I trail off, so angry I don’t know how to tell him. I’m also aware that my voice is climbing higher and higher, and louder, too, and I should probably take this inside before the neighbors file a noise complaint.
I storm back inside, and hear Zach stumbling to follow me.
“Is this your way of telling me you want to start trying for kids?”
I spin back around, hands jabbing at the air or back on myself as I talk.
“No! I just—you know, I can’t wait till I’m forty to start thinking about it, you know? I don’t have that luxury.” I break off with a sigh and tug my hands through my hair. “We should be talking about those things, and we’re not and . . . ”
Zach sighs, rubbing his hand over his mouth, and I hear him mutter, “It’s too early for this bullshit.”
“What?” I hiss.
He blushes when he realizes I heard him, but then his gaze hardens, his jaw sets and he nods as if steeling himself before saying, “This is ridiculous, Serena, you get that, right? If you wanted to talk about kids, or if you want to get married, or if you want to move to a bigger house, or whatever, then why didn’t you just say that? Why didn’t you just ask me?”
“Well apparently if I had, you wouldn’t have had a fucking opinion anyway!”
“Excuse me for not having planned out every minute of the rest of our lives!”
“We’ve been together for four years, Zach! You’re telling me you never stopped to think how you might propose one day? Or even if you would? If you wanted to?”
“Do you want me to?”
“That’s not the point!”
Zach scoffs, but the sound quickly turns into a disbelieving chuckle. He paces away from me and then back again, getting up close until he’s only inches away. “Then what is the point, Serena?
Why don’t you fucking spell it out for me, since I’m obviously not getting it?”
I shove him back. “Don’t look at me like that. Like I’m being a total bitch.”
“You are! You’re being a bitch! It’s not like you. What the hell is going on this morning?’
“I’m trying to talk to you about it but—”
“Oh, is that what you’re doing? Because it sounds more like you’re attacking me for not having been part of a conversation you think we should’ve had, without ever telling me! You do realize how extremely absurd this whole thing is right now, right?”
“Screw you, Zach.”
“Do you want to sit down and talk about how many kids you want, or when you want us to get married? Have you already picked out colors for a nursery?”
“Oh, fuck you!” I’m screaming now, and I don’t even care if it wakes up the whole freaking apartment building. I grab Zach by his T-shirt to shove him out of the living room and into the entryway.
“If it’s so fucking absurd why don’t you just do what you do best and ignore it, and go away for a pint with the boys till you decide it’s all blown over?”
“Come on, that’s not fair.”
I don’t know if he means that it’s not fair because he wouldn’t do that, or because he’d love to do exactly that, but he can’t, because the building is on lockdown. I don’t care to know the answer; I have a horrible feeling it’s the second one.
“You’re the one not being fair,” I tell him, my voice hitching.
“You’re the one calling me a bitch just because I want to talk about something real for a change!”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
“Then what did you mean? Huh?”
“Fuck this,” Zach grumbles, shaking his head. “Maybe I should go.”
“Yeah, you do that. Good luck. Where are you going to go, huh?”
He stands there looking at me, lips pressed tightly together and jaw working furiously as he churns over words he decides not to say. A single line cuts through his forehead and I think for a second about how I’ve never seen his eyes look such a bright blue. He looks ready to cry and my heart splinters.
Please don’t cry, Zach, because if you cry, I will too, and then we won’t get anywhere.
He doesn’t cry. I watch as his posture shifts and his whole body turns rigid. His hands don’t even shake. He is completely and utterly still, and then he lifts his chin. I hear the sharp, loud breath he draws in through his nose, and lets out again.
What right does he have, to be so angry with me? To call me a bitch?
How can he just not have an opinion on these things? How can he just expect to go with the flow, over such major life decisions?
It makes me feel like he doesn’t even care about the life he has with me. It makes me feel like . . .
Like he’s settling.
Like he’s just with me to pass the time.
It makes me feel like I’m settling.
“I have to get ready for work,” I say, and I shut myself in the bathroom. I actually do need to take a shower, but instead, I sink to the floor with my back against the door, hugging my knees to me and burying my face in the fluffy sleeves of my dressing gown, stifling the sob that tears itself out of my throat.
I hold myself tighter, my body hunching as small as I can make it go, like I might somehow be able to keep my breaking heart together like this.
apartment #22 – olivia
Chapter Fifteen
Sure, it’s fine, go ahead and watch TV, it’s absolutely not bothering me. I’m in the next room! I can totally work just fine from my bedroom! It is A-okay. Don’t you guys worry about me, just have fun. It’s really not a problem.
It is absolutely a problem. It is absolutely not fine.
But, I guess, it has to be fine, because I have no choice in the matter. And it’s not their fault, I know that.
I’m doing my utmost to keep being a good hostess. I’d want them to do the same for me.
That doesn’t stop me feeling totally exhausted, though. And it is much harder than I thought it would be to focus—especially with one of them knocking on the bedroom door every so often to say, “Sorry, Liv, how does the oven timer work? Livvy, sorry, just quickly—how do you get the extractor fan in the bathroom to turn on? Just bringing you a cup of tea, Olivia, love . . . and, while I’m here, where did you say the laundry detergent is, only I can’t find it in the cupboard under the sink?”
Even without that, though, the state of disarray my apartment is in is enough to keep me at least mildly stressed out. Jeremy brought Kim an extra bag of clothes when he brought the shopping the other day, and he brought Lucy some of her clothes from their parents’.
Addison’s been borrowing some of mine since we’re roughly the same size. Unfortunately, though, all this means is that everywhere you step in the apartment, there seems to be a rogue pair of socks, someone’s bra, a bunched-up T-shirt none of us are sure is clean or dirty so we toss it on the laundry pile just in case. I know the girls are making an effort to keep it tidy, but it’s more difficult than any of us thought.
Even the sight of the drying rack cluttered with damp laundry in the corner of the bedroom stresses me out.
I’m starting to realize that Kim isn’t the only one of us who likes things to be just so.