18. Dominic
Dominic
Icarry our plates into Elena’s kitchen, and she doesn’t tell me where anything goes.
That is how ordinary this has become.
I know which cabinet holds the glasses. I know her dishwasher sticks unless I push the top rack in before closing it. I know she leaves the pan soaking even though she could wash it in less time than she spends insisting it needs to soak.
Behind me, she gathers our water glasses from the table and brings them to the counter.
“You’re doing that wrong,” she says.
“I’m loading a dishwasher.”
“Incorrectly.”
I look at the two plates inside it. “Explain how.”
“You put the larger one in front of the smaller one.”
“They’re the same size.”
“They’re clearly not.”
I turn toward her. “You own six identical white dinner plates, Elena.”
Her mouth twitches. “Five identical plates and one slightly smaller plate.”
“Why?”
“I broke one and replaced it.”
“With the wrong plate.”
“It was the same collection.”
“Apparently not.”
She laughs, and the sound hits me with the same quiet force it always does. Her hair is down. Her feet are bare beneath a pair of soft gray pants, and she’s wearing the black sweater she pulled on after dinner, dismissing her blouse as uncomfortable.
This is Sunday night. There is no appointment tomorrow or timing requirement we can use as an excuse. I came because she asked what I was doing for dinner.
Now I’m standing in her kitchen arguing about plates while she smiles at me like this is our life.
A month ago, she told me she knows what this is. She still couldn’t say she wanted it, and I told her okay because anything else would have turned her honesty into something punishable.
I meant it. I can wait for the words; her actions are enough to show she’s trying.
“You’re staring,” she says.
“I’m deciding whether to break the smaller plate so you can replace it properly.”
Her smile widens. “Touch that plate, and you’ll never be invited back.”
“That seems extreme.”
“I have boundaries.”
“I’ve heard.” The teasing note in my voice is a mistake. I see it instantly in the way the light in her eyes dims, the slight stiffening of her shoulders. The humor between us vanishes, and I feel the loss of it like a sudden chill.
Elena looks away first and carries her sparkling water to the table. Her laptop is waiting at the far end, closed during dinner by agreement. She sits and flips it open.
I finish with the dishwasher, bring my glass over, and take the chair beside her. “You’re working?”
“No.”
“There’s a spreadsheet on your screen.”
“That doesn’t automatically make it work.”
“For you, it usually does.”
“It’s personal.”
I lean back, giving her the space to decide whether she wants to show me. A dozen columns stretch across the screen, each broken into smaller sections. Dates. Responsibilities. Contingencies.
Her preferred language.
“What is it?” I ask.
“A preliminary plan for maternity leave.”
Every part of my attention sharpens. “You made a leave plan?”
“I started one. There are too many unknowns to finalize anything, obviously. We don’t know when I’ll get pregnant or what the pregnancy will be like, and childcare availability will depend on timing. This is only a framework.”
I read the headings again. “You’ve included work coverage.”
“Maya can absorb some of the day-to-day functions, but she shouldn’t be expected to perform two jobs. I’ll need to redistribute the rest across the finance team and identify someone who can handle executive decisions while I’m unavailable.”
“You’ll be unavailable for as long as you need.”
Her gaze lifts to mine. “I know.”
Something in my chest unknots. The word is enough.
Then she scrolls.
The next section is labeled Residential Schedule.
I set my water down. “What’s that?”
“Custody logistics.”
The word choice is hers. Clinical. Final. It’s a clean, hard jab, and it lands. We agreed to co-parent. We spent eleven pages making certain neither of us could use employment, money, or biology to take this child from the other. None of this is new.
The two columns are.
Her address fills the left side. Mine fills the right.
“I’ve been looking at the first year,” she says, slipping into the calm, precise tone she uses when presenting a financial model.
“Especially the first few months. We can’t treat custody the same way we would when the baby is older.
We’ll need to account for feeding, sleep, recovery, and that constant transitions won’t be practical. ”
She moves through the document, explaining stages and adjustments. She has considered where the baby sleeps, how we divide weekdays and weekends, and when overnight stays at my home become realistic.
It’s careful. Fair. Designed to give both of us equal standing.
It’s also a future in which I leave after dinner.
“I’ll set up the nursery here first,” she continues. “You can do the same at your place, but we probably won’t need to duplicate everything immediately. A bassinet would make more sense until overnight visits begin.”
