“Gosh, Cadence, please don’t be so nice about it,” he said, sounding miserable. “I just… I come home to that bland, empty apartment every day and feelsolonely. And I think, ‘okay, just make it homier in here, maybe that’ll help.’ But I don’t want it to be homier. I want tocome home. I want to be with my family. I—I miss that so much. It tears me up inside. And maybe it’s selfish of me to ask, but do you think you’d ever be willing to try again?”
She opened her mouth to reply, but he shook his head and kept going.
“And I don’t mean like a clean slate. I don’t want you to pretend that our past didn’t happen. I just… I really want to try. I want to be better.”
She believed him. She knew what Tyler looked like when he was being distant and knew what he looked like when he was being heartfelt. This was the latter. Nothing about him as he sat before her reminded her of the man from whom she’d grown so distant. This was the Tyler from before, and she felt so, so grateful to see him again.
But…
“Ty,” she said quietly. “That’s all great, and I hear you. I believe you. But what if… there’s no reason to believe I’m suddenly going to be able to get pregnant.”
His eyes widened.
“Cadence, no,” he said. “That’s not—” He paused. “Okay, obviously I’d be psyched if we had another kid. But if it was just you, me, and Izzy for the rest of our lives? That’s… it’s everything. It would be perfect.”
She let her eyes flutter closed. It was that or risk a tear slipping free. Because, yes, it did sound perfect.
And yet, she wasn’t sure that grief wouldn’t come between them again.
“Can I think about it?” she eventually managed, only the smallest wobble in her voice breaking free.
She opened her eyes when she felt Tyler grasp her hand.
“Cadence,yes,” he said. “Of course you can. You can take as much time as you need. I want us to be a family again, but Idon’twant to go back to the way things were. I want to be better. I want tolistenbetter. And I’m okay with waiting as long as you need.”
Her lips twitched, and his expression lightened a little.
“Fine, fine, you know me too well. I won’tlikewaiting, but I’ll do it. Because I want you to feel sure. As sure as I feel.”
This time, a tear did escape.
“Okay,” she managed.
“Okay,” he agreed, squeezing her hand once before letting go. She could practicallyfeelhim holding back words. He was a fixer by nature. It was what had led him to his job, and it pervaded different parts of his life.
And knowing that made her appreciate his silence all the more. It made her believe even more strongly that he meant what he said about changing.
“Listen,” he said, rapping his knuckles smartly against the table. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to have a really good dinner. We’re going to not worry about anything more than tonight. After we eat, we’re going to do that thing where we pretend that we don’t want dessert, and then we pretend that we are going to share one, and then we decide to get two and split them.”
She smiled. “It just feels like you’re getting twice the dessert than if you ate one whole one,” she said. It was a comfortable conversation, one they’d had a thousand times, and it made her feel far calmer than she had only moment before.
“Exactly,” he agreed. “After that, I’ll drive you home, and I’ll give you space to think.”
“Thank you,” she said quietly.
He mimed locking his lips and throwing away the key, which Cadence assumed was a sign that they were no longer talking about heavy topics.
Their food arrived mere moments later, and their conversation flowed from topic to topic. They had a cheerful debate over whose dinner was more delicious, Cadence’s seafood alfredo or Tyler’s wood-fired steak and side salad.
“You are nuts,” she said, pointing at him with a fork, “it’s a seafood restaurant. You order the seafood!”
“We live in a seaside town,” he countered, laughing. “If I only ate seafood at seafood restaurants, I’d never eat anything else.”
“You’d be happy though,” she said, biting down on a perfectly grilled prawn to punctuate her statement.
“I’m happy right now,” he returned, taking a bite of steak.
She really had no argument for that.
