“I think,” I say, “that if we put our money from the show together, plus I have some savings, we could get something bigger than we need right now.” I swallow.This is treading onto dangerous ground again, ground that assumes things about our future that I’ve desperately wanted but have been terrified to think about. “You know, so we could stay there forever, if we wanted to, and never need a bigger place.”
“You mean when we have kids,” Emily ventures, and I grin right back at her.
“Yeah, when we have kids.” We’ve talked in generalities about that before, and that’s something we’ve both said we want.
Emily lays her head on my shoulder. “I think that’s a great idea.” She pauses. “Does that mean you’ll want to get married someday?”
We’ve talked about that in generalities, too.Though we haven’t talked about either as much over the last six months, when shit got real. “Yeah, of course,” I say. “I’d marry you anytime.”
She lets out a little whimper, like that’s the best thing she’s ever heard, and leans up to kiss me again. Our mouths lock together, and it’s hot, and it feels so damn good, and my body is starting to—
She breaks away. “Hey,” she says, like she just thought of something. “You know I want kids. But we’ve never really talked numbers.”
Oh. I always assumed we’d have two, since we’ve talked in the plural sense. I don’t have any more specific ideas than that, and I wonder if that’s about to get me in trouble.
“That’s true,” I say.
Emily bites her lip, her eyes cutting to the side. “And maybe I should mention that I want a big family.”
Huh. Okay, so if she wants three or four, we might want to get a house with at least three bedrooms, but that still shouldn’t be a problem—
“I’d love at least five,” she says. “Five to eight. Somewhere in there.”
My mouth falls open, and I stare at her. “You wantwhat? Eight?Children?”
She winces. “Really, though, five would be fine. We don’t have to have as many as eight, and—”
“Eight children,” I say, feeling breathless again. “You want to have eight children.”
“But we don’t have to! I mean, obviously you don’t want to, and—”
“Are you telling me how I feel again?”
She stops and presses her lips together for a moment. “How do you feel about that, Jason?”
“Stunned,” I say truthfully. “I’m processing.”
“Okay.That’s totally fair. And we really don’t have to have that many—”
“But you want to,” I say. “So let me think about it.”
Emily nods, though she looks nervous.The truth is, now that I’m adjusting to the idea—which definitely took me by surprise—it makes sense to me. Emily likes her job, and she says she’ll always want to work in some capacity. But she doesn’t love her career like I love mine, and I remember back when we were first dating, telling her once that I thought she’d make a great mom, that she might find a real joy in that that she doesn’t get from her job. At the time, I expected to get reamed out for being sexist and insulting, but Emily agreed. Not every woman has to want kids more than she wants a career, but I’ve always had that sense about Emily.
I want to be there with her for that, so bad. And if she wants eight kids, it’s not really a question of whether I want to do that with her.
“How could we afford that?” I ask. “I mean, I do well at my job, but you’re not going to be able to work full time, not with eight kids—”
“Or five. Or fewer, we don’t have to—”
“Emily,” I say, raising my voice just a little, and her face falls.
I take a deep breath. Damn, after all the conversations that have gone wrong lately, I do not want to screw this up. “This is something you want, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she says. “But—”
“So we’re at least going to talk about it.”
“But it doesn’t seem to be somethingyouwant.”
