I walked up the steps to Kylie’s apartment and paused at her front door. We hadn’t spoken much since the incident at the hospital. She had called briefly the other day to ask me out with her and Alyssa, but I’d been too busy shooting some footage in the park. I smoothed my hands over my torso before knocking on her door, preparing myself for the inevitable argument that was about to ensue.

But when she opened that door and gazed up into my eyes, I choked.

“Adam,” she said. “Hey there.”

“Hi, Kylie. Could I come in?” I asked.

“Of course. Yeah. Sure. I just…I was making some coffee. Do you want some?”

“I’d love some. Thanks.”

I looked around her apartment and saw the few boxes she had already packed up. They were against the wall and pressed into corners. They were small boxes that must have held the trinkets I didn’t see strewn around her apartment, like the small frogs she’d started collecting after one found its way into her bed in her dorm at college. Alyssa had teased her relentlessly about it, and it had simply stuck. Everywhere she went, she noticed every frog and brought up the hilarity of that story. I bought her a glass frog from a trip I took during her sophomore year, and she had been accumulating them ever since.

And the random books she kept piled up on her coffee table were no longer there, fanned out and glaring at me with their dated covers. I didn’t see as many shoes strewn about in corners and her small closet was wide open. She was in the throes of packing up for our new apartment, and I hadn’t lifted a finger to pack away anything.

The coffee smell that filled the room ripped me from my trance.

“Smells good,” I said. “New blend?”

“Stronger blend,” Kylie said.

“Your office hours catching up with you?” I asked.

“I’ve been bringing a little bit of it home. Just looking over past files and making sure there are no other errors to be caught. Your father’s last CPA was sloppy at best.”

“Then it’s a good thing he hired you,” I said.

She looked at me with a pained expression on her face, and it dawned on me: That was the first compliment I’d ever given her about taking this job with my father. And with that guilt surfaced every little thing we’d encountered over the past two months. Hell, over the past year. So many things had fallen apart between us and so many things had gone astray. It was happening to us more and more lately. The silence and the days gone by without speaking to each other. I used to get so excited when she asked me to go out with her and Alyssa. But last night? It had been nothing for me to turn her down.

I hadn’t been out with her and her best friend for months.

“Creamer and sugar, just like you take it,” Kylie said.

“Oh, I don’t put creamer in my coffee anymore,” I said.

“You don’t?” she asked. “Since when?”

“Since I got sick on spoiled creamer about eight months ago.”

“Wait, you got sick on spoiled creamer? How did I not know about that?”

The tension grew between us as I quickly took the mug from her hands.

“It’s fine. Thank you. It smells great.”

“No, no. I’ll drink this one. Let me make you another,” Kylie said.

“You hate sugar in your—”

“Just let me make you another one, damn it.”

The harshness of her tone blanketed her apartment with a reality neither of us could admit to. Something as simple as coffee creamer had become a blatant beacon for the rift between us. As I watched her stand at her small kitchen counter and scratch her calf with her other foot, I thought back to the better times between us, the times when we were on the same page and as happy as we’d ever been. She’d been away from her manipulative parents and I’d been working myself out from underneath the sharp shadow my father and his money cast. We had agreed on everything, finished each other’s sentences, had the same life trajectory at one point.

When the hell had it all gone to shit?

“Here,” Kylie said. “Let me know if I put too much sugar in it.”

“I’m sure it’s great,” I said.

“Communicate with me, Adam. Let me know.”

I brought the mug to my lips and sipped it. The drink was a little too sweet. She never put sugar in her coffee so she never knew how to gauge it. But the look in her eyes was almost desperate. She was desperate to get something right.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her it was wrong.

“It’s perfect,” I said. “Thank you, Kylie.”

“Good,” she said with a smile. “Want to sit down?”

The two of us took a seat on her couch, and I watched her stare into her untouched coffee. I knew she wouldn't drink it. She’d sit right there with it in her hand until I left. Then she’d pour it down the drain. She’d never been someone to put sugar in her coffee. Kylie had never been a sweets person period. No chocolate. No caramel. It had made Valentine’s Day very hard over the past four years. She’d rather munch on chips and miniature pretzels then delve into a candy bar. Or gummies. Or chewing gum for that matter.

“What are you smiling at?” Kylie asked.

“You,” I said. “I’m smiling at you.”

Her cheeks flushed as her eyes danced between mine.

“I’m sorry, Kylie.”

“For what?” she asked.

“For the hospital. For always fighting with you. I don’t want to fight with you anymore.”

“We aren’t fighting,” she said as she turned her body toward me. “Not even sort of.”

“I know you want children, and I know my answer didn’t make you happy.”

“I’m not worried about it,” she said. “Really, Adam. I’m so young. Both of us are. We’ve got plenty of time to think about kids in the future.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s true.”

