“If you decide you need something...”
“I’ll come to the door and let someone know.”
She smiled and gave a small bow, then turned and left them to their meal, closing the doors quietly behind her.
They ate for a few minutes in silence, then Gabe resumed his interview. “Are you in school?”
“I was. I’m taking some time off because I’m not sure what I want to do. It was okay to be indecisive at first because I had to get all the basic core classes in. But now it’s to the point where if I don’t have a declared major, I’m flying blind and wasting money I don’t have to waste. I don’t want to be like some slave with massive college debt I can never climb out from under.”
And she probably didn’t want to be Gabe’s slave either, he thought. But aloud he stuck to the conversation she thought she was having and said, “You have no idea what you want to do?”
“I mean... in a perfect world I know what I’d like, but it’s silly and unfeminist and... you’ll laugh. Or be offended.”
“Try me.”
Julie’s face turned nearly as red as her sweater. There was some resistance to this admission but somewhere within her she seemed to find the courage to say the words. “I want a simple life. I want to find the right man, someone who can take care of me. And then I want to take care of him and his house. And children if we have them. God, I can’t believe I said that out loud. It’s so mortifying.”
Gabe laughed.
“I knew you’d laugh at me.”
“I’m not laughing at you. Trust me. I was just thinking you were in college to get your MRS degree.”
Julie looked down at her plate. “Yeah. Kind of, I guess. It’s pathetic.”
Gabe reached across the table and covered her hand with his. “No. It’s not pathetic at all. You want what you want. At least you’re brave enough to say it instead of chasing an ambition that doesn’t truly interest you.”
In truth, Gabe found himself ridiculously happy she had no large goals of her own. The idea that her sole ambition in life might be to serve him sent a thrill down all his nerve pathways. At least if things progressed and he became the demanding bastard he knew himself to be, he wouldn’t be robbing her of some other great ambition and life.
“Do you want children?” He worried this might be too much for a first date—not exactly light conversational fare—but kids didn’t fit into his life. He had to ask all the important questions now before he let himself get carried away with plans for their future.
“I’m not sure. I’m pretty young. It’s a little early to decide that now, I think. Do you have kids?”
“No.”
“Do you want them?”
“No.”
“O-okay.”
“I got the snip. I never wanted them and wanted to be sure I never had them.”
“Oh.”
He watched as she carefully brushed her hair over her shoulder. More a nervous gesture than a flirtation. Dammit. She did want kids. This was clearly a dead end that was only going to make her uncomfortable, so Gabe shifted the conversation. They could worry about this kid thing later.
“So, you’re looking for a rich husband then?”
“No. He doesn’t have to be rich. And if he makes a small wage and needs my help to earn money, that’s okay, too. I’d prefer to stay home, but I have a job. I can work. It’s not a problem.”
“I’m teasing you,” Gabe said. “I don’t think you’re a gold digger. Do you have any hobbies or interests?”
“I-I like to play the piano.”
“Are you any good?”
“Well, I’m not concert caliber if that’s what you’re asking, but I’m good to the untrained ear.”
“You didn’t think to pursue that as a career?”
Julie’s lip turned up in a look of disgust that was almost too precious given her soft, sweet features. “God no. If I turned my love into a job, it would turn into... well... a job. I want it to be something I do because I love it, not something I’m striving to compete with the whole world for. I don’t want to be the best. I just want to be.”
She might be innocent—far too innocent to work where she worked and to have reached the age of twenty-two—but she had all the makings of a submissive in every other aspect. Could he not gently lead her along this path? She seemed willing to be led, almost starving for it.
Leaving aside the kid thing. But maybe later she’d change her mind. Or maybe she was being honest and it wasn’t a priority. Maybe she’d just been taken aback by how firmly he’d said no. And if he had to live a double life with her, couldn’t he set her up somewhere in suburbia and adopt a couple of kids? Men in crime families did the suburban family thing all the time. Probably not the best rationalization or example, but he was reaching for anything here.
“W-what do you do?” she asked, bringing him back to the present.
Gabe stiffened, still undecided on what he would tell her about that. But of course if he was grilling her, she’d begin to return the favor.
But Julie continued and supplied a story for him. “I was sure you were in construction.”
He laughed. There was a weird sort of truth in that, if you counted what he did with the girls who came to the house for training construction. Maybe reconstruction. But definitely something new and grand was being built through his hands.
“You’re pretty perceptive,” he said.
Her face lit up. “So you are in construction?”
“I am.” But even this recombining of the truth turned his stomach. He didn’t want something fake with her. He didn’t want to have a whole secret life behind locked doors miles away from her. He wanted to be able to confide the truth. But there was no way he could tell her without bringing her to the house. And then she’d be his prisoner. Even without great ambitions, he didn’t think he could do that to her. She wasn’t just some girl. She was the girl who’d been tugging plaintively at his heart for months now.
“Are you close with your family?” Gabe asked.
“For a long time I was. They offered to pay for my college, but they wanted me to go to seminary. They had this idea in their head that I’d meet some nice preacher boy and that I would make an ideal preacher’s wife. But I think it was this last ditch effort to keep me religious—like he could somehow babysit my thoughts and convictions. When I told them I didn’t want to go to seminary and that I wouldn’t marry someone religious, let alone a minister, they flew off the handle and disowned me. Supposedly I was killing my poor father with my rebellion.”
She looked down at her plate as if realizing how personal she’d gotten with him. “I-I’m sorry. That was way too much information probably for a first date.” She took a slow breath, smiled nervously, and said, “No, I’m not close with my family. You?”
Suddenly her working at a dive bar made sense. It was perhaps the least religious place she could immerse herself in... well, besides the house Gabe helped run, anyway.
He swallowed a bite of food and took a drink of saki. “I am similarly estranged from my own family. Though for very different reasons. They’re all a bunch of raging alcoholics. I left home the second I could be free of them.”