“I love these Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots. I played them with everyone when I was in the hospital. An orderly named Oscar showed me how to win every time, and after that, no one could beat me.”
“What will happen to the stuff you still have here?”
“I guess I’ll put away things like the robots for my future nieces and nephews.”
“What about your kids?”
He puts the robots back on the shelf where they live and turns to me, looking stricken. “What kids?”
Suddenly, I’m cold all over once again, albeit for entirely different reasons. “The ones we’re going to have together.”
“I, um… I’m not having kids, Dee. How could I do that, knowing I may not live to see them grow up?”
I’m going to be sick. That’s the only thought in my head as the meager contents of my stomach come rushing up. I run for the bathroom in the hallway, managing to shut and lock the door before I bend over the toilet and vomit.
WYATT
Fuck. This night has been a goddamned disaster. Watching Dee sprint from the room and hearing her retching in the bathroom breaks my heart. Is this going to screw up everything? It can’t. I won’t let that happen. I go to the bathroom and knock softly on the door. “Let me in, sweetheart.”
“No.”
“Please?”
Several minutes later, the lock pops, and the door opens. I step into the scent of the air freshener Dee sprayed to hide the smell of vomit.
Her face is ghostly pale, and her eyes are big and full of tears that gut me.
“Dee, honey…”
She takes a step back from me, not that there’s far she can go in the small bathroom. “Don’t. Please. I’d like to go home, please.”
“To my place or Miami?” I can barely breathe as I wait for her to reply.
“To your place for now.”
For now. Have two words ever carried more weight?
I find a washcloth in the linen closet, wet it with cold water and wipe the tears from her face. “Please don’t cry. I can’t bear that.”
“I’m sorry.” She makes an effort to pull herself together, running her fingers through her hair and pinching some color into her cheeks. “Will you please tell them I’m not feeling well so we can go?”
“Yeah, sure, and don’t apologize for being upset.”
As we head downstairs, I’m full of fear that everything has changed with Dee in the matter of one disastrous evening. I’ve never been in a situation like this, in which someone else’s happiness means more to me than my own. I’m pissed with my parents, but apparently, they’re pissed with me, too, which makes everything awkward as we say our goodbyes.
“Will we see you before you leave?” Dad asks.
“I don’t think so. We’ve got a lot to do to get ready for the movers.”
“So, when will we see you again?”
“I’ll come back to visit in a couple of months, and you’re always welcome in Miami. Our house has a guest suite that’s all yours.” Although, after tonight, how can I subject Dee to having my parents staying in our house when they barely spoke to her? I’ll take that up with them on my own when she’s not there to be further hurt by them.
“Thank you for dinner, Mr. and Mrs. Blake,” she says in a stiff tone that’s so far removed from her usual warmth that it might as well be coming from a stranger. “It was very nice to meet you.”
“You, too,” Dad says.
Mom says nothing.
I want to scream at them. Don’t you realize this woman means everything to me? That she’s the love of my life, the same life they weren’t sure I was going to get to have for a very long time? I’ll say all that and more when I call them tomorrow. But for now, I have to get her out of here and deal with the other issue that arose upstairs.
I hug them both before I follow Dee out the door. “I’ll call you.”
Dee’s already in the car when I get in and look over at her, stunned to see tears rolling down her cheeks.
“I’m so sorry that was such a disaster in there.”
“It’s fine.”
I’ve never had a girlfriend before, but one thing I know for sure is if a woman is in tears and says everything is “fine,” it most definitely isn’t. I start the SUV and back out of the driveway, navigating the first streets I ever drove on, after the transplant when the whole world opened to me. Learning to drive and getting my license had been at the top of my list.
I want to tell her that, but I’m not sure I should say anything until we address the elephant sitting between us. I think back over every conversation we’ve had, and no, we never did talk about kids, which I can now see was a significant oversight on my part. I should’ve told her I don’t intend to have kids, but I sort of assumed she’d know that.
That was a huge mistake, one I’m not sure can be corrected at this point.
She says nothing to me on the twenty-minute ride to my place, which is a marked contrast to the usual nonstop chatter between us. We never run out of things to talk about, and the silence sits like a heavy weight on my chest.
I can’t fuck this up with her. After having been loved by her, I’d be devastated to lose her.
Back at my place, she goes straight upstairs to shower and change into pajama pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt of mine. It’s the first time she’s put on clothes for bed since she got here, and it makes me sad. I love sleeping naked with her.
I give her a half hour to herself before I go up to check on her. I bring her a glass of the iced tea she loves and put it on the bedside table on what’s become her side of my bed. I sit on the edge of the bed and reach for her hand, which is icy cold. “Can we talk about it?”
“Which part? The one about your parents taking an instant dislike to me or the part about you not wanting kids and waiting until now to tell me that?”
“It’s not that I don’t want kids, Dee. If everything were normal for me, I’d want a bunch of kids, especially if you were going to be their mother. But how do I do that to them or you, not knowing what the future holds for me? Do you want to wake up a single mother to however many kids we have when my heart suddenly gives out?”
“What I would’ve liked, about two weeks ago, was to know how you felt about this subject. I made the mistake of thinking when you said you were all in, that meant all in.”
“I’m all in with you. I love you. I want everything with you, but I don’t want to bring kids into this uncertain reality of mine.”
To my great dismay, she begins to cry so hard that sobs shake her body.
I reach for her, but she puts her hand up to stop me. “Dee, honey…”
“Don’t. Please don’t.”
I’ve never felt so helpless. “I can’t stand that you’re upset because of me.”
“It’s my fault.” She uses the tissue I hand her to wipe away tears and blow her nose. “I dove in without doing my due diligence. I should’ve asked you about kids before I agreed to go all in. I should’ve told you how I’ve waited my whole life to be a mother. When we talked about my miscarriage, I should’ve said how important it is to me to try again someday.”