“They let you do that?” Is what I finally say. Gideon’s expression doesn’t change, sideways on the pillow. “Wait, is that why your …semen… is sort of…” I make a hand gesture that I hope conveysnot quite the usual consistency.
“Oh. Yeah,” he says, blushing. “That happens.”
I’d just thought maybe he was really well hydrated or something.
“It took some convincing,” he goes on. “I had to find someone who was willing to perform one on a single guy in his twenties and sign a lot of forms.”
“So, youreallydon’t want kids,” I say.
“I really don’t,” he says, and then takes a deep breath and finally closes his eyes, lashes dark against his cheeks. “So, if you really do, this probably won’t work.”
I’ve thought about having kids. Of course, I’ve thought about having kids; find me a woman in her thirties who isn’t deeply aware of the possibility. At some point everything we’re told flips fromyou’re too young, not yettoyour eggs are going to dry up and then you’ll be a tragedy, and there’s shockingly little space between the two things. One minute it’s irresponsible and the next the clock is ticking, louder with every second that you don’t have a man, a house, a dog and whatever else childrearing is supposed to require.
It’s something I’ve never fully decided. I’ve never had the urge but I always figured that maybe I would, with the right person, the right circumstances.
Or maybe not. More than anything, this feels like relief.
“I never really did,” I say. Gideon opens his eyes and narrows them at me, looking thoughtful and pensive, his thumb stroking over my belly. It kind of tickles.
“No?” he asks. “I know it’s a lot to bring up this early, but I don’t want to trick you, or trap you, or waste your time.”
“You areanythingbut a waste of time.”
“You know what I mean.” I do, as if falling for someone and sharing kisses and lying tangled in sheets and all the moments in between is a waste if it’s not leading to a goal. As if Gideon in all his delicate, brawny glory is nothing but a means to an end.
“I’m not as sure as you are,” I admit, and he huffs a tiny laugh. “But you’re, like,verysure.”
“I know,” he says, and rolls onto his back so he can look at the ceiling, muted sunlight pouring through a window. His bedroom’s on the second floor of his house, and when it’s late morning and beautiful like this, it feels like we’re lying in the sky. “I’ve always known. I remember being six and thinking that I never wanted kids.”
Six. I had no idea he was thinking about this when he was six. I was thinking about tutus and dinosaurs.
“You decided when you were that young?” I ask. I’m thinking,when we still knew each other?
“More or less,” he says. “Back then it wasn’tI think I should get a vasectomy,but I knew I didn’t want what my parents had.”
“You knew what you wanted even then?”
“Not all the way,” he says, and turns his head toward me, and in the morning light his eyes are the color of a penny that’s been left out in the rain for too long, shot through with darker spokes. “Not exactly. Not everything. But I knew this.” He swallows. “I knew a couple things.”
I try to imagine it: being sure about something for most of your life. Understanding the shape of it early and stepping into it, comfortable and secure, not guessing and second-guessing and winding up thirty-two and still uncertain. IthinkI want to stay in Sprucevale and IthinkI’d like to be with Gideon and IthinkI don’t want kids, but certainty’s always eluded me.
“Oh,” I finally manage to say.
“Will you promise me something?” he says. I’m on my side, watching him, and he rolls onto his back again, staring up. “That if you change your mind, you’ll tell me and not drag it out? Just—make it quick and clean, okay?”
“Of course,” I say, softly, then reach an arm across his chest. “Hey.”
Gideon turns his head. His body follows and then he’s closed the distance between us and we’re kissing and it’s gentle but focused, single-minded, the way Gideon does sometimes. There’s teeth but they don’t hurt. Not yet. When he pulls back, his fingers are still tangled in my hair.
“I think about you all the time,” he admits. “I wake up thinking about you, and I go to sleep thinking about you, and I think about you when I’m driving and cooking and tying my shoelaces and brushing my teeth and—”
Gideon takes a deep breath.
“And I think about us in five years, or ten, and I know that’s a little crazy, but it feels really right, Andi, so if you’re going to break my heart tell me. Just promise you’lltellme.”
And that feels like relief, too, the future splitting open and letting the sunlight in.
“Gideon, I will tell you,” I promise. “But I’ve spent way more time thinking about you than thinking about having kids.”
