Loading page…
Twenty-five years of friendship, one house, and a fourth bedroom with nothing in it. He asks you the question with the pizza going cold between you, and then he stops talking and waits.
He's designed houses that cost more than some people earn in their entire lifetime, and yet here he is sitting on the floor of his own living room eating pizza out of a box because he hasn't managed to order a damn dining table in three weeks. Priorities. "Before you say anything: the table is picked out." He pulls another slice of pizza from the box between you and leans back against the wall. "I just need to order it." Brief pause. "For eleven days." Okay. Maybe that's not a particularly strong argument. The house around you is nearly finished by now. His house. After months of blueprints, construction dust, decisions about wood, stone, light, windows, and roughly eight thousand questions where people seriously expected him to know which damn door handle best represents his essence. Now there are still a few boxes lying around, some walls are missing art, and his kitchen drawer looks like someone threw cutlery into it during an earthquake. So basically: move-in ready. You have been here often enough to witness all this madness. Which, after twenty-five years of friendship, isn't particularly surprising either. You've known him since you were both five. You've known him since the times he was convinced that bleached tips were a good idea. You witnessed his first catastrophic dates, later the years when dates rarely lasted long enough to become catastrophic, his studies, the founding of the studio, his family, Aveline. Especially Aveline. Almost three years. The only woman where he eventually stopped thinking about whether there would be an after, and started thinking about what it would look like. Until they found out there was one single point they couldn't compromise on. Children. She didn't want them. He did. Not maybe. Not someday if it happens to fit into life. He wants to be a father. So they ended something that otherwise worked. Shit, that hurt. Sometimes it still does. But Aveline wasn't wrong and neither was he. Their futures just stopped being the same somewhere along the way. His gaze drifts past you. Down the hallway. There's an open door there. Behind it lies the only room in the house that has truly remained empty. Four bedrooms was probably a bit optimistic for a single thirty-year-old. He's had to hear that often enough. He takes a bite and chews slower while looking at the open door. For days he's known that he wants to have this conversation today. For days he's been thinking about how. He had better openings. Much better ones. None of them are left. "Nursery." The word just slips out. He turns his head to you. Normally some dumb joke would come now. A grin. Something to make the moment light again. Not this time. He puts his slice of pizza back in the box. "That's what the room is for." There. It's started now. He rubs his hands once over his jeans before resting his forearms on his pulled-up knees. Damn it, Arrowsmith. He gives presentations to people who wire him seven-figure sums for a design, and of all people, in front of the person he's known for twenty-five years, he suddenly feels like he's seventeen. "I want a child." His voice is calmer than he feels. "Not tomorrow. And I haven't secretly ordered a baby somewhere either." There it is, the shitty reflex. The corner of his mouth lifts for a second. Then he gets serious again. "After Aveline, I started thinking about why I was even waiting for the right relationship to come along again. Whether I really need a partner before I can become a father." He reaches for his beer bottle, turns it once between his fingers, and sets it back down without drinking. "So I did research." That's probably the understatement of the year. "Options. Costs. Work. Childcare. Legal stuff. The whole damn unromantic part you should probably consider before deciding you want to be responsible for another person." And he kept landing on the same question. With whom? Not just some woman. Not the next person he might eventually fall in love with. Who does he trust enough to share something with for the rest of his life that you can't just walk away from when it gets complicated? The answer was so obvious that he initially thought it was completely insane. Then he tried to find a better one. Didn't work. He looks at you. And suddenly he's very aware of what he might risk with his next words. Not just some date. Not a relationship of a few months. Twenty-five damn years. Maybe you'll laugh. Maybe you'll think he's completely insane. Maybe you'll say no. He can live with that. What he likes considerably less is the thought that this question could break something between you that has worked since you were both kids. Still, he wants to ask it. He breathes out slowly once. "Okay." His hand runs through his hair. "This is either going to be one of the best or one of the dumbest questions I've ever asked you." He holds your gaze. No more grinning. No punchline. Just him. "I don't want to know if you want to be with me." A second. "I want to know if you could imagine having a child with me." He does not fill the second after it. "No is a complete answer and it costs you nothing — not the house, not the twenty-five years." Then he stops, and waits, and does not look away.