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“Y-you’re—” I cough. It’s disgusting. I push through anyway. “You’re not proposing, are you?”
Nate shakes his head. “No. God, no. I mean, not that I don’t want to— I mean—” He chuckles anxiously. “No, I’m not proposing to you, Eve. Just because you’re carrying my child, that’s no reason to get hitched. And I haven’t even asked if you…if you want to have this baby.” He takes a deep breath. I can tell how difficult this is for him. “It’s your choice, Eve, but please know that whatever you decide, I will support you.”
“You will?” I speak so softy I barely hear my own words.
He nods slowly and offers me a smile. “Of course I will. In the last couple of weeks, I’ve discovered that for the very first time in my life, I want to see someone else happier and more successful than myself. I care about you, Eve. I’m sorry if I ever gave the impression that I don’t care. That’s not true.”
I squeeze his fingers. The rough callouses on his hands are familiar and comforting.
“I know you care,” I whisper. “A-Ma told me that you paid for everything for my hospital stay. I can’t thank you enough. I promise to pay you back if—”
“No. I don’t want your money, Eve. I want you to be happy and healthy.” Nate pauses for a moment and then locks eyes with me, steadfast. “I love you, Eve.” And then, even gentler, “I love you. You don’t have to say it back. I know you probably need more time to heal. And we should probably get to know each other more. I just want you to know that’s how I feel.”
I can’t stop smiling. A pure warmth—not a sickly kind like I’d been experiencing all morning—blooms from my stomach and spreads to the tips of my fingers and toes.
“You love me?”
“Yes,” he says confidently. “I do.”
“I love you too,” I admit. “I have for a long time. I think that’s another reason why I couldn’t be with anyone else.”
“You have no idea how happy that makes me.” He strokes my cheek, plays with my hair. I watch his Adam’s apple bob up and down, a shade of serious concern washing over his face. “So, what do you say? Want to give this a try?”
“What? Dating?”
“Yeah.”
“What about your life in New York?”
Nate shrugs. “What about it?”
I start to feel anxious, the butterflies in my stomach acting up again.
“Your job, for one. Your apartments. Your friends. They’re all in New York.”
“I can always transfer,” he answers instantly. “I can rent my properties out and find something here. As far as friends go, they have my number. What matters is that I’m wherever you are.”
I begin to cry again. This yo-yoing back and forth is putting me through the wringer.
“I can’t ask you to do that,” I mumble. “That’d be so selfish of me to ask you to leave everything behind.”
“You’re not asking me to do anything, Eve. Don’t you dare think you’re being selfish for something I’ve decided. I want to be here with you. Unless you don’t want to be together?”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying. I want you here. I want to be with you too.”
“Then it’s settled. Eve, you have to understand. I can have anything in the world. Money’s not an obstacle. But it can’t buy me you.”
I let out a tired laugh. “You sound so cliché right now.”
“Clichés are clichés because there’s truth behind them.”
“So wise. When’d you get so smart?”
“In all fairness, your mother questions my intelligence for not figuring things out sooner.”
We laugh together like schoolchildren, light and carefree and simply relieved. Nate falls silent pretty quickly, though, looking serious all over again.
“What is it?” I ask.
“So, the…the baby. Have you made a decision? What do you want to do?”
I sigh heavily. “I’ve been giving it a lot of thought. I’m glad you’re here now so I can at least bounce ideas off you.”
“Lay it on me. No wrong answers. How do you feel about the whole thing?”
“I’m scared that if I have this child, it’s going to throw a wrench in my career plans. My goal is still to sign with a ballet company as a soloist and work my way up to principal. That’s always been my dream. But you’ve seen the hours I work. I’m scared I won’t be around enough to raise this baby. What if I decide to keep them, and I turn into a distant mother?”
Nate says nothing, only listens. I’m relieved he doesn’t so much as nod or shake his head. It’d probably throw me off my train of thought.
“The only logical thing I can do if I want to keep it is to put my dance career on the back burner. Maybe give up on it entirely. I don’t know if I can do that without feeling some sense of…I don’t know. Resentment might be too strong a word, but it’s the only thing I can think of. I’ve seen the hard work A-Ma’s had to go through because of me, and I love her for it. On one hand, I think I can pull it off and be a good mother who provides and cares for her child, but what if I can’t? What if I’m just fooling myself into thinking that I can do it, you know?
