“There are no negatives when it comes to our relationship,” he says firmly. “I knew this was possible going in. If I was worried about it, I wouldn’t be here.”
“Sometimes I have to pinch myself,” I say. “Like I can’t quite believe you’re here. With me. That we’re back to where we started.”
“I’m definitely here with you but we’re not back to where we started. Everything is different now.”
“My feelings aren’t different.”
“Aren’t they?” He strokes my hair. “I mean, are they exactly what they were four years ago? Or are they deeper now? Less urgency and more thoughtfulness? We’re not having knee-jerk reactions or making spontaneous decisions because we’re so frantic to be alone together. We’re older and, I think, more mature, handling things like adults instead of hormonal teenagers.”
“That’s true in a way but we were still sneaking around until very recently. And now we’re back to having a curfew.”
“That’s only because we’re trying to be respectful. At some point we’re going to have to push back. Especially when you move in with me.”
That catches me off-guard and it takes a few seconds before I can ask, “is that on the table? For real?”
He looks down at me in confusion. “Well, yeah. What did you think was going to happen? We would just keep doing what we’re doing until we’re thirty or whenever your dad decides it’s okay for us to be together?”
“Well, no, but…I wasn’t sure if that was the next step.”
“Unless you don’t want to.” He sounds slightly hesitant and I have to nip that in the bud.
“No, I do. More than anything. I just…”
“You just don’t want to upset your parents.” He sighs, obviously a bit frustrated. “At some point, you have to stop letting your parents manipulate you emotionally.”
“I know. I’m sorry. In my head, the future is based on family.”
“Yours, mine, or ours?” he asks curiously.
“That’s just it—shouldn’t they all be the same? If we get married, your family becomes mine and mine becomes yours.”
“Sure, but things are always more complicated than that. Our parents are still relatively young, so they’re working and whatnot. They have their own lives, and we’re going to have ours. We can’t make decisions based on what’s best for them—it has to be what’s best for us.”
I don’t know how to respond to that.
“Babe?” He takes my chin between two fingers and forces me to look at him.
“I guess I’m still trying to picture what ‘us’ looks like.”
“What do you want it to look like? I assumed we’d buy a house, move in together, and get married. Would you rather get married first? Before we move in together?”
“I honestly didn’t think about it in that much detail. I guess we should talk about those things.”
“You don’t want to move in?”
“Like I said, I do. I just want things to be positive when we do. I don’t want my father yelling and threatening, my mom crying, my sister begging me not to leave her alone with them.” I hesitate. “She thinks she and I are getting an apartment this summer once I get a job and she gets her real estate license.”
“Seriously?” He frowns, and there’s no doubt he’s not happy about that piece of information.
“I told her we couldn’t afford it and that she needed to think about childcare. She relies heavily on us to help with Charlie.”
“It’s fine to want to help, but again, you can’t put your life on hold because of a decision she made.”
“That’s the thing—our parents wouldn’t let her get an abortion so it wasn’t entirely her decision.”
“Then it should be their responsibility to help her.”
“You’d think. It just doesn’t always work that way.”
