Page 157 of Into the Dark
“A rest from you?”
He gulps his black coffee loudly and smiles a lopsided smile. “You going to repeat everything I say?”
I stare at him harder. “Only the things that don’t make sense. Why would I want a rest from you, Jake?” What does that even mean? “Do you want a rest from me?”
He lets out a small sigh. “Course I don’t, Alex.”
“Well, then, what are you talking about? Why would I want a rest from you?”
Another soft sigh. “You just look tired, baby, that’s all I mean.” His voice is soft and understanding, but I still feel disproportionately irate. I look tired? That means I look like shit. Everyone knows looking “tired” means looking like shit. Which means he thinks I look like shit.
“I look pregnant, Jake. That’s how I look.” I bristle. “I’ve never done this before. I’ve never carried a child before, and I’ve never worried about whether the man I love is going to come home to me or not, or whether he’s going to be arrested or not, or whether he’s going to be discovered in a ditch somewhere with a bullet through his bloody skull or not. This is all new to me. So maybe that’s why I look tired. So no, I don’t want a rest from you. In fact, I don’t ever want a rest from you. I love you. I need you here…with me. I always need you here.” I feel something thick lodge itself in my throat and drop my blurry eyes from his. These bloody hormones.
His hand is on mine a second later, large, warm fingers linking through mine, pulling my attention to him. “Alex, Jesus fucking Christ. Is this is where your head’s at?” He looks horrified. “Stop that right fucking now. I mean it. You’re going to make yourself sick, and that isn’t good for the baby. You need to stop thinking this stuff, yeah? How many times do I have to say it? I’ve got this. I know what I’m doing.” His eyes are hard and firm and commanding. I want to do what he says—bloody hell, I want to—but it’s not as easy as all that. Not in my head. “If you want and need me here, then that’s where I’ll be, okay? Whatever you need.” He squeezes my hand again.
“Okay then.” I nod again, relieved. “Good…that’s good.”
His eyes linger on me as if he thinks I’m seconds away from another freak-out. Finally, he slides his hand out of mine, but it’s so he can lift his cutlery again.
The sound of the birds outside drifts in through the open back door as I watch him eat in silence. I keep my eyes away from the white and focus instead on the mesmerizing movement of his hands and mouth. He flicks his eyes to mine every now and again as though to check I haven’t fallen apart. He, by contrast, looks strong and stable; completely unshakable. He must have a million and one things running through his head too, but you wouldn’t know it to look at him. You would never know it to look at him. He’s strength to my weakness. Bravery to my cowardice.
When he’s finished, he sets his knife and fork down and lifts his cup to drain the rest of his coffee. Then he wipes a hand over his mouth and points at my plate. “Finish your toast,” he orders softly.
“Yes, sir.” I smile and do as I’m told, washing it down with my cooling sweet tea.
Jake lifts his cup again and slurps it loudly as he’s prone to do. His neat eating doesn’t extend to liquids. He’s a loud drinker. If anyone else consumed liquids as loud as he did I’d find it repellent, but because it’s him I don’t.
“Guess we should start looking for a new house then,” he says in a conversational tone.
I almost choke on my toast. “What?”
“We could be doing with another room or two, I reckon.” He throws a casual look about the kitchen and down the hall before bringing his eyes back to me. “It’s gonna get a bit cramped here pretty soon.”
“Is it?”
He raises an eyebrow.
“I love my house,” I say, a weird stirring happening in my chest.
“Yeah, I like your house too,” he says. “But me, Cale, and the baby are gonna take up more space than you have here.” He says it as if he’s given it a great deal of thought.
I honestly have no idea how it takes me so long to get there, but when I do, my chest feels all tight and fluttery. He wants us to buy a house together? He wants to move in with me, finally. And just like that, the coil of paranoia is shaken off and I’m smiling across the table at his serious let’s-buy-a-new-house face.
“We could get an extension,” I suggest.
He glowers at me. “You and my baby and my four-year-old living on a fucking building site for months? No fucking way.” he shakes his head. He must take my thoughtful silence as reluctance because he shifts forward in the chair toward me. “So let me get this straight: you don’t wanna marry me, and now you’re telling me you don’t want to live with me either?”
“Ugh, that’s not true, and you know it,” I laugh, reaching across to hit him playfully on the shoulder. “I want both of those things. You know I do!” I’m already imagining house-hunting with him, lost in images of us moving into a large house in the country with a huge garden. Jake wears paint-splattered sweatpants and a torn white T-shirt as he carries out nameless DIY tasks. In my imagination he’s good at DIY, though I have nothing to base this on other than his skilled hands.
“Prove it then.” He smirks. “Let’s buy a house.”
“I don’t need to prove it. I actually asked you to move in with me and you said no,” I remind him.
He relaxes back in the chair again and smooths his hand over his beard a few times, looking serious again. “Think about it, Alex: me plus a toddler plus a baby. We come with a lot of shit, and we’re kind of a package deal. I know you love this house, but I promise we’ll find another one you love just as much. Maybe more.” He flashes a canine smile at me then, and it’s like he knows. It’s like he knows the effect that smile has on every single nerve in my body. The same effect it’s always had. Debilitating. Life-affirming. I know for a fact I’ve never been more in love with him than I am right in this moment.
The living room of our new imagined house. It’s large, and the sun streams in through a large bay-paneled window. Boxes everywhere. Caleb runs around crazily holding a newborn baby in his arms. I think I might implode or cry at the amount of pure-white joy I feel at the idea of it.
“You’d want to live in London, I suppose? I don’t think I can live in the city, Jake. It’s just not for me.” Maybe it would be me with Jake though…