“They’re more like land developers,” she deadpans. “Stake a claim, build a cul-de-sac, fight about zoning.”
I bark a laugh. She hides a smile in her shoulder. We rinse our fingers with water from a bottle. I steal a napkin; she steals the last shrimp. It’s easy. Too easy. I remind myself that there’s competition for her heart.
We almost make it the whole walk without talking about anything that really matters. The easy part runs out somewhere near the fountain. We’re quiet, the kind of quiet that makes me itch to crack a joke, but she doesn’t laugh at the last one I tried. She keeps twisting her sleeve, eyes locked on the water. I know better than to fill that silence with nonsense.
Since I’m not a coward, I ask gently, “So, are you going to tell me what’s really bothering you?”
She swallows, watching the fountain. “I don’t know if I should.”
“Alright.” I let the stones rattle under our shoes. Palm fronds gossip above us; the harbor smells like salt and diesel and the kind of evening that keeps secrets.
“It’s Rowan,” she says at last, like she’s broken some pact we made by staying silent. “Before he came to Lamaze class, well, we had this fight.” Her fingers twist the edge of her sleeve. “I guess it was a fight. He told me about foster care. But he didn’t just tell me. He used it against me.”
I let out a sound that isn’t a laugh, not quite. “He gives knives when he means to hand you a key, sure,” I say, then laugh at how weirdly poetic it came out. “Sorry, that sounds?—”
Willow looks up sharply, like she’s surprised I’m taking the conversation so well. “No, that’s exactly it.” She stops short, her shoes scraping noisily against the ground. “You’ve known him for a long time, huh?”
I nod. “A fair while, I have. He’s been through a lot. He aged out of foster care. He was never adopted. Everything he has, he did himself. He’s resilient. And he doesn’t know what a family even looks like, Willow. My friend…he claims he’s locking the door to keep you safe, but mostly he bolts both sides so no one gets in or out, like.”
She looks at me sternly, like she’s reading between the lines. Her freckles stand out in the bright sun. Sighing, she shakes her head and keeps walking. “That makes sense. He said he doesn’t do attachments like the rest of you, and that he knew I wanted him to be scared but he wasn’t scared, he was…smarter thanyou two. That I should just pick you or Declan.” She looks up apologetically. “Not that either of you isn’t a prize, but?—”
“But it still hurts when someone rejects you,” I say, for her and for me. It does hurt. This is the first time she’s said aloud what we’ve always known—that there’s a choice to made, that she alone has to make it.
“Right,” she says, guarded but matter-of-factly. “And also, it isn’t fair to make the choice for me. And then later he came to Lamaze, and so I thought he had realized how silly that was, but?—”
“He ran scared after he showed up for you?”
“Yes,” she says flatly. “He…he told me he’ll never be my boyfriend. And I told him he’s nothing to me.”
“Do you want him to be your boyfriend?” I ask, not looking, not wanting to scare her from telling the truth with whatever she might see in my eyes.
“I don’t feel like I have any time to think about what I want with him. I feel like it’s all up to him.”
“You wanted him to say he was scared,” I say, because it’s the obvious thing and because I know her enough to call it. I chuckle a little, imagining Rowan saying “I’m scared.” It’s like imagining a pig talking.
She looks at me, small and honest. “Don’t laugh.”
“I’m not,” I tell her quickly, bumping her a little. “I’m just…he’s a tough nut to crack.” I smile sympathetically.
She says, “It’s just that if he had said he was scared, then I could do the comforting. Because then it wouldn’t all be on me. Because if he admitted fear, it would make room for me.”
She stops talking abruptly, and I let her think, not filling the sound waves with fluff. After a second, she flinches at a thought, blinks, and says quietly, “My dad left my family when I was little. He had a whole secret family we didn’t know about, and he chose them over us. I learned to, I don’t know, fight? For my spot? Like…if they don’t want me, and I can make them choose me, it’s better than someone who outright wants me. Because I didn’t prove anything.”
There it is, the hinge. The reason she’s even entertaining Rowan. It’s not too different from the reason Rowan isn’t entertaining a future with her and the babies. The way abandonment teaches you to prize who won’t stay because staying is the thing you never got. The way you start thinking someone who keeps you at arm’s length is kinder than the one who might leave.
“You deserved a father who stayed. You did, love,” I tell her, reaching for her free hand. She lets me take it, and I shake her arm gently. “Not one who taught you how to measure people by the distance they keep.”
Her laugh is a jagged thing. “So poetic tonight.” I don’t say anything back, and then she punctuates the thought by saying, “It’s stupid.”
“Oi, it isn’t.” I slow my steps to match hers. “It makes sense.” She stares out at the water. “You deserve someone who doesn’t make you prove you deserve him,” I say before I can stop myself.
She bites her lip, thinking. The moon pretends to be a lamp and the lamps pretend to be moons; everything is a little false and alittle grand. “So you’re saying I deserve someone like you? That I should forget him?” she asks.
I want to tell her she should choose me, but the words curdle in my throat. They’d sound selfish when she’s this raw. “That’s not what I said.” My voice is soft.
“It’s what you meant, though, isn’t it?” She meets my eyes, trying to see if I’ll flinch.
Maybe it is what I meant. Maybe it isn’t. Rowan is a tough nut to crack, yes, but hecanbe cracked. I’m sure of it. Even if I never have.
