Incubus Dreams - Laurell K. Hamilton [104]
I didn’t know what to say to that. We’d both told each other our sad stories years ago. She knew all about my mother’s death, my father marrying the ice princess stepmother, and my perfect stepsister. We’d shared our bitterness toward our familes long ago. I knew all this, so why tell it again? Because something about the proposal had brought it up.
“You told me months ago that Louie is nothing like your dad.”
“Yeah, but he still wants to own me.”
“Own you,” I said, “what does that mean, own you?”
“We date, we have great sex, we enjoy each other’s company, why does he have to move in, or make me marry him?” There was something like real fear in her face.
I touched her hand where it lay clenched on the tabletop. “Ronnie, he can’t make you marry him.”
“But if I don’t agree to something, he’ll leave. We either move forward, or he’s gone. That’s him trying to force me to marry him.”
I felt like I wasn’t qualified for this talk, because her logic wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t like that. I knew Louie, and he’d have been horrified that she saw his proposal and his need to finalize things as ownership. I was almost a hundred-percent certain he didn’t mean it that way. I squeezed her hand and tried to think of what to say that would help things instead of hurt. Nothing came to mind.
“I don’t know what to say, Ronnie, except that I don’t believe Louie meant to hurt you like this. He loves you, and thought you loved him, and when people love each other, they tend to want to get married.”
She took her hand back. “How do I know this is love? I mean the love, like till-death-do-you-part love?”
Finally something I could answer. “You don’t.”
“What do you mean, you don’t? Isn’t there supposed to be a test, or a sign, or something? I thought if I ever fell in love that this panic wouldn’t be here. That I would be totally sure and unafraid, but I’m not. I’m terrified. Doesn’t that mean that Louie isn’t the one? That it would be a terrible mistake? Aren’t you supposed to be sure?”
Now I knew I was unqualified for this conversation. I needed like a pinch hitter to offer better advice than I had. “I don’t know.”
“Were you sure when you let Micah move in, sure that it was the right thing to do?”
I thought about it, then shrugged. “It wasn’t like that. He moved in almost before we’d dated, I . . .” How do you put into words things that you only feel, things that have no words attached to them? “I don’t know why I didn’t panic when he moved in, it just happened. One day I walk into the bathroom, and there’s a razor and a shaving kit. Then, when the clean clothes got put away, his T-shirts got mixed in with mine, and since they’re the same size, we left it that way. I’ve never dated anyone before who can wear the same clothes I can, it’s kind of neat to wear his jeans sometimes, or his shirt, especially if it smells like his cologne.”
“God, you love him,” she said in despair, almost a wail.
I shrugged and drank coffee, because talking was making it worse. “Maybe,” I said.
She shook her head. “No, no, your face goes all soft when you talk about him. You love him.” She crossed her arms over her chest and looked at me like I’d betrayed her somehow.
“Look, Micah moved in gradually, but I didn’t feel crowded the way you did with Louie. I like having his things in the bathroom. I like having a his and her side of the closet. Seeing his stuff with my stuff gives me a full cupboard feeling.”
“A what?” she asked.
“Getting a T-shirt out and realizing that it’s one I bought for him because it brings out the green in his eyes gives me that I’ve got my favorite foods in the cupboard and it’s a winter night, and I don’t have to go out in it feeling. I’ve got everything I need at home.”
She looked at me in soft horror.
Hearing myself say it out loud was a little frightening, but