Once we’ve ordered—she took my recommendations, glad for someone to point her in the right direction—she sinks back in her seat, wrapping her delicate fingers around the glass and lifting it to her lips.
“So,” she begins. “I…I guess we’ve got a lot to talk about, right?”
“We do,” I agree, mentally running through the checklist that I put together in my head before I came out here tonight. “First off, Lila, I don’t want to assume anything about your financial situation, but anything you need from me, consider it done.”
“Oh, right,” she replies, her brows momentarily drawing together. “I—yeah, I might need some help with that down the line. I have a job but I’m not working at the moment, and it’s only part-time, so…”
“Were you in college?” I ask. “When it…?”
I don’t know how to say it. Which is ridiculous, given that this is what I do for a living. If anyone should be comfortable talking about this stuff, it should be me, but I know I’m already straying too close to the bounds of discussing what happened between us that night in my cabin in the woods. If I bring it up, I’m worried that she’ll think this is the only reason I’ve brought her here, when we need to get into the practical side of things.
“No,” she murmurs, shaking her head. “I was studying for a while, but I— It didn’t work out. I had to drop out.”
“Oh, what were you studying?” I ask, with genuine interest. I barely know this woman, after all, and she is the mother of my children. I want to know just who they’re going to be raised by. What values she holds, what passions she’s pursued, everything.
“Uh, law,” she replies, lifting the glass to her lips and taking a sip, almost as though she’s hiding behind it. “Got a couple of years in, but it…”
“It wasn’t for you?”
She nods, seemingly relieved that I’ve filled in the blanks. “Yeah, something like that.”
“Took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do,” I reply. “Nothing wrong with it…”
“Yeah, but I bet you didn’t have twins to deal with,” she shoots back playfully.
I chuckle. “Point taken,” I admit. “Don’t know how well I would have balanced my studies with kids, if I’d had them…”
“Is that why you came to America?” she asks, tipping her head to the side. “To study, I mean?”
I nod. “Sure is. Some of the best schools in the world for what I wanted to do with my life, and I got a scholarship.”
She lets out a whistle through her teeth. “Damn, that’s impressive,” she murmurs. “I worked my butt off all the way through high school, thought I might get some kind of support, but I guess it never really happened for me.”
“Your parents couldn’t help you out?”
She shakes her head. “Didn’t have any. I was in foster care.”
“Oh,” I murmur, surprised. Maybe that explains why I haven’t heard any mention of her family pulling their weight with the twins.
“Yeah, but I made it,” she replies. “And I’ve got a family of my own now, right? That’s all that matters.”
It’s clear she doesn’t want to stick around in conversing about that topic for too long, and I’m happy to move it along. The food arrives, the table laden with a few different dishes.
“Help yourself,” I tell her, as I push mine toward her. “No way I’m going to be able to finish all of this.”
“You just told a breastfeeding woman to eat as much as she wants,” she remarks, cocking an eyebrow. “I don’t think you’re ready for this.”
I laugh as she tucks in. She’s got a good sense of humor, the kind that my family would have appreciated. My mum told me once, when I mentioned dating an American woman, that she didn’t know how I could put up with them, how I coped with how seriously they took everything, but I’m pretty sure Lila would have passed her test.
And I realize, as I’m sitting there, that I’m starting to see this as something more than just a get-together to discuss the matter of the twins. I’m letting myself get drawn into seeing this as some kind of date, and I know that’s dangerous, the kind of dangerous I can’t let myself get close to. I might be willing to provide for these kids in all the ways I can, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to be part of their lives—or hers, for that matter. I’ve seen what happens when I try to be part of a family, the destruction it seems to leave in its path, and the last thing I want is for her to be dragged into it too.
“So, you said you were married before, right?” she asks me, as she finishes up another bite of the pumpkin ravioli that she ordered.
I nod. “Yeah.”
“Any…I mean, anything else come out of that? Anything else I should know?”
I understand what she’s getting at. She might not have outright come out and demanded to know if I have any other kids, but she doesn’t need to.
