Chapter 11
Adam wanted kids. I didn’t.
Do you? I wonder as I watch you sleep. We haven’t discussed it yet, but things have become very serious very fast. I know it will come up soon.
Two weeks ago today, we had our first dinner together.
We shared an Uber back to my condo. We stepped into the elevator together, just the two of us, specs of mica in the tiled floors glittering beneath the cool lighting above us, our wavering reflections visible in the silver of the walls.
I pressed my spine against the back of the elevator, feeling wine course through me, feeling fuzzy and alive and uncertain. Was this really what I wanted?
You were next to me, warm and obvious and not that much taller than I was, but I was humming and buzzing; I was pulled to you, nevertheless.
Suddenly, you turned, and before I could finish my thought, before I could answer my own question, your hand was in my hair and your lips were against mine.
You wanted me so badly, and that made me want you, too.
The elevator could have opened at any time, at another floor, to another resident waiting, and I felt so young.
We stumbled into my condo, and you didn’t leave until morning, after we had shared coffee and shy, questioning smiles. It had been a highly successful date, but what would come next?
What came next was more dates. We have seen each other nearly every day over the last two weeks.
We’ve gone to brunch and met for lunch. We’ve grabbed coffee and held hands as we returned to our cars, shame burning on my face because I’m too old to hold hands with a boy, desire burning in my gut because I don’t care.
We’ve slept together in your bed and in mine.
In my shower, my hands pressed on the glass, you moving behind me as we both watched the mirror across from us.
Even once against the wall in the foyer of your apartment.
It was so urgent that time, your skin burning beneath mine.
Last night, in my bed, it was tender. You nudged my hair away from my face and stared down into it. You said nothing, and it’s only been two weeks, yet I heard your words anyway: I love you.
I watch the rise and fall of your bare chest. I can tell that you shave it, can see the stubble. I study your face, wait for the feelings to swell like the tide, to rush in like waves and foam along the beach. Nothing comes. I don’t love you.
I didn’t love Adam, either, at the end.
Of course, I didn’t know it was the end until he told me.
I thought everything was fine. I got along with his mother, and in three weeks I was set to be his plus-one for his college roommate’s wedding.
Sometimes, when I walked past his dresser or glanced at his nightstand, I would wonder whether he had a ring hidden inside one of those drawers. But I never searched for one.
If I had searched, I wouldn’t have found a ring.
We ate linguine one evening, sitting cross-legged on our family room floor, watching Jeopardy! When the show was over, Adam turned the TV off and stacked our empty plates.
“You’re never going to change your mind, are you?” he asked out of nowhere.
“About what?” I replied, fingering a loose thread at the cuff of my sweater. I was stalling because I knew what he was talking about.
“You will never change your mind about not wanting kids, will you?”
I could feel him looking at me.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I can’t say either way. But how I feel about it now is that, no, I don’t want kids.”
I wanted to be partner, not a mom. I loved my work.
And I didn’t feel the need to have both, to have it all.
I was perfectly satisfied with my career alone, with its predictability, its stability.
My career was everything, and it was safer this way.
How could I—who still sometimes felt like that little girl, lost and confused, whose mother put on high heels with strings that tied up her calves and disappeared into the night, who disappeared as often as she could—bring a new life into this world?
“I might change my mind,” I continued, even though I knew that was doubtful. “But I might not.”
Adam shook his head once, tersely. That tiny movement held a foreboding sense of finality.
“That’s not good enough.”
I could hear him swallow. It was the only sound in the room. Five seconds passed. Ten. Then he added, “I think we should break up.”
I wrapped the loose thread around my finger, again and again, and I pulled until it tore free.
Now I let my gaze trace your strong jaw, your thick, dark lashes, which cast shadows against your cheeks.
Your lids begin to flutter, and with a heaving and rather satisfied-sounding breath, you’re awake.
You catch me watching you, and you smile knowingly, as if you’re unsurprised. Your eyes fall closed again. “Good morning,” you murmur. “How did you sleep?”
You always ask me this, with great interest and care, as if something quite important turns on how well I slept the past night.
“Good,” I say, even though I’ve been awake for at least an hour, my legs restless, my thoughts racing, something unpleasant and sour but nondescript, inexplicable, needling at me. “You?”
“I always sleep well when I’m with you,” you say. You roll onto your side, resting your face on your pillow, inches from mine.
We blink at each other for several long seconds that stretch and sway.
“Where do you think you will be in five years?” I ask vaguely, skirting the issue, dancing around the thing I really want to know.
“Hmm,” you say, the corners of your lips tilting upward.
“Maybe we’ll be in Tahiti. In an overwater bungalow.
I’ve always wanted to stay in one of those.
You’ll be partner and I’ll be partner, and we’ll have senior associates to handle all of our work while we’re out, so it will be a relaxing trip.
We’ll have cocktails on our deck, with our feet in the water, and when we get too hot, we’ll jump in. ”
I smile in spite of myself. You’re taking it for granted that we’ll be together. Your vision is endearingly optimistic. But you haven’t answered the question I didn’t really ask.
“Do you think you’ll have kids?” I say before I lose the nerve to be so direct.
Your face cracks, the fragile shell of an egg, and you’re grinning. “Klara,” you say. You snake your arms around my neck, tuck your fingers into my hair. “Are you already asking me if I want to have kids one day?”
I swallow and shift, although I can’t move much. You’re pressed too close, holding me too tightly. “I guess I am,” I say.
“Why?” you ask. “What’s made you want to know?”
“I’m not sure,” I say, trying to sound blasé. “I just was curious.”
You watch me, eyes darting over the features of my face, saying nothing.
“That was why my last relationship ended,” I add, breaking the silence. Because what’s the point of hiding it? I’m too old for games, for passive-aggressive maneuvers, for subliminal messages. “We were together for a long time. But we wanted different things, and it ended.”
You extract a hand from my tangled hair and stroke my cheek with the soft, plush pad of a finger.
“Klara,” you say, “I want whatever you want.”
You smile into my face, your finger still on my cheek, and I force myself to smile back.
Should your words make me feel happy? Relieved? They don’t. There’s a prickle in my gut. Too much, too fast, it says. Back up. Something isn’t right.
There’s something else, too—another feeling or sense—but I can’t quite put my finger on it. Until you speak again.
“I love you, Klara Martin,” you add.
No, I think. No, no, no.
But you are gazing at me expectantly. You are blissful and simply full. Full of love for me. For this new and bright and hopeful thing that we have.
It never occurred to you that I wouldn’t say it back. And it’s far too soon, but I don’t want to disappoint you. I don’t want this to end. I don’t want to ruin it. I don’t want to ruin what would be such a beautiful and perfect moment, if only what I say next were true: “I love you, too.”