feel like I’m about to detonate an IED under the foundation of our whole life.
The front door opens with the usual shudder and bang.
I hear him in the foyer, setting down his briefcase and kicking off his boots.
He does a little cough—clearing his throat, telegraphing his approach.
It’s a tic I’ve come to recognize as affection, like he wants to make sure I have enough warning to put on my game face.
Liam comes into the kitchen, shirt sleeves rolled to the elbow, the day’s stress still knitted between his eyebrows. He sniffs the air and grins. “That smells incredible, sweetheart.”
“Thanks.” I scrape onions into the pan and watch them hiss.
He walks up behind me and wraps his arms around my waist, hands splaying across my belly, and I almost lose it right there. I freeze, my heart bungee-jumping into my throat.
He kisses the back of my neck. “Bad day?” he says.
I shake my head. “Just tired.”
He pulls away, but lingers at the island, picking at a chunk of bread.
I watch him out of the corner of my eye as he tears it into perfect halves, then eighths, then sixteenths, eating each fragment with forensic precision.
We’ve become a picture of domestic bliss: the handsome professor and the pretty grad student, cohabitating in a house lined with too many books and an alarming number of throw pillows.
It’s too good to last, and I can’t stop myself from poking myself every time I look at him.
We sit down to dinner. The food is fine.
I try to taste it, but everything lands like cardboard.
I keep waiting for the right moment to say it, but there’s never a right moment.
I ask about his class—he complains about a student who plagiarized an essay by copying directly from the Norton Anthology, not even bothering to change the footnotes.
He asks about my thesis and I lie, say it’s going great, that the committee loves my topic.
We’re both pretending. I wonder if he can tell.
It’s only when we’re cleaning up—me scraping plates, him filling the dishwasher—that I finally break.
“I need to talk to you,” I say, and my voice is too flat, too formal.
He turns, drying his hands on a towel, suddenly very still.
I look everywhere but at him. “I’m pregnant,” I say, and the words are so much smaller than I thought they’d be. They barely fill the space between us.
He blinks. For a second, I think he didn’t hear me, or didn’t understand. Then his jaw works, a slow, almost painful flex. He opens his mouth, then closes it again.
“How—” he starts, but the word stalls out. Then: “Are you sure?”
I nod. “Doctor confirmed. Six weeks, maybe a little more.”
He drops the towel on the counter. “Is it—?” He stops, realizes how that sounds, and shakes his head. “Sorry. Of course it’s mine. I just—holy shit.”
He sits at the table, rubs his face with both hands. When he looks up, his eyes are glassy, a color I’ve never seen before. “Simone, do you want this?”
The question detonates, but I answer from the heart.
“I think so,” I say, and I hate how weak it sounds. “But I’m scared.”
He exhales, all the air in his lungs leaving at once. “Me too,” he says, but there’s a lopsided smile tugging at his mouth. He stands, crosses to me, and wraps his arms around me, crushing me to his chest. I can hear his heartbeat, a frantic, desperate rhythm.
“We’ll figure it out,” he says into my hair.
We stand there for a long time. I don’t cry, not really, but I feel the relief sluice through me like a fever breaking.
When he finally lets go, he cups my face in his hands, searching my eyes for something. He laughs, this wild, almost disbelieving bark.
“God, you’re really pregnant.”
“Yeah.”
He kisses me. Not soft, not careful—hungry and real, his lips hard enough to leave a bruise.
When he pulls away, he digs in his pocket and pulls out a small velvet box. I recognize it immediately—a ring box, the kind that comes with a future inside.
He holds it up, then laughs again, almost sheepish. “I’ve been carrying this around for weeks,” he says. “I wanted to do it right, you know? Candlelight, poetry, whatever. But this is the only thing I want, Simone. I want you.”
He opens the box. The ring is beautiful: white gold, tiny diamond, nothing flashy but so much more than I expected.
He doesn’t get down on one knee. He just looks at me, his blue eyes raw and open.
“Marry me, sweetheart?” he says, voice thick. “Your hand in marriage would make me the happiest man on Earth.”
For a second, I can’t breathe. I stare at the ring, then at him, and my mind is a snarl of hope and panic.
I think about all the times I told myself I didn’t believe in marriage, that it was a trap, a lie, a story people told themselves to stave off the darkness. I think about my mom, about the parade of foster moms, about every woman I ever knew who was chewed up and spat out by love.
But then I think about the man in front of me, and how he always lets me go first in arguments, how he never makes me feel small even when I am, how he looks at me like I’m the only thing in the room.
I want to say yes.
I want to say it more than I’ve ever wanted anything.
But something in me hesitates. I think of the baby—this microscopic, theoretical person—and I wonder if he’s only asking because of them, not me.
He must see it in my face, because he closes the box, holds it in both hands.
“It doesn’t have to be now,” Liam says, gentle. “It doesn’t even have to be ever, if you don’t want it. I just—fuck, Simone, I love you. I want you to know that, no matter what.”
I nod, tears finally spilling over, hot and ridiculous.
“Yes, Liam,” I manage in a trembling voice. “Yes, I’ll marry you. I love you too.”
He wipes my cheek with his thumb. “Don’t cry, baby. We’ll figure it out,” he repeats. “Even if it’s messy.”
I laugh, a wet, snorting sound that makes him laugh too.
“Ask me again,” I say. “When I’m not such a disaster.”
He grins. “You got it, Mrs. Thomas.”
Then, he slides the ring on my finger and we both look at it, breathing in the miracle of what’s happening.
I will soon say my vows to Liam, and he’ll repeat them to me.
We will be bound by everything that life has to offer, including the child in my belly.
As if waltzing in a dream, we leave the dishes in the sink and go to the living room, collapsing together on the couch.
He holds me, one hand on my stomach, the other tangled in my hair.
We don’t say anything for a long time because this is only the beginning.
Just us, and the impossible future, and the promise of something we might build together.
I close my eyes and let myself savor the moment because this time, it’s going to work out, with this man by my side, and our love to bind us together for eternity.