Chapter 6 #2
Her grip on her water glass tightened until her knuckles went white. She set it down and pressed her fingers against her bare wrist, where her watch usually sat.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to turn movie night into a statement on our future.”
“It’s fine.”
“Doesn’t look like it.”
Kate nudged her fork until it ran perfectly parallel to the edge of the plate. It took her several seconds to speak.
“It wasn’t you. It’s the word ‘plan.’ It used to mean something was under control. Now I can’t tell if talking about next week is sensible or just a way to pretend nothing can go off the rails.”
I didn’t try to correct her. Outside, the dock bumped against the pilings.
“My mother always says my father just wasn’t ready,” she continued.
It wasn’t a topic I could push. I stayed right where I was.
“When he walked out, I mean. After my brother was born. I was six years old, and he took two days to come back. My mother packed garbage bags full of clothes and pretended she was doing spring cleaning. Then she reduced the whole thing to a handy catchphrase: Some men just don’t know how to handle surprises. ”
The bread cooled between us. Kate spoke looking at the center of the table, as if the wood grain could carry the weight of the conversation for her.
“That’s a cruel thing to lay on a six-year-old,” I said.
“She didn’t say it to be cruel. She said it because she was exhausted and he was a coward. But I heard something else. I learned that a surprise is a test, and that wanting someone to stay is the exact mistake that gets you left behind.”
There wasn’t an answer I could give that wouldn’t sound like defending my own gender. I wasn’t going to tell her I wouldn’t leave, as if staying were some cheap, easy pledge. Kate didn’t need a promise designed to soften the truth.
“And now?” I asked.
She let out a dry, hollow laugh.
“Now I’m pregnant by a man I barely know, who owns a house by a lake, plays professional rugby, and has way too much flour. Which part of that sounds like a responsible plan to you?”
“The flour is under control.”
Kate covered her mouth. The laugh that escaped this time was small, catching in her throat at the end. She rubbed the corners of her eyes with her thumbs before a tear could spill over. Watching her do it left a dry ache behind my ribs.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“You don’t have to apologize.”
“I don’t want this to be what I am to you.”
The sentence hung over the table. I leaned back in my chair, because leaning forward would have been an impulse of my own body, not hers.
“It isn’t.”
Kate shook her head. “I don’t even know what this is to me. Sometimes I think if I wanted this, it would make me a version of myself I don’t recognize. A woman who lets a single night make her life choices for her. A woman who needs someone to stay.”
“Needing someone doesn’t make you any less capable.”
“No. But it makes me vulnerable to the exact same stupidity.”
“It wasn’t stupidity that your dad walked out. That was his choice.”
I held her gaze as I said it. Her eyes were rimmed with red, and a flush of heat was creeping up her throat. She looked furious with her own body for betraying her.
“I know,” she whispered. “I know that in theory.”
“Theory has a habit of showing up late.”
Kate flattened her palms against the wood. I kept mine resting on my thighs.
“What about you?” she asked. “Don’t tell me you’re great with surprises. I saw the notebook.”
The hit was clean. Earned.
“I’m not great with anything I can’t fix.”
“I gathered that.”
“My dad coached. When I was a kid, if I got hurt on the pitch, his first question was whether I could keep playing. The second was whether I needed ice. Sometimes the second question came way later.”
Kate waited. She didn’t look away.
“When I graduated from Cal, I thought I’d have to convince him that professional rugby was a real career.
All he asked was what it paid. It wasn’t greed.
It was his way of finding out if I was safe.
In his mind, providing was caring. If he could build something for you, fix something for you, pay for something, he didn’t have to sit with you when things went sideways. ”
“And you learned the language?”
“I speak it fluently.”
The rain intensified against the roof. In the dark glass of the window, the pendant light reflected the two of us across the table, with the shadow of the lake stretching out behind us.
“That doesn’t mean you’re him,” Kate said.
“No. But it means I have to pay attention when I start acting like him.”
Her gaze flicked to the drawer where I’d hidden the notebook, even though she couldn’t know what was inside. Then she looked back at me.
“What did you think when I called you?”
The question caught me with my fork halfway to my plate. I set it down.
“That I wanted to drive over to your apartment. That I wanted to know who your doctor was. That I wanted to buy things. That I wanted to make a list until the fear had boxes I could check off one by one.”
“That’s exactly what I was terrified of.”
“Yeah.”
“And now?”