Whisper Me This(59)

“I could—what?” The idea is incomprehensible and foreign.

“Block him. If he’s harassing you.”

I shake my head to try and clear it. “It’s not harassment, really. He’s worried about Elle. We share custody. I can’t exactly not talk to him.”

The atmosphere in the car, despite the calm night outside, feels electric. My hair rises on the back of my neck.

“Give me my phone, Tony. I have to call him back and explain.”

“You don’t have to do anything.”

“You don’t understand! He’s an attorney. He could take Elle.” My voice breaks. I fan my face with my hand, waving back tears and trying to stop a weird gasping for air that my body has started, as if all the oxygen in the world will never be enough.

Tony deflates. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry. I just—God, I hate guys who do that shit to women. Can’t ever learn to keep my mouth shut.”

“It’s okay. I—it was nice to have somebody stand up for me. And I can see why you’d think that about him. But he’s a good father. And he doesn’t usually shout like that.”

“It’s just that tone he was using, making you feel stupid. You don’t deserve that.”

Which is when the memory hits me, right between the eyes with enough force to knock me backward against the seat.

It’s no longer Tony sitting behind the steering wheel. It’s Greg.

It’s late, winter late, and already dark by at least three hours. Snow gathers on the windshield faster than the wipers swish it away.

Chuff. Chuff. Chuff.

We’re parked at the corner of the lot, and the glare of the gas station lights stops short of me, in the passenger seat, illuminating only Greg’s face so that he looks disembodied, insubstantial.

“When, Maisey? You keep putting this off and the baby will be our flower girl.”

My hand goes automatically to my belly. In response I feel the flip, flip, of the baby growing in my womb. She feels like a fish, a tiny fish growing in a dark, private place that belongs, so far, only to me.

Greg wants halvsies, and I’m not sure I want to share.

“I don’t know when. Soon. Just . . . not yet.”

Every other day he asks about the wedding, the one he’s been talking about since high school, the one he gave me a ring for months ago, the one he wanted before we moved in together, before we got pregnant. The wedding he wants because he says he loves me.

I have no good reason to put it off, and yet I do. Over and over and over again. Of course I love him, how could I not? He buys me flowers and takes me places. He’s handsome and smart and going to be rich. But my love is a pale thing compared to the love he expresses for me. His feels too hot, too bright, like a fire that might consume me if I stand too close.

Whatever I give him, it never seems to be enough.

He wants all of me, including the bits that I’ve managed to keep for myself, hidden away from my mother. I’ve learned from her how demanding love can be, with all the expectations I can never live up to, and something inside me rebels at the idea of surrendering my inner self—or the tiny baby growing inside me—to Greg.

Mom wants me to marry him, and she doesn’t even know about the baby. My secret. Still a part of me and nobody’s business but my own.

She wants me to marry him because he’s solid, whereas I am flighty. Focused, whereas I am scattered. Successful. Safe and law-abiding and going to earn more than enough money to support me in comfort. She says he will help me grow into the woman I’m capable of being. What she means is that maybe I’ll finally stop being flighty and indecisive and irresponsible.

All my life my mother has made my decisions for me, not trusting I can make my own. And I’ve let her do it. I’ve let her decide everything from the color of the ribbon in my hair as a child to my choice of university and my journalism major. We all know I am terrible at making decisions, so why am I resisting both her wishes and Greg’s now?

But whenever Greg asks me to marry him, I choke on the word yes. I say maybe, and later, and of course “I love you,” because I do, I must, what is wrong with me if I don’t?

But now there is a baby, or at least the promise of one, and that changes everything.

Greg takes a long quavering breath, and then another, and his shoulders begin to shake. In quiet horror, I realize he is crying, that I have caused him to cry.

My hand butterflies onto his shoulder and rests there, tentative. He stiffens beneath my touch, the muscle going from soft to rock-hard, and my hand flies back to the comfort of my belly and the baby swimming secretly within.

“I can’t do this,” Greg says.

I think I’ve heard him wrong, but he straightens up and turns his head to look at me. His face is wet with his tears, his dark lashes glued together, his features taut with pain and determination.

“This is the last time I’m asking, Maisey. Give me a solid answer tonight. Say yes. Say when. Hell, tell me the word, and I’ll drive us all the way to Vegas, and we can tie the knot tomorrow.”

My throat is dry, but the sensation of tiny wings flitting against my ribs is not grief or fear. I don’t answer. Can’t answer.

“I mean it,” he says, desperation hardening his voice. “Tell me now, or it’s over between us.”