Cora Carmack - Keeping Her

“We don’t even know if we’re pregnant yet. You want to uproot our entire life on a possibility?”

I took hold of her elbows and said, “No. No, of course not. We can wait to answer until next week, until we know for sure. But even if you’re not pregnant, Bliss, you might be someday. This job is a rare opportunity. Most ­people have to work their way up for years to get this kind of job.”

“And what kind of job is it?”

“What do you mean?”

She gripped my shoulders like she wanted to shake me. “What will you be doing? You love theatre. You said it made you grow up. It led you to me. You’re going to leave that for what? A job behind a desk?”

“I love you, more than I’ve ever loved acting.”

She pulled her elbows out of my grasp and threw up her arms.

“What does that have to do with any of this?”

“Bliss, I’m doing this for you. For us.”

“Well, stop.”

I shook my head. “What?”

“You heard me. Stop. I didn’t ask you to do any of this.”

“You don’t have to ask.” I dragged a thumb across her jaw. “I just think it’s time for a bit of realism. It would be stupid not to take this job.”

“I’m hearing a lot of stupid things at the moment.”

Okay. So she wasn’t excited about the idea of living in London.

“Damn it, Bliss. We need this. I’m trying to grow up, to get a real job, and be an adult about all this.”

“Being an adult doesn’t mean you change everything about yourself. You were an adult already without this fancy job and the money.”

“But now I can be an adult that can provide for you.”

“You already provide all I need. You said we needed a dose of realism?”

“Yes. We do.”

I could see that now.

“You said almost the same thing to me on the first night we met, on the night we kissed. We were talking about theatre, about Shakespeare.”

“Bliss—­”

“I never would have even stopped at that table if you hadn’t been reading those plays. We would have met for the first time as teacher and student, and nothing would have happened between us. We might not have fallen in love if you hadn’t been the assistant director for Phaedra. You proposed to me on stage, Garrick. Our whole life is theatre. The love we have is because of theatre. I associate all of our greatest moments with a play. If we’d thought about what was safe or smart when we met, we wouldn’t be together today. And you’ll always be the man that encouraged me to follow through on my dreams, the man that taught me how to make the bold choices and go after what I wanted. You said you weren’t like your father. He’s supposed to be the one whose primary concern is money.”

“The money is just a means to an end. You and the baby are my priority.”

“If you really want to do something for me, you’ll turn down this job.”

“Bliss, just think about it.”

“I am thinking about it. I’m thinking about how I fell in love with a man who told a classroom full of seniors that the hardest thing about this life isn’t landing roles or having enough money. It’s keeping up your spirit and remembering why we chose theatre in the first place. So take your own advice, Garrick. You could have had this life all those years ago, but you didn’t want it. You wanted something different. Something better. And either you still want that other life, that life with me. Or you don’t. But I would leave before I’d let you ruin your own dream.”

The silence detonated in my ears. My heart was raging in my chest, and I felt like my ribs were going to crack if it beat any harder. I couldn’t lose her. I wanted her more than I wanted anything else. She eclipsed every dream, every desire, every doubt.

“Bliss—­”

“I mean it, Garrick. I appreciate what you’re doing, and I get it. I love you for being willing to do this, but it’s not worth it. Not if you stop being you.”

She took my hand and pressed it to her stomach. “If we did have a child, and he came to you with something like this, would you tell him to take the money, to take the job that didn’t mean anything? Why am I even asking, I know what you’d say. You’d tell him to do the thing he loved, the thing that made him feel more alive. Life’s too short to waste time living it any other way.”

She was right.

Damn it. She was right.

The knot in my stomach loosened, and I released a heavy breath.

“How is it that you know me even better than I know myself?”

“Because I love you.”

My heart sprinted, and the force of each beat drew me closer to her. Every time she said those words . . . every time it felt like the first time. I wrapped my arms around her and pulled until I had her feet dangling off the floor. I kissed the corner of her jaw and returned the words.

“But if we’re pregnant . . . there are so many things we’ll have to overcome. It’s going to be hard with our lifestyles.”

She threaded her fingers through my hair and said, “Your mother took me to see a friend of hers who’s a doctor.”

I met her gaze, and set her feet back on the floor. “You told my mother?”

She shrugged. “That woman has a way of prying out my secrets.”

“And?”

“And I’m not pregnant.”

I swallowed, my stomach twisting with a combination of emotions, too vast for me to really identify.

“You’re not?”

She shook her head. “The doctor said she thinks it’s probably just stress that’s thrown off my cycle. Probably the combination of all the work and thinking about meeting your family.”

My heartbeat was slow, but loud in my ears.

“So . . . so we don’t have to worry about any of those things.”

“Not now, no.”

For the life of me, I couldn’t tell if I was disappointed or relieved. Not about the baby. The job though . . . that felt like I was a hundred times lighter.

“You okay?” she asked.

I kissed her forehead, then the tip of her nose, followed by her lips. I absorbed the calm from her warm skin, breathed in the balance from her closeness. I said, “Yes. I’m more than okay.”

She nodded. Her expression was just as hard to read, and I got the feeling that she was just as confused about how she felt as I was.

“Garrick? One more question.”

“Anything.”

Her smile widened, brilliant and beautiful. All her confusion disappeared.

“Marry me?”

Half a dozen responses flitted through my mind, from simple to snarky. But there was one thing that would always be true about me. I preferred action to words.

So, I pulled her close and answered her as thoroughly as I could.

EVERYONE DESERVES ONE grand adventure.

We all need that one time in life that we always get to point back to and say, “Then . . . then I was really living.”

Adventures don’t happen when you’re worried about the future or tied down by the past. They only exist in the now. And they always, always come at the most unexpected time in the least likely of packages.

An adventure is an open window, and an adventurer is the person willing to crawl out on the ledge and leap.

I told my parents I was going to Europe to see the world and grow as a person. (Not that Dad listened beyond the second or third word, which is when I slipped in that I was also going to spend his money and piss him off as much as possible. He didn’t notice.) I told my professors that I was going to collect experiences to make me a better actor. I told my friends I was going to party.

In reality, it was a little of all of those things. Mostly, I was here because I refused to believe that my best years were behind me now that I’d graduated from college. I wanted to experience something extraordinary. And if adventures only existed in the now, that was the only place I wanted to exist, too.

After nearly two weeks backpacking around Eastern Europe, I was becoming an expert at just that.

I trekked down the old cobblestone street, my stiletto heels sticking in the stone grooves. I kept a tight hold on the two Hungarian men that I’d met earlier in the evening, and followed our two other companions down the street. . Technically, I guess it had been last night when we met since we were now into early hours of the morning.

I couldn’t keep their names straight, and I wasn’t even that drunk yet.

I kept calling Tamás, István. Or was that András? Oh well. All three were hot with dark hair and eyes, and they knew four words in English as far as I could tell.

American. Beautiful. Drink. And dance.

As far as I was concerned, those were the only words they needed to know. At least I remembered Katalin’s name. I’d met her a few days ago, and we’d hung out almost every night since. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement. She showed me around Budapest, and I charged most of our fun on Daddy’s credit card. Not like he would notice or care. And if he did, he’d always said that if money didn’t buy happiness, then ­people were spending it wrong. So if he got mad, I’d just say I was finding my joy.

“Kelsey,” Katalin said, her accent thick and exotic. “Welcome to the ruin bars.”

I paused in ruffling István’s hair (or the one I called István, anyway). The five of us stood on an empty street filled with dilapidated buildings. I knew the whole don’t-­judge-­a-­book-­by-­its-­cover thing, but this place was straight out of a zombie apocalypse. I wondered how to say brains in Hungarian.