Total pages in book: 47
Estimated words: 46599 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 233(@200wpm)___ 186(@250wpm)___ 155(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46599 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 233(@200wpm)___ 186(@250wpm)___ 155(@300wpm)
“Maybe,” he chuckles. “But you’ve done something better than just cook them. You’ve elevated them.”
I laugh at his phrasing. He chuckles along with me; all the tension and the unspoken heat are forgotten for a moment. It was like in the car, when I told him a half-truth, that I was thinking about a garden.
But it wasn’t just a garden. It was our garden.
I let my thoughts drift away, my fantasies blooming, a garden filled with light, Ben there, Alex, and our children. Mom and Dad were there too, all of them laughing, no rifts or pain caused by mine and Ben’s closeness.
“You get a dreamy look sometimes, Becca bee,” he says.
I look away, catching our reflection in the glass of the window. With the dark night behind it, it’s easy to make us out, with Ben looking like a giant, his forearms resting on the table. I look small next to him, the bagginess of his shirt hiding my shape, making me look vulnerable, like I need protecting.
He’s going to protect me.
“Do I?” I ask.
“Are you thinking about taking photos?”
“Sometimes,” I tell him. “Sometimes I’ll drift off imagining what I could do, like maybe I could travel…but then, I don’t really want to travel. Maybe I could take portrait photos. That seems like a fun job.”
“For kids?” he says, forking another chicken piece.
Hearing the word kids in his gruff voice sends my mind back to those fantasies, to the impossible garden and the laughter and the love.
“Yeah,” I say, nodding. “That would be awesome. Imagine how fun that would be…I’m sure it would be stressful too. But it can’t be worse than a double shift at a grimy restaurant.”
“You’re a hard worker, Becca,” he says. “Alex has told me how you started working as soon as you could.”
I shrug. “Mom and Dad always instilled the need to work hard in me. They never gave me much of an allowance. I hated it at the time, but I appreciate it now. I like earning my own money.”
We pause, eating silently for a time.
“So, do you want your own kids one day?” he asks.
My core gives a near-violent shudder as though trying to drive me to my feet and around the table. I imagine sliding into his lap, grinding my hips against him, and whispering in his ear that I want babies with him. And I’m ready to do it now.
“I’d like children one day,” I say as neutrally as I can. “What about you?”
“I….” He pauses, his eyes getting glassy as though he’s thinking of the future or the past. “If I found the right person, yeah, I’d like kids. How many would you want?”
I want to ask him about that line. If he found the right person.
Could I be the right person?
He’s said nobody has ever made it so he can relax before, nobody except for me. A mean voice hisses, He’s lying. It’s a line so he can take your virginity from you. But I don’t believe it. I refuse to. After all we’ve shared, I simply find it impossible.
“Maybe three,” I say. “Or four. Even five, if we had the money, the ability to give them the life they deserve. That’s it. It’s not so much the money. As long as I knew they could be happy and wouldn’t want for anything.”
He leans forward, staring hard at me. “You’d need somebody older, someone who already has money – more than he knows how to spend. You’d need a man who wants a young, beautiful woman to give him a family.”
I drop my fork, the clattering noise far too loud.
“Are you teasing me?” I snap.
He leans back, studying me. His expression is a map of tension. It’s like there’s so much he wants to say, would say, but something’s holding him back.
“I was just….” He pauses, lips twisted. “I’m not teasing you, Becca bee. I wouldn’t joke about this.”
“So, what are you saying?”
I know I should stop. My voice is getting way too loud, my tone heavy with anger. Or maybe it’s not anger. Maybe it’s pity aimed at myself because the life he hinted at can never happen.
Unless he tells me it can. Unless he shatters my world and makes all my dreams come true.
“Because you don’t mean that, do you?” I go on, bolting to my feet, waving my hand. “You don’t really want to be the…the….”
“Say it,” he says gruffly, rising slowly to his feet.
“The father of my children,” I yell. “You can’t really want that. So you must be teasing. It’s fine. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be yelling like this.”
I tell myself it’s for the best. If he wanted the impossible, we wouldn’t be able to act on it anyway.
We’d have to separate for Alex’s sake, and it would only make it more painful.
But then he walks around the table, his footsteps slow.