Chapter 23 Emery #2
“All good?” I ask. My voice comes out breathier than I planned, but we’re standing so close, and he’s always had this effect on me.
I mean, of course I liked sex before, but with Luca it was something else entirely.
Animalistic. Instinct, from the very first time.
We’ve never gone this long without it, and I wonder if there’s some tension spring inside me that’s slowly ratcheting up, making the thought of touching him, feeling him, take over more and more real estate in my mind.
Oblivious to all of this, he closes the car door behind him. “All good,” he says with a wide smile. “Lead the way.”
“So, I did some research on accessibility,” I say as we walk, unhurried, toward the park.
“Mostly I wanted to make sure you wouldn’t have any issues getting to the sand, but they have accessible bathrooms, paved trails, picnic tables, parking, and direct access to the beach.
They even have special beach wheelchairs people can rent, with these big all-terrain tires.
I didn’t know this, but some of them even float in shallow water, which is pretty cool.
” When Luca is quiet, I glance over. He’s smiling. “What?”
“Nothing. That was just very thoughtful.”
“Oh,” I say, feeling my face warm. “Well… good.”
The path cuts between two wide swaths of grass, with a playground at the far end. We both look toward the laughter of a pair of toddler boys chasing a cloud of soapy bubbles.
“Their mom must be exhausted,” I say, hearing their delighted demands for More bubbles! More bubbles!
“It’s crazy how little kids look like tiny drunks,” he says, and stops to watch them. He’s not wrong. Their little bodies look so top-heavy, tiny legs veering one way and tottering the other, trying to keep up with the chase.
“Not everyone can be built like Thor,” I tell him.
“Thor, huh?” he says with a grin, then tilts his head. “Did we ever talk about kids?
“A couple times,” I say, my chronic guilt raising a single hand to make itself known. “I know you wanted them one day, but—”
“You were always so busy,” he finishes for me.
“Yeah,” I say quietly.
“And what about now?”
His question is so direct, my brain feels like it’s run over a speed bump.
Old Luca would have danced around the subject or given hypotheticals.
This Luca is looking right at me, waiting for an answer.
I’m not sure I have one. We never made a concrete timeline, because if it looked like it was headed in that direction, I would change the subject or put it off, and true to form, Luca didn’t push.
I never thought I’d have time for a relationship, so I obviously never even considered children.
Then Luca came along, and in hindsight I think subconsciously I knew that if I could barely make time for my husband, I couldn’t possibly be a mother.
But it’s a good question. What about now?
“I think… I think I’d like to talk about it,” I say finally. “Maybe not now, but when things are more settled.” I hear how that sounds, another procrastination attempt, another when, but it’s not the same. “What I mean is, it’s not a no. I don’t think I would have said that before.”
He mulls this over. “Okay,” he says. “Thank you.” Luca tugs on my hand for us to continue.
He doesn’t let go, twisting his fingers with mine as we walk. It’s such a simple thing, but the sensation is the equivalent of a boulder rolling over inside my chest.
“Since this is our first date, and we are clearly strangers who have never been married to each other before,” he says with a grin, “why don’t you tell me about yourself. Favorite color?”
“Blue.” His eyes, his favorite shirt, the color of the small sapphires in my ring.
“Food?”
“Anything you make, but I’m partial to your seared tuna and green rice.”
“That sounds impressive.”
“It is. Maybe we can make it together. You never used a recipe, and it would be interesting to see if the steps feel familiar at all.” Not as a scientist, I tell myself, but as Emery Martín.
Paved ground gives way to sand, and the air seems to shift, too, heavier, cleaner, the wind carrying with it a fine mist. The tide is going out, and a handful of families build sandcastles; others search for shells or seaweed on the freshly exposed shore.
We walk in comfortable silence, no direction in mind, just two people, almost strangers, but also not.
“We got married over there,” I say, pointing down the beach. “You can’t see it from here because the coast curves, but it’s called Torrey Pines.”
He follows my gaze, squinting into the distance. “I saw the photos at the house. We looked so happy.”
I smile up at him. “We were.”
“Can we go there soon?”
“Of course.”
“You know, I’m guessing you’ve told me all this before, but when did you know you wanted to be a doctor?”
We have had this conversation, but I’ve told him everything in half-truths, stopping before I got too close to something I wasn’t supposed to say. It’s different now, I remind myself. I’m different. At least I want to be.
“I’d always had an aptitude for STEM, but it wasn’t until my parents died that I knew I wanted it to be my life.”
“Oh shit.” He squeezes my hand. “How old were you?”
“Fourteen. I wasn’t with them,” I say, eyes on the breaking surf.
“I’d been begging to go to this girls’ camp in Big Bear, so they sent me and decided to go on a weekend trip, just the two of them.
I’d been out on the lake all day with my friends, and when we got back to camp my aunt was there waiting to talk to me.
She said my parents had been in an accident, and that they hadn’t made it.
Just like that. One moment I had parents, and the next moment I didn’t.
“I packed up all my things and we got in her car and started back toward San Diego. We were about ten minutes from camp when I got service on my phone again. There was a voicemail from my mom.”
Luca stops us and turns me to face him. He looks down at me, eyes intent, patiently waiting for me to continue.
“She’d tried to call me, right after the crash, I think.
My dad was already gone; he’d been the one driving and had died on impact, but my mom’s injuries were to her abdomen, and she was hanging on, trying to make it until the paramedics came.
She said she loved me more than anything, that they both loved me, and she was sorry she was going to miss my band concert the next week. ”
I take a deep, shaking breath and Luca reaches up to swipe at the tears on my cheeks. I hadn’t even realized I was crying. He pulls me just a little closer.
“Her breaths were heavy,” I say, “and I don’t know if she was in pain or if it was the adrenaline, but she could have made it, Luca.
She had a lacerated liver. She suffered internal bleeding and circulatory collapse, which they told me triggered cardiac arrest. But now I know they could have saved her. ”
“And that’s why you do this.”
I nod. “BioNEX is the only place with enough money and ambition to fund the kind of work I do. The things we’re doing…” I swallow. “We could have saved her. That’s why it’s so hard to just walk away.”
Luca is looking at me in a way he hasn’t since before the accident, like he can see straight through me. Only this time, I’m not trying to protect anything, not trying to keep a part of him out.
“I started college only six months after they died. I see now that I basically filled that hole by putting my head down and just grinding. College, medical and graduate school, and eventually BioNEX.” I shake my head at the recollection.
“When I started working there, I knew there would be trade-offs. They warned me. There were confidentiality clauses and NDAs and my boss, Leonard, said that I would have nearly unlimited resources, yes, but I would never have a normal life.” I huff out a dry laugh.
“But by that point, I hadn’t had a normal life in a decade anyway.
I didn’t even know what ‘normal’ looked like.
All I knew was that if it meant I might save people like my mom, I was okay with it.
” I look up at him. “I never questioned that decision until I met you.”
Luca smiles, his eyes flicking down to my mouth before meeting mine again, searching.
“I thought I could do it, but I really, really sucked at it,” I say, smiling sadly up at him.
He reaches up, gently dragging the pad of his thumb beneath my eye again.
“It was selfish to want both. I know that now,” I say, and it’s like another boulder turns over inside me, my breath coming easier.
“It wasn’t fair to you. I’ve never told you that before, and I’m sorry. ”
“Thank you for telling me. I see you a little clearer now, I think.”
I groan. “That’s scary,” I say with a pained laugh.
“I think in this case, scary can be good.”