Things I Want My Daughters to Know_ A Novel - Elizabeth Noble [130]
“What would they do with the babies?” The second it was out of her mouth, Jennifer wished it unsaid. That was the high-octane subject.
Stephen let it go. His mind was on other things. “If these are the perks of being childless, I say bring it on.”
AFTER THE SECOND TIME, IT WAS JENNIFER WHO FELL ASLEEP, sated and contented in a way she didn’t remember feeling for a while. Her mind felt empty.
When she woke up, an hour or so later, Stephen was smiling at her, his fingers in her hair.
“I don’t know, you promise a guy a night of lust, and then you fall asleep on him.” But he was smiling.
She poked him gently in the stomach with her index finger. “Be careful what you wish for, stud.”
Stephen clucked quietly and pulled her gently, so that her head was on his chest. She couldn’t see his face, but she could hear his heart beating.
“Why can’t it always be like this?” he asked, with a sigh that might have been happy or sad. He wasn’t talking about the sex.
“I don’t know.”
“I love you, Jen.”
She took a deep breath, feeling him holding his own breath, and his chest tighten beneath her face, and then told him the truth.
“And I love you.”
He paused long enough for her to know that he hadn’t necessarily expected her to respond that way.
“So why do we let all the other crap get in the way, then?” His voice was small. “Why are we making each other so unhappy?”
It was the first time he had said out loud that either one of them was unhappy. Jennifer stayed where she was—she didn’t want to see him.
“I think…I think we’ve let things get bigger and bigger and not sorted them out. We’ve been…I’ve been a coward.”
“Well, if you have, then so have I. It isn’t all your fault.”
“Can we talk…now?”
She thought of a song she’d once loved. Something about love having its own voice. About both of you needing to listen to it, to save it. Was he listening to it now? Maybe this was their time.
She sat up, pulling the dressing gown over her shoulders. Reaching for the bedside light, she turned it on, and they both squinted against the sudden brightness. Stephen looked right at her, and his eyes filled with tears that she hadn’t heard or felt coming.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him cry. If she ever had…
“You don’t want to have a baby with me, do you?”
Another first. That hadn’t been said out loud. She didn’t answer.
“I should have asked you, straight out, ages ago. I’ve been an idiot. I didn’t want to ask, because I was afraid of what the answer would be. But you’d have to be an idiot not to realize what was going on, when you wouldn’t go for the tests last year. It wasn’t anything to do with the doctors or being afraid you might not be able to have kids, or anything else you told me, or I told myself. That was all a smokescreen. I’ve known for a while. You don’t want to have a baby with me.”
“Stephen.”
“Don’t you love me anymore?” One tear had rolled down his cheek. Jennifer found it unbearably sad and shocking. “I know I’ve been a pig. I know I have. I don’t know what came first. I’ve been a pig because I’ve been frightened. I know that sounds like the biggest excuse ever, and I know that doesn’t make it okay, but I think…” He struggled to put his feelings into words. “I think I’ve been afraid, for ages and ages, that you don’t really love me, and that you’ve been getting ready to leave me. For a while I wondered if there was someone else.” She shook her head at him, vigorously, no. “I almost wished there was—that would have been something I understood, a tangible problem, something I could try and fix. The baby thing is a red herring, really, isn’t it? I mean, whether we have a baby together or not isn’t the point. I mean, I want one. I always thought we’d have one…more, maybe. But it isn’t really…about that, is it?”
He was right. It wasn’t. She wasn’t Wendy. It wasn’t cut-and-dried for her.
“We don’t even know if I can.”
“That doesn’t matter. I don’t care. That’s not what matters to me. What matters is whether you’re going to stay with me, Jen. Not whether we have a baby. You not trying to find out