“Are we…” God, this is so difficult. “When you say family, are you… are you talking about having kids?”

He considers his next words wisely. “Not having kids right at this moment, but having them in the future, yeah.”

“And what if… what if I said I didn’t want to have kids?” I bring my feet back onto the bed and sit cross-legged.

He scratches his scruffy jawline as he brings his feet up on the bed and faces me, crisscrossing his legs. “It all depends on why you don’t want to have them, I guess.”

“So you do want to have them?” I’m a little surprised that he doesn’t even have to think about it.

His eyes search mine and then he definitively nods. “Not right now, but eventually way down the road.”

“And what if I said that way down the road I couldn’t see myself as a mother.” I chew on my lip nervously. “Then what?”

He slips his fingers through mine and holds both of my hands. “Why can’t you see yourself as a mother?”

I roll my eyes and pull one of my hands away to gesture at myself. “I think it’s sort of obvious.”

He looks genuinely perplexed. “No, not really.”

“Because of who I am.” I struggle for words. “Because of my problems. Because I don’t even know what being a mother entails. I mean, I had a few good moments growing up, but other than that I pretty much took care of my mother instead of the other way around.”

He wiggles his fingers from my hand, grabs my knees, and drags me closer to him. “Exactly, which is why I think you’ll make a great mom.”

“I think you’re wrong,” I disagree. “If anything, it’ll make me a very confused mom.”

His hands glide from my knees to my thighs and his fingers jab into my skin like he’s afraid to let me go. “No way. As much as I hate it, you took care of everyone in that household. You cooked. Cleaned. Paid the bills. Helped your mom take her medication. Stayed home and took care of her while your father went out to the bar every night acting like a teenager. At sixteen, Ella May, you were more responsible than a lot of thirty-year-olds.”

“I did stupid stuff, too,” I remind him. “I think you’re forgetting all the fights I got into, all the roofs I jumped off of, the many times I made you drive reckless and tested the boundaries of life.”

“You had to breathe somehow.”

I think about what he said, squirming because all this positive talk about me is making me uneasy. “You’re seriously freaking me out right now.”

“I know,” he says. “But it’s the truth. You’ll make an awesome mom if and when that time comes around.”

I eye him over with skepticism. “And what if it doesn’t? What if I say there’s just no way I can do it? What if I say that I just want to spend the rest of my life drawing and listening to you sing? Just you and I?”

“Then I guess it’ll be just you and I growing old together,” he says with a trace of a smile on his lips. “And I can live with that, too. I can live with anything just as long as you fucking marry me.” And with that, he gets to his feet. “This weekend. No more messing around.” He sticks out his hand and I take it, nodding.

He pulls me to my feet and we walk toward the door. “Although, I must say that we would make beautiful babies together.” He flashes me a cocky grin and I roll my eyes. “Imagine one with your hair and my amazing eyes.”

“You’re too cocky for your own good. Besides, I’d rather they had your hair and my eyes. I’ve never been a fan of the color.” My face twists in disgust I grab a few strands. “Although I love your eyes, too. Maybe she could just have your hair and eyes.”

His brow crooks up as he starts to pull the door open “She?”

I bite down on my tongue, realizing my slipup. “Did I say ‘she’?” I feign dumb.

He nods and there’s a sparkle in his aqua eyes as we step out into the hallway. “So you’d want a girl?”

I fight for oxygen and then seal my lips. If I could picture myself with a kid, I picture it as a little girl, all punked out with blond hair and blue eyes. I’m not ready to admit that aloud yet, though. “Can we just go tell your mom about the wedding?” I ask, trying to sound neutral, but my voice comes out more off pitch than I intended. “Before Lila and Ethan let it slip out.”

He looks at me for about five seconds longer and I wonder whom he sees. The girl he met when he was four? Or the one who ran away when she was eighteen? Or this new one who thinks about weddings and babies? “Whatever you want,” he finally says and starts down the hall.

He’s always saying that and I tug on his arm, stopping him. “What about what you want for once?”

He pauses, searching my eyes for God knows what. “I have everything I want right here,” he says simply, and I can tell he means it.

Chapter 12

Micha

The whole baby talk with Ella was a little weird, but it needed to be talked about, I guess. I’d never thought that much about it, but having kids wouldn’t be so bad, down the road of course. It’s not like I worry I’d turn into a shitty father like mine. I think I was always a bit more like my mom than him and I’m glad. But I want to make sure that Ella and I are both in the right place if we decide to have them.

