“She’ll never forgive me.”
Luke grabbed Mariana’s hand. “I know you feel that way.”
He said it all the time. Mariana hated it. “You don’t know.”
“Look. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“She didn’t know where Ellie was.” Mariana had ruined her chance. Her only chance.
Luke sighed. Again.
It had been sweet earlier, when Luke had asked that they stay at home instead of going out. They’d been planning on going to a picnic at their friend Savannah’s condo in Oakland, but when they’d looked at traffic, it would have taken them an hour and a half to get there, and who knew how bad it would be on the way back? Luke had nuzzled Mariana’s throat, his scruff making her shiver. “Let’s stay home and make some belated fireworks of our own.” Mariana had laughed in surprise and spun in his arms.
It had felt like Before. It used to be they’d spent full days in bed whenever they could steal the time. Since the proposal, though, they’d been so wretchedly polite. The few times they’d had sex had felt perfunctory, bodily needs met, that was all.
Today, though, was different. It had been old times. The windows shook with another reverberation outside. A full week after the Fourth of July, the Potrero neighborhood was still beating a staccato rhythm of airborne blasts punctuated by whistles. The bed swayed and thumped joyfully along with their movements. She kept her eyes open while she came, and he’d done the same. That had been the worst—and the best—part.
Lying on his back, Luke spoke toward the ceiling, “Honey—”
Mariana sighed. That simple noise was enough to take a bit of light from the room. Luke didn’t finish his sentence. He got up. The water ran in the bathroom. She could see him in profile, leaning forward, his wrists on the sink, his head down. He stayed like that for a long, unbearable moment.
She was going to lose him if she kept this up. There was no relief in the thought.
He finally left the bathroom and sat next to her on the bed. “Mariana—”
“Why do you stay?”
“You still don’t know?” His laugh said that things were the same, that he still loved her the same way.
She was—what were those rocks called? Where ships wrecked? She was those. “Your proposal . . . You shouldn’t . . .” You’re wasting your time with me. Why bother? Why are you here with me now?
“I love you, you idiot.” He tugged on a lock of her hair. “I love the way you cuddle yourself into me until sweat runs off me in the middle of the night. I love the way you laugh at more than half of my jokes. I love the way you fit on the back of my Harley. I love the way when you’re at the shop, you have your own work to do on the app and I don’t have to worry about you. I love your sexy walk, and I like this slick spot right here.” He slipped his hand to where he’d so recently been, and Mariana gasped. “I love that you like to cook but can still manage to burn rice.”
“Hey!”
“And I love that I can see how much you love me by the way you buy the baking soda toothpaste instead of your damn Colgate.”
“I hate that baking soda shit,” she said mildly.
“But you buy it for me.” Luke smiled.
“Let’s have a baby instead,” she said. It was a thought that had flickered through her mind two or three times a week for the last month or so. When Luke had been inside her earlier, she’d imagined it, a child made by them—a little extension. A piece of them, held to the side. Just in case. It was a stupid thought, one she couldn’t stop having.
Luke scrambled, crablike, backward and up the bed so he was sitting against the headboard. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
She kept her voice light. “Why not?”
“Why not? You’re forty-four. I’m forty-eight. You won’t marry me. We’ve never even talked about babies. You bring it up now?”
“There are ways.”
“You realize you’re being insane. I know you’re not serious.” He wiped his forehead, swiping his hand down to his mouth.
She wasn’t really serious, or at least she hadn’t been, not up until about sixty seconds ago. She’d been pregnant once in her early twenties and she’d never regretted the abortion she’d had. She’d never thought about getting pregnant on purpose. Not till now. “We could do it. Think about what it would be like.”
“God. Everything is about your sister.”
Heat filled her mouth, burning her tongue. Mariana held up a hand. “Excuse me?”
“I know you love her more than anyone in the whole world, and I’ve always accepted that.”
Anger flared low in her belly. She folded her arms. “You had no choice but to accept that.” Of course she loved Nora more. Of course she did.
“That’s what I’m saying. I’ve been mostly fine with that up until now. But, Jesus, Mariana.” He wiped his lips. Normally he would reach out and touch her leg or she would twist and put her head in his lap. But neither of them moved. They were frozen. They didn’t jump when a firework mortar blasted somewhere outside, rattling the glass again. “A child that you”—he waved his hands in the air—“give birth to or buy or adopt or whatever, that won’t make Nora think you’re good enough to take care of her daughter.”
It hit her with the force of the sun. He was right. It was literally the only thing she hadn’t tried in her constant quest for her sister’s acceptance.
How naive of her. “Holy shit.”
“Love—” He started to reach for her and then took his hand back, pulling the sheet over his lap. Luke was almost never conscious of his nakedness. Then he took a deep breath that Mariana could almost feel. “It’ll be okay. Having Ellie here. It’ll work great. We can move your office into the spare bedroom, and she can have the attic. She’s always loved it up there—”
“No, no, no, no. No.” She wrapped her arms around her knees, realizing that she was freezing even though she was still sweating at the armpits. “It won’t—she won’t—we won’t need to do that. It’s not going to come to that. She’ll be fine. I don’t know how . . . But I’m not . . .”
Luke’s answer was his silence.
Mariana went on. “She will be. We have no idea what kind of breakthrough drug is about to be released. They’ve been researching it, just throwing buckets of money at it.” She’d read so much about it. Millions of dollars had to add up to a cure. Eventually. Soon. “And besides, she doesn’t want me to have Ellie. I’m not good enough.” Her voice trailed off. She wasn’t.
“Well, she sure as hell won’t want Paul to have her.”
“I hate that you thought of this.”
Luke shut his eyes.
She scooted forward then. She put her hands on his knee and shook it. “Nora’s going to be fine.” He smelled like them, like sex and sweat and faintly of the rosemary shampoo they both used. “She’s going to be okay. Eventually.”
When he opened his eyes, she saw the truth.
Fuck him, anyway. She scrambled off the edge of the bed and lunged for her robe.
“You’re going to have a kid whether you like it or not,” he said.
“Stop talking.”
“Paul’s never going to help. You all know that. You’re going to have to take care of Ellie when your sister isn’t here.”
“Stop.” They didn’t yell at each other. Ever. She was a professional in the field of mind-body balance. And she didn’t care that she was screaming. “You’re so full of shit. You don’t know anything.” Her hands fumbled with the robe’s tie—she couldn’t make a bow. She’d forgotten how.
He stood and made the bow for her as she shook in front of him. Then he led her back to bed and pulled the blanket up over both of them. Mariana’s teeth chattered so hard she bit her tongue and she tasted blood.
“I love you,” she said against his neck.
“I know.”
Another explosion roared outside. The smell of gunpowder drifted in through the open window. “No, I really love you.” She wanted to tell him she loved him more than Nora. She wanted to say it so badly.
“I know.” His hand was heavy on the back of her neck.
Open hands cling to nothing.
What a bullshit mantra. She wrapped her arms around him as tightly as she could.