21 #2
“Ellis and I have only barely talked about selling this house,” I say.
“But I think he’d be open to it. Of course, the other thing is that I have access to my, um—” I giggle about this, embarrassed.
“My trust fund, because I’m twenty-five now.
And I think buying a house is a good idea.
It’s a good asset.” I’m not totally sure about buying a house with Ellis, of course.
Maybe what I want to do is buy a house in my name only, and then we all have our own freaking houses.
It’s not that I don’t trust Ellis—
Hmm. Maybe it is that.
Things with Ellis have been good lately, however, very good. It’s kind of like that poem by T. S. Eliot about the world ending with a whimper not a bang, except nothing’s ending, and our relationship is chugging along.
It’s been sort of anti-climactic. He was hooking up with another woman regularly, and we never even once got into a yelling match about it. I made it clear that I didn’t like it, though, and he said he would stop.
So, he did.
And everything went on, tentatively at first, and then less tentatively, and then even less tentatively.
Things with us are still very new, and they’ve only been good for a short period of time.
He’s doing so much better lately, and we are settled and boring and he and Callie even can talk on the phone with each other without going to go have sex with each other.
Of course, Callie is pregnant.
They got one of those tests you can do for DNA, and it’s definitely Andrew’s baby, not Ellis’s, so that’s good, because if my brother was the stepdad to my boyfriend’s baby, like, I cannot handle that kind of drama. There is enough drama in my life.
I would not say that pregnancy has mellowed Calliope, because I’m not sure Calliope is mellowable.
But she has shifted her obsession from Ellis entirely to the baby and being pregnant.
She goes around wearing little shirts with arrows to her (totally flat, by the way) belly saying, Bump and Baby on Board.
All she talks about now is baby stuff and pregnancy stuff and how she is going to have a home birth with no medical interventions, because she has watched three documentaries about home births.
If you want to get an earful, ask Calliope about the evils of pitocin.
Obviously, she has stopped drinking any and all alcohol.
Andrew, being an alpha, has latched entirely on to her obsession, so they are, wow, can I tell you, just a sheer joy to be around, and I mean that sarcastically.
All they want to do is infodump you on why breastfeeding is best for the baby, how co-sleeping is dangerous, and how they have already decided to do baby-led weaning.
On the other hand, it’s possible that I’m reacting badly to all this baby stuff from them for another reason, because of that Plan B I took. But I don’t know if I want to think too much about that, so I always push the thought aside.
“I’m not asking you two to uproot your lives for us,” says Gatlin.
“But you want to uproot your life for us?”
“For me,” says Gatlin. “It’s mostly selfish.”
“It would be better for us to be closer if this relationship is going to progress,” I say.
“Kane said a bunch of other weird shit,” says Gatlin, sounding sulky. “He said that you and I aren’t romantic, that we’re just besties.”
“Oh, Gatlin! I love you, you know that.”
“I love you, too,” he says. “And I like our connection. I feel like it’s deep in ways that a purely physical connection wouldn’t be. I’ve never had a romantic relationship with someone that felt like my connection with you.”
“Me either,” I say, “but then, I really haven’t had a lot of romantic relationships in my life.”
He laughs. “I only mean that you and I don’t get into fights like I do with Kane, I guess.”
“Yeah,” I say. “There’s a volatility to the attraction with the others. It makes it hotter, but whatever we have, it’s warmer, nicer, safer.”
“Exactly,” he says, and I can hear his affection for me leaking into his voice.
I grin, blowing on my wet toenails, basking in it. “I think Kane’s jealous,” I say. But maybe I’m saying that because I have jealousy on the brain.
“Kane doesn’t get jealous.” Gatlin is sulky again.
“Maybe not sexually, and maybe he hides his other attachment feelings even from himself, but I think he worries he’s not enough for you, and I think you telling him that you want to uproot your life, specifically because you want more than him, it’s…”
Gatlin sighs. “You have such good insight into him, Hannah. What would I do without you?”
“You would be very frustrated,” I say, laughing. “You would be very confused. You would be very lonely. And I would be, too.”
He chuckles on the other end. “I think you’re right. He is worried about that, and I should have thought of a different way to broach the subject with him.”
“I’m going to call him,” I decide.
“No, Hannah,” he says. “No, you don’t have to do that.”
“I do call him sometimes,” I say. “He and I talk on the phone. We text.”
“Yeah, but… there was another part of the conversation.” Gatlin sighs again.
“What?”
“I shouldn’t say this to you,” he says. “We talked about it at the beginning, maybe, a little bit, but then I didn’t want to pressure you, and I left it all behind, and I don’t want to introduce it now. It’s definitely something we can wait on, it can be years down the road, but…”
My heart is starting to pound, and I think I know what he’s going to say. “Gatlin?”
“I just… I maybe mentioned that maybe I would like to, um… start a family with you.”
My heart squeezes in half. I let out a breath. Oh, my God. “Did you?” I’m smiling. “Did you really say that to him?”
He lets out a relieved breath. “Hey, you don’t sound opposed.”
I lean back on the couch, thinking about everything that happened months ago, going back and forth, not taking that pill, the whole nine yards. I just breathe for a moment. “No, I’m not opposed,” I say, eventually.