I meant everything I said. Either way, kids or not, I’ll be happy as long as I’m with her. But I think now I really need to talk to her about my future in music and the tour coming up. I should have probably told her right after the baby talk since we were talking about our future. It would have been a good time, but I was scared and nervous of what she would say—or what she wouldn’t say. Music is my passion, my emotional outlet in really hard times, and Ella knows this and I know she’ll be supportive, but what I don’t know is if she’ll come with, and if she does, will she be doing it because she wants to or because she thinks it’s what I want? And if she doesn’t, then that means I have to give it up—give up my dream. And knowing that makes me want to avoid it as long as possible.

With the tour and our future still lingering in my mind, we enter the kitchen with our fingers linked, the fresh aroma of coffee in the air. I feel like I’m seven years old again and Ella and I are telling my mom how we broke our next-door neighbor Mrs. Millerson’s garden gnome because we wanted to see if it was a real gnome. Mrs. Millerson had caught us and told us we had to get her a new one. We thought we were going to get yelled at but thankfully my mom always went a little easy on me due to the fact that my dad bailed out and she’s always had a soft spot for Ella.

But now instead of telling my mom about the broken gnome we’re telling her that we want to have a wedding in five days and how we almost got married without her. My mom flips out at first, more than I thought she would, but her anger turns to excitement when I remind her that yeah, we were going to get married without her but we decided not to.

Thomas, my mom’s boyfriend who’s a little younger than her, is in the kitchen eating a bowl of cereal at the table while all this goes on. He looks a little more cleaned up than when we last saw him, at least he’s wearing a clean T-shirt and jeans without holes in them. My mom is still dressing like she’s younger—her shirt has all this flashy diamond shit on it and there’s some on the trim of her pants. But I don’t say anything about it. I get that she’s happy and even though I still think Thomas is an idiot, especially when he drips milk on the front of his shirt, he seems to make her happy.

“So we’re really going to do this?” my mom asks with a grin on her face as she pours a cup of coffee.

“Do what?” I ask, exchanging a confused glance with Ella, who shrugs, as confused as I am.

My mom shakes her head at me as she sets the coffeepot down on the counter near the sink. “Get married.”

I press back a smirk. “I didn’t realize it was a we thing.”

She sighs, like I’m a silly little child, and walks past us, making her way across the kitchen to the fridge. “I didn’t mean we as in all of us.” She opens the fridge door and takes out a gallon of milk. “I meant we as in you and Ella.” She beams at Ella as she pours milk into her coffee. “The daughter I never had. God, this is going to be so much fun.”

Ella steps back, tensing, shying away because my mom’s enthusiasm is scaring the shit out of her. “What’s going to be so much fun?” she asks.

“Planning your wedding.” My mom glances at Ella and me as she puts the milk back into the fridge. “You two are going to have the best wedding. I’m going to make sure of that.”

I pull Ella toward me and circle my arms around her waist, trying to ease her panic. “You know you have only five days to plan it and then we have to return home, right?” I tell my mom.

My mom clasps her hands together and glances over her shoulder at the snowflakes drifting down from the cloudy sky. It’s early afternoon but with the lack of sunlight it looks like it’s late in the day. “Five days is perfect.” She returns her attention to us. “I can do a lot in five days.”

“And we’re all broke,” I remind her, pressing Ella’s back against my chest. She’s being really quiet and it’s making me nervous. I’m not sure if it’s all the wedding talk that’s freaking her out or the fact that we just had a baby talk.

“I have some money saved up.” My mom collects her cup of coffee from off the counter. “And besides, you can have a nice wedding without spending a whole lot of money.” Her eyes land on Ella. “Do you have a dress already?”

Ella shakes her head and then blinks at my mom distractedly. “What?”

“A dress, sweetie.” My mom looks at me questioningly from over the top of her cup as she takes a swallow. “Does she have one yet?”

I lean over Ella’s shoulder to catch her eye and I’m startled by the layer of water in her eyes. There’s something wrong and I need to find out what. “Yeah, she has one,” I say to my mom and then grab Ella’s hand and lead her toward the hallway, calling over my shoulder. “Mom, we’ll be right back.”