Page 67 of The Square

So much. I love him so much that I get this… this sick feeling inside my gut when he looks at me this way. Or when I just think about him. I love him so much my heart hurts every time I gaze up at his face. Or his fingers gently caress my arm.

I don’t know what to do with this love. I don’t know how to process it.

I love Danny this way too, but Danny is gone now. He’ll be back. I know that much. But my love for him, that all-encompassing passion that ruled my life ever since we met that day I poked the blue beetle… it’s died a little. Not died, maybe. It’s just been tempered by the new love I feel for Alec.

I have some guilt about that, but not much. Because Danny is part of this love. He’s not here now but he will be once I call him and tell him.

I almost did that yesterday when I got the news. I almost told him first but I stopped myself. Because there’s this rational part of me that knows how Danny would react.

Oh, he’d get over it. I’m sure. But still.

“I’m pregnant,” I say, still smiling up at Alec.

And he does everything I expected. His reaction is everything I could’ve hoped for. Elation. Happiness. And a litany of rhetorical questions like, “What? No? Yes? Oh, my God! I’m gonna be a father? You’re having my baby?” And of course… “I love you, Christine.”

We dressed up. We went out. We had dinner, and we danced.

We celebrated.

And of course, we talked about Danny. We would call him… eventually. Not tonight. Tonight was ours. But that call would happen, and he’d…

Did we really think he’d be happy?

That night we did. We really did.

But everything is different the next morning, isn’t it?

So we didn’t make that call even though Danny was the only other person I wanted to tell. He was the only thing missing in my life.

“Let’s just wait, nunu,” was Alec’s reply the next day when I brought it up.

“But Danny loves kids,” I said. “And he loves us.”

“He loves you, yes,” Alec replied. “But… I’m not sure how he’d feel about me as a father.”

Which I acknowledged. Alec isn’t really father material. I was actually counting on that to win Danny over. I’d plead with him to come take care of me. Come be the perfect father that Alec never could be.

And it’s not even like Alec objected. This was just a fact we all knew. Each of us fulfills a role in this triangle. Each of us has a place. We knew how to share.

But as the weeks went on, I think we both realized that Danny was never going to buy into this idea. That Danny wanted me. And if there was a child, and if there was a relationship to be forged from it, then that relationship would be three people, yes. But not four.

It was never going to work.

I think this is why Alec continued his relationship with Eliza. I really do.

Not to hurt me, though he did. Not to get her pregnant, though he did.

This baby was his, but it wasn’t his, not really.

It was mine and I belonged to Danny first, not him.

So we didn’t call him.

Sometimes it makes sense.

It does.

I get it.