“How were they?” she asks.
“Good. Said you have to come with me next month when I go back.” I pause. “Vashti will probably want to go soon to see the space and start getting a feel for everything.”
To her credit, Yasmen doesn’t even stiffen in my arms, but simply nods. “Makes sense. She should.”
“So what happened here while I was gone?”
She does stiffen this time, looking up at me for several seconds, like she’s weighing her words. She traps one corner of her bottom lip between her teeth and draws in a sharp breath.
“Hey, what’s up?” I frown. “What happened?”
“I had a kinda weird experience, I guess.” She lowers her lashes and clasps her hands together.
I shift her off my lap and onto the ottoman beside me so I can read her expression better. Lifting her chin, I scan her face. “What happened?”
“I realized my period was over a week late.” She says it so softly, but it hits me with the sonic force of a rocket launch.
“Your…what?” I’m dazed. Confused.
Scared.
My heart pumps blood to roar in my ears, and a starting pistol sets my pulse to racing. I wanted a vasectomy as soon as the doctor told us the risks. Yasmen begged me not to get one, and her grief was so deep, I didn’t press. Now I wish I had.
“What the…but you’re on—”
“Birth control, yeah. I’m not pregnant. I just thought…being so late, I had to make sure. My cycle actually started last night.”
Air whooshes from my chest in a rush, relief slumping my shoulders. “Damn, babe. You had me ’bout to lose it.”
She smiles faintly, licking her lips and training her gaze on the hands in her lap. “I know it’s for the best that I’m not, but those few minutes from the time I peed on that stick to when the negative sign popped up, I was…” She looks at me, uncertainty written on her face, in her eyes. “Hopeful. I wanted it, Si. So bad.”
I’m quiet, not sure how to respond. This—her having more kids—was an impasse we never found a compromise for.
“It made me realize,” she goes on, her tone careful, measured. “I mean…I knew this…have always known it, but it reminded me how much I want more kids.”
Tension creeps across the line of my shoulders, tightening the muscles in my back, balling my hands into fists on my knees.
“With you.” Her gaze is steady, sure now. “I want more kids with you.”
Her words land on me like bricks, and I have to force myself to stand under the weight of them. I walk to the rear of the closet, rubbing my mouth. Facing shelves of shoes and purses instead of facing her.
“I know what the doctor said,” she continues. “I’m not saying I have tocarrychildren. Adopt? Foster?”
“You weren’t open to that before.”
“I wanted a replacement for Henry, hoping it would help take some of the pain. I thought I needed that, and anything you said to the contrary felt like you just didn’t understand, but I’m open now.”
She touches my shoulder, and I turn to face her.
“This isn’t really about us making more kids,” she says. “It’s about us making a life together…again.”
“This isn’t what we agreed on,” I remind her quietly. “We said this isn’t a reconciliation.”
“I don’t know what the hell we’re doing anymore.” She breathes out a laugh, her eyes searching my face. She bites her lip in the way that always precedes something she’s hesitant to say out loud. “But we don’t have to remarry for you to come home.”
Home.
The word startles a humorless laugh out of me. I grip the back of my neck with one hand, angling an incredulous look at her.