“Visits.”
Her fingers pause over the trackpad. “Overnights.”
“With me.”
“Yes.”
“At my house.”
“That’s where you live.”
I study her face. She isn’t trying to hurt me. Elena believes she is doing what she always does: taking an uncertain future and forcing it into columns until nothing can surprise her.
Except she isn’t planning for uncertainty. She’s planning for my absence.
After the unscheduled nights. After the appointments and the Tuesday she texted because she wanted me there. After she curled into me and said my name like it belonged to her.
She has taken everything between us and built a future that erases it.
“Is something wrong?” she asks.
I look at the spreadsheet again. “Where are you in this plan?”
Her brow creases. “Here.”
“And I’m there.”
“You’ll have your own space with the baby.”
“I see that.”
“This is only a draft. We can change the schedule if there are things you don’t agree with.”
She thinks the schedule is the problem.
I close the laptop gently, my own movements a contrast to the sudden, sharp clarity in my head. I turn in my chair until I’m facing her.
“Elena, where does us exist in your model?”
Her expression goes still.
The crease between her brows disappears. Her shoulders straighten, and the warmth she’s carried all evening retreats behind the composed face I see across conference tables.
“The original agreement accounts for us,” she says.
“It accounts for two parents.”
“That’s what we are.”
I wait for her to add something else.
She doesn’t.
The silence presses into every ordinary detail around us. Two water glasses sit beside the laptop. Her sweater is draped over the back of the chair she expects me to occupy. I put our dinner plates in the dishwasher while she teased me about my technique.
An hour ago, this apartment felt more like home than the place where I sleep.
Now she’s describing me as a man who will arrive according to a custody schedule.
“The terms were designed to protect both of us,” she says. “Separate residences were always part of the plan.”
“Before you changed the plan.”
“I didn’t change it.”
“You lied about the window and let me believe it. Then the negative result forced the truth out. You canceled the clinic, and you kept asking for me anyway.”
Color rises along her throat. “That was different.”
“You admitted you lied because you wanted me. Then you spent months calling that desire useful every time I asked what it meant.”
“We agreed we could be honest about wanting sex outside the fertility window.”
“And you think that’s all this has been?”
“I think we need to be careful about assigning meaning to choices we made while trying to conceive a child.”
My hands clench under the table. The urge to stand, to walk away, is a physical force. The restraint it takes to remain seated surprises even me.
“Was the office about conception?”
Her lips part, but no answer comes.
“What about the bar? Tuesday last month?” I ask. “You texted me because you wanted me here. We ordered dinner. We sat on your couch and talked for hours. You told me about your ex and why trusting someone terrifies you.”
“Dominic.”
“You leaned into me and asked me to stay. I told you I went to that bar because of you. I told you I’ve rearranged rooms and schedules around you for years. You looked at me like you understood what I was saying.”
“I did understand.”
“Then explain how we get from that night to a spreadsheet where our child lives in two homes and we meet for custody exchanges.”
“It isn’t a custody exchange.”
“What would you call it?”
“Shared parenting.”
“From separate houses.”
“Yes.”
“Because that’s what you want?”
“Because it’s what we agreed to.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Her jaw tightens. It’s the same retreat I’ve seen before, the same wall she throws up when feeling starts to feel like risk. Not this time. “The agreement exists for a reason.”
“Then tell me the reason.”
“I already have.”
“You keep telling me what the document says. I’m asking what you want.”
She pushes away from the table and stands. “You’re treating this like I’ve done something wrong by planning for the structure we both signed.”
I watch her move toward the kitchen, putting distance between us with a glass she doesn’t need to carry. She sets it beside the sink, though the dishwasher is open two feet away.
“I’m asking whether any part of the last seven months has changed what you want your life to look like.”
She grips the edge of the counter and stares down at it. “Of course things have changed.”
“Which things?”
“We know each other differently now. We crossed boundaries. We allowed this to become more personal than either of us intended.”
“I intended it.” The words are quiet, but they cost me something. Her head lifts, and I know the words landed.
The same fear flashes across her face that I saw last month when I asked her to choose me while she was afraid. She knew then that I wasn’t speaking about dinners or sex. She knows it now.
I rise from the table, though I don’t move closer. If I touch her, she’ll either soften or pull away, and I need her answer to be her own.