“Right.” I snicker. “You did admit when we were, like, ten, that you thought stars looked like the ones from Mario Kart from up close.”
“Mario Kart is where I got most of my space knowledge.”
“Surprised you became a chef and not an astronomer, honestly.”
He laughs softly, and even though we both clearly know nothing about astronomy, we fall into silence as we gaze above. I might be clueless, but I do know that, just like watching the ocean, stargazing puts everything in perspective. How small we are in the grand scheme of things.
“Can I ask you a question?” Eli asks after a while.
I hum.
“What happened to that fiancé of yours?”
“How long have you been waiting to ask that?” A corner of my lips curves up, even though I don’t particularly want to revisit this story.
His gaze drops to my lips, then climbs back up, too slowly. “Mostly since you’ve started to feel like mine again.”
Mine.
Again.
I’m not a romantic at heart. I believe in steadiness and shared goals in a relationship. Never have I dreamed of being swept off myfeet and carried into happily ever after. It wasn’t something that could happen to me.
Eli Grant makes me want to dream.
I blink fast, trying to keep my feet firmly on Earth. He hasn’t said this to convince me of something. That’s one thing I love about Eli; with him, what you see is what you get. He’s thought it, so he’s said it.
The pads of his fingers continue brushing delicate patterns against my skin, not pressuring but relaxing.
“He left a little over six months ago.”
Eli’s jaw shifts to the side, but he remains silent. The flames flicker in his eyes, making their amber the color of spring honey.
“We’d been struggling to get pregnant for a long time by then, obviously, and I’d received my diagnosis more than a year before, but I’d only just been told by my gynecologist that it probably would never happen for me.”
I’ve wanted to erase the moment he left since it occurred, but it’s inked there, in bright colors. The wilting plant in the corner behind him, the leaves having turned from green to a murky gray, because I couldn’t be bothered to water it. The Alicia Keys song I’d been listening to before he came in from work with avoidant eyes. The creases in his dusty blue shirt, like everything about his usually pristine self was rumpling. I was slowly bringing him down with me.
“It’s nothing against you, Cass,” he said, not even taking the time to sit, a bag at his feet. He’d come out of the bedroom with it, his mind already made up before that moment. I was still by thesink where I’d been washing romaine lettuce for dinner, my hands freezing in the water. “I just… I need this.”
“He wanted kids more than he wanted me,” I tell Eli, which sums up the theatrical breakup. Theatrical on his part, not mine. I did not move an inch, didn’t even say a word. My fingers were bloodless, but I didn’t move them away from the water. I was frozen. As he talked, apologizing and explaining his every thought, all I could think was,I want them more than I want you, too.
“That fucking asshole,” Eli says.
I lift a shoulder. “I realized once he was gone that our relationship was more about a future family than anything else for me, too. We got engaged and didn’t plan a wedding for two years afterward. Pretty telling.”
“Still. He shouldn’t have left because of that.”
“I couldn’t give him what he wanted.”
“So?” His jaw shifts. “Cassie, he should’ve loved you for you, not for your potential motherhood. You don’t ask someone to marry you then leave the second things don’t go your way.”
Except when he left, my potential motherhood felt like itwaswhat I had been, and now it was gone. I didn’t feel whole, so how could I fault him for it?
“You’d have stayed with Liz, if she hadn’t left.” It’s more a statement than a question.
“Probably, yes.”
“And would that have been a good thing?”
