“You realize I don’t need you, right?” I interrupted, searching his face. “I’m going to be a doctor, and I’m turning out to be a pretty damn good one. I have the most amazing friends in the world. A nice place. Everything I could possibly need—”
“I know that!” Ricky said in a harsh whisper. “You think I don’t? You think I don’t think about that all the time?”
“Do you?” I said. “Because it feels like you think I’ll always be here. That you can just keep playing games with me, and that I’ll sit around, twiddling my thumbs, waiting for you to decide that you’re ready to commit—”
“I’m not playing games,” Ricky said. “I was embarrassed, okay? It’s a baby. I wasn’t sure if it was my baby! Angie, you know this about me. I’m not abandoning any child of mine, ever. I’m going to be there for all those moments—their first steps, first words; I’m going to be there changing diapers, taking them to daycare, doing all of that. How was I supposed to ask you to be a part of that, huh? How was I supposed to tell you that I wanted to be with you, but, oh, also, can you please include my kid in your plans for the future that you’ve been working so hard for? How was I supposed to, in good conscience, ask you to do that for me?”
I sucked in a sharp breath, my fists unfurling at my sides. In the flurry of my anger, I hadn’t fully considered what the consequences of Ricky’s being a father would be on our relationship. But spoken out loud like that? I imagined arranging my rank list for Match with programs in Arizona, a state I had never even visited, at the top. A small, strange child screaming down the halls when I was trying to sleep after twenty-eight-hour calls—
Ricky squeezed his eyes shut, smoothing his hands down my arms.
“Look,” he said, his voice reed thin, his words flowing fast. “I know last week I hesitated. And I know that you think it’s because I’m not . . . invested in you, or something. But that’s not it. My last relationship was a mess. And the one before that. And before that. I kept going all in with people who weren’t ready to go all in with me. I did some shitty things to people I cared about just to try to salvage relationships that weren’t worth salvaging. And I told myself, ‘Well, this is just what you do for love.’” He chewed at his inner cheek, and I wondered if he was thinking of Shae. “But it wasn’t love, was it? It was just me trying to do what I thought was right. And with you . . . it was like I was falling back into old patterns. Jumping in, when I really needed to be holding back. Except it was worse, because the way I felt . . . The way I feel about you is just so much more, you know?”
He sucked in a breath, looked down at the floor. This was Ricky stripped bare, I realized. No excuses, no pretenses, just the beautiful, maddening man I had come to know. When he looked back up at me again, his eyes were hard with determination.
“Listen, Angie,” he said firmly, and I jolted, jarred by the shift in his tone. “I want to be with you all the time. When you’re not with me, I’m thinking of when I can see you next. Every time you say you need something, I want to be the one to do it for you. And I thought, ‘Look. Of course you feel this way. This girl is smart, she’s funny, she’s beautiful, her body is ridiculous’”—I snorted and ducked my head as Ricky laughed, guiding my face back to his—“‘but give it some time. This is just the honeymoon phase. Get to actually know her, you know?’ But I have gotten to know you, and that’s only made holding back harder. So when you asked the other night if you were my girlfriend”—I swallowed against the ball in my throat, the sting of his rejection still fresh—“honestly, I wasn’t sure if we were on the same page about what that meant for me. It’s not just a label for me. I’m looking for someone who can be my family. I needed to feel like that was something you even wanted with me. And . . . I wasn’t always sure that it was.” He paused, searching my face for a reaction. “Is it? I’m not talking about right now, or even tomorrow. Just . . .”
All this time, I’d thought I was getting ahead of myself. Always trying to fit Ricky into my future, getting lost in distant what-ifs, instead of just living in the moment. But apparently, he’d been doing the same.
“Are you asking if I see a future with you?” I asked. He gave me a grim nod, and I exhaled, feeling my heart pound in my ears. “I mean. Y-yeah. I do.”