“Hey honey, back so soon?” Ella called out from the kitchen when I got home.
“Left a bit early today, nothing much going on. Whatcha doin?”
“Just started dinner, figured you’d be later. Didn’t you have a long lunch with Mike?”
“We had lunch,” I said. “Don’t know that it was overly long.”
“I thought you worked later if you went out to lunch.”
“Yeah, sometimes. But I wasn’t gone that long, we went to the diner just down the street from the office. What’s for dinner?” I asked as I made my way into the kitchen.
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Looks like we need to go on a grocery run, all we have is pasta. But we have lots of sauces, unless you want to make one up.”
“Nah, something premade should be fine. Have a good day?”
“Yeah, I think so. Talked to Carol about the maternity ward, and she’s going to look into it for me.”
“Thought you already did that.”
“Well,” she said. “We’ve talked about it but now we’re really talking about it. Now that I’ve been thinking about it I really want to get it.”
“Don’t get too maternal on me now.”
“Sorry, it’s in the genes. How’s Mike?”
“Mike’s Mike.” That’s really the only thing you can ever say about him.
“It’s been a couple days, I thought it’d be a big deal kind of lunch, y’know, with whatever problems you had.” She said.
“Nah,” I said. “No biggie, we moved on.”
“I don’t know how you do that, just get over things.”
“It’s a guy thing Ella, no need to linger. But it was good to talk to him, I wanted to get his advice on the whole kid thing.”
“You did not!”
“Course I did.”
“Why would you do that?” She asked.
“Why what?”
“I don’t want you talking to Mike about that kind of stuff.”
“What do you mean,” and I started laughing. “What kind of stuff?”
“Our stuff, I mean, Mike’s in a bad way and I don’t want that rubbing off on us. He’s not the kind of person you’d go to for that.”
“Mike’s my best friend, he had a family, why wouldn’t I ask him for advice? Who else would I talk to?”
“He had a family Will, he doesn’t have one now. He’s just beat down and angry, that’s not where you go. I can’t believe you’d do that!” She said.
“You’re not making any sense, I told my friend what’s going on with us. That’s what friends do. You keeping this all a secret?”
“Of course not, but I’m not talking to anybody like Mike.”
“Like Mike?”
“Yeah, like Mike. Let me guess, he thinks it’s a terrible idea and now you’re having second thoughts.”
“You know what? Never mind. I’ve got some stuff to finish in the garage.” And I stormed out of the room, didn’t even bother to change out of my work clothes. I haven’t been that furious at Ella in a long time, and never was I so sure that I was in the right about it. But I still felt like a petulant child walking out like that. I went to the garage and started clearing off the worktable, putting all the tools back up on the pegboard. I didn’t really have any pending projects, but had to keep my hands occupied.
I guess I understood where she was coming from, it’s not like I expected Mike to have a positive outlook on anything either. I was expecting him to say something about how it’s a shit world and it’s irresponsible to bring kids into it or something. That or just gloss over the topic because he was obviously unsupportive. I dunno; guess I expected anything other than him being supportive. That’s just not the Mike we’ve known the past couple of years.
If I was worried about his opinion, how could Ella not be? But still, is it okay for her to discount my friend like he’s nothing? And not trust me enough to know that I know better? Hell, it was like she was forbidding me from talking to him. That didn’t seem right no matter how you looked at it. Even if she had been right, and 9 times out of 10 she would have been with Mike. Maybe 99 out of 100. It’s still didn’t seem fair.
I don’t know how long I was in the garage sulking, but I definitely missed dinner. Ella was mad enough not to come get me, so at least we were even. When I got back inside she was sitting on the couch watching some cooking show. I was going to just walk behind the couch to the bathroom and take a shower without saying anything, but I couldn’t resist.
“He said that he thought it was a great idea to start a family. No…what he actually said is that if you say we’re ready that means we’re ready, and that I should do whatever you say.” I started walking again, but when I got to the hallway I stopped. “He also said you’ll make a great mother.”
Ooh, really good, and not where I was expecting it to go.Good job. I'm not tired of this story line. Don't give up on it.
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