I’d come prepared to tell her the truth, to sit down and tell her that I didn’t ever think about them, that I didn’t want to ever think about them. That children weren’t in my future no matter if it was next year or the next century. I’d come prepared to face the demise of my relationship with her, to tell her I didn’t want children and I wasn't willing to compromise. I didn’t want to do that to her. I didn’t want to make her a stay-at-home mother.

If my production company took off, I’d be filming, traveling, commissioning work and hiring actors and actresses. She’d be stuck at home with a brood of children and a want to work but no possible way to work. And she could throw out all the solutions she wanted—hiring a nanny, day care, all of us traveling together—but I knew none of it would make her happy. I knew none of it would really, truly make Kylie happy.

“Are you still happy with me, Adam?” she asked.

Her question ripped me from my trance as the blood drained from my face.

“Why would you think I’m not?” I asked.

“I wonder sometimes. I know you know things aren’t the way they used to be between us, and I wonder if you’re still happy. Are you? Because it’s okay if you’re not.”

Was I happy with her? Of course. Did I love her? Yes.

Were we right for each other’s futures? That had yet to be determined.

“I am,” I said. “I’ve always been happy with you. Are you happy with me?”

“Of course I am, Adam. I love you. There’s a light you bring to my world that no one else has ever brought to it. And I’m so scared of losing that. Of losing you.”

I set my mug of coffee down the second her eyes filled with tears. I plucked her mug from her hands and set it down as well, then wrapped her up in my arms. There had only been two other instances I’d ever seen Kylie cry. The first was when Alyssa had been hit by that car on campus and put in an ICU room, and the second was when she had looked out into the crowd on her graduation day and hadn’t seen her parents.

But none of those moments compared to the tears she unleashed on my shoulder. And it broke my heart.

“It’s okay,” I said as I smoothed her hair. “Shh, shh, shh.”

“I don’t want to lose you, Adam.”

“I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere,” I said.

“We can wait to have kids. I don’t want them for another three or four years anyway. It could be five, or even six. Or if we don’t want to do natural kids at all, we could adopt. There are so many kids who need parents who don’t have them. We’d be wonderful parents to those kinds of kids.”

I closed my eyes and tried to block out her words as she pushed herself into my lap. She straddled my hips, her knees planting into the cushions of her couch. Her tears drenched my shoulder for the first time ever in our relationship, and it ripped the breath from my lungs. Kylie was hurting inside, confused, and it was because of me.

I needed to tell her the truth, but the idea of compounding her sadness made me sick.

“I think we need a vacation,” I said.

“What?” she asked with a sniffle.

“I think a lot has changed and we need to get away for a little bit. You’ve taken this job with my father, which I’m very proud of by the way—”

“You are?” she asked.

“I was an ass about it. My outburst and the tension it brought down on us was wrong. And I’m sorry, Kylie. This job obviously makes you happy, and I’m glad you took it.”

The smile that crossed her face lit up my world.

“We’re also moving, and I think that’s putting pressure on us. Things are escalating with the test audience, and I’m about to be thrown headfirst into a round of edits I didn’t think we’d have to address.”

“What happened?” she asked. “When was that screening?”

“A couple nights ago. It was pretty rough. None of the people in the audience liked the ending, so we have go to back and reshoot some things.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Daisy happened and everyone was so happy about it. I didn’t want to ruin the moment.”

“You have to talk to me, Adam,” she said as she cupped my cheeks. “You’re shit at it.”

I chuckled before she brought my lips to hers to kiss. I tasted the salted sadness of her tears on the tip of her tongue. My hands smoothed up and down her thighs as she rolled her hips into me. What started out as a small kiss blossomed quickly into an inferno threatening to burn down her apartment. I whipped her around and tossed her down on her couch as breathless giggles fell from her lips.

“Come away with me,” I said.

“Where do you want to go?” Kylie asked.

“One of the state parks. We could get a small cabin or something, a hotel room that overlooks one of them. Anything that gets us out of Portland and away from the chaos of our changing lives for a second.”

“I’d love that,” she said. “But I do have a meeting Monday morning that your father really wants me to be at.”

“Then talk to him. Ask him for a couple days to yourself.”

“I just started, Adam. I can’t do that.”

“He’ll understand. Tell him you’ll take some work with you. And you’ll have your phone in case any CPA-like emergencies pop up.”

“A couple days away does sound nice,” she said.

“Then come with me,” I said. “Come away with me and let’s coexist in peace for a little bit, without worries or stressors or anything else breathing down our neck.”

I encompassed her lips with mine and felt her hands fist my shirt as she pulled me closer.

“Okay,” she said in a whisper. “I’ll talk to him.”

“Wonderful. I’ll get on my phone first thing in the morning and book us a place. No filming, no offices. Just you, me, a beautiful view of the state park, and no clothes.”

“Mmm, none at all?” she asked.

I slid my hand up her shirt, making it all the way to her naked breast just in time to feel her nipple pucker.

“Don’t even pack them,” I said.