Hopeless(122)

“That’s not true,” Holder says. “You’re forgetting about Shayla.”

I laugh. “You mean Shayna?”

“Whatever,” he says, shaking his head. “Your go.” He quickly shoves another chip in his mouth and grins at me.

“Why did your parents divorce?”

He gives me a tight-lipped smile and drums his fingers lightly on the table, then shrugs his shoulders. “I guess it was time for them to,” he says, indifferently.

“It was time?” I ask, confused by his vague answer. “Is there an expiration date on marriages nowadays?”

He shrugs. “For some people, yes.”

I’m interested in his thought process now. I’m hoping he doesn’t move on to his turn now that my question has been asked, because I really want to know his views on this. Not that I’m planning on getting married anytime soon. But he is the guy I’m in love with, so it wouldn’t hurt to know his stance so I’m not as shocked years down the road.

“Why do you think their marriage had a time limit?” I ask.

“All marriages have a time limit if you enter them for the wrong reasons. Marriage doesn’t get easier…it only gets harder. If you marry someone hoping it will improve things, you might as well set your timer the second you say, ‘I do.’”

“What wrong reasons did they have to get married?”

“Me and Les,” he says emphatically. “They knew each other less than a month when my mother got pregnant. My dad married her, thinking it was the right thing to do, when maybe the right thing to do was to never knock her up in the first place.”

“Accidents happen,” I say.

“I know. Which is why they’re now divorced.”

I shake my head, sad that he’s so casual about his parent’s lack of love for each other. I guess it’s been eight years, though. The ten-year-old Holder may not have been so casual about the divorce as it was actually occurring. “But you don’t think divorce is inevitable for every marriage?”

He folds his arms across the table and leans forward, narrowing his eyes. “Sky, if you’re wondering if I have commitment issues, the answer is no. Someday in the far, far, far away future…like post-college future…when I propose to you…which I will be doing one day because you aren’t getting rid of me…I won’t be marrying you with the hope that our marriage will work out. When you become mine, it’ll be a forever thing. I’ve told you before that the only thing that matters to me with you are the forevers, and I mean that.”

I smile at him, somehow a little bit more in love with him than I was thirty seconds ago. “Wow. You didn’t need much time to think those words out.”

He shakes his head. “That’s because I’ve been thinking about forever with you since the second I saw you in the grocery store.”

Our food couldn’t have arrived at a more perfect time, because I have no idea how to respond to that. I pick up my fork to take a bite but he reaches across the table and snatches it out of my hand.

“No cheating,” he says. “We’re not finished and I’m about to get really personal with my question.” He takes a bite of his food and chews it slowly as I wait for him to ask me his “really personal” question. After he takes a drink, he takes another bite of food and grins at me, purposefully dragging out his turn so he can eat.

“Ask me a damn question,” I say with feigned irritation.

He laughs and wipes his mouth with his napkin, then leans forward. “Are you on birth control?” he asks in a hushed voice.

His question makes me laugh; because it really isn’t all that personal when you’re asking the girl you’re having sex with. “No, I’m not,” I admit. “I never really had a reason to be on it before you came barging into my life.”

“Well, I want you on it,” he says decisively. “Make an appointment this week.”

I balk at his rudeness. “You could ask me a little more politely, you know.”

He arches an eyebrow as he takes a sip of his drink, then places it calmly back down on the table in front of him. “My bad.” He smiles and flashes his dimples at me. “Let me rephrase my words, then,” he says, lowering his voice to a husky whisper. “I plan on making love to you, Sky. A lot. Pretty much any chance we get, because I rather enjoyed you this weekend, despite the circumstances surrounding it all. So in order for me to continue to make love to you, I would very much appreciate it if you would make alternative contraceptive arrangements so that we don’t find ourselves in a pregnancy-induced marriage with an expiration date on it. Do you think you could do that for me? So that we can continue to have lots and lots and lots of sex?”