“Did I do something wrong?” Elliot asks in the evening.
Natalie hasn’t said a word to him since she asked him to pass the bread during dinner.
“No,” Natalie says, but it was clearly meant to be a yes.
“Are you sure?”
“Are you sure you want to have this conversation right now?” Natalie asks.
“Uh… what’s the conversation?”
“Every time anyone brings up getting married, you act like it’s somehow a big mystery to you why anyone would think that we might get married one day,” Natalie says.
“Well…” Elliot shrugs. “It’s mostly that they’re acting like we’ll get married… I don’t know… tomorrow.”
Natalie gives him that stare she always does when she’s trying not to roll her eyes. “Humor me for a second,” she says. “Have you ever thought about getting married? Not that I’m saying that I want you to promise me that you’ll propose soon or anything like that. I’m asking about your general stance.”
“On getting married?”
“Yes.”
“Oh,” Elliot says.
“I mean, is that something you can see in our future?”
Elliot should say yes. He knows that there’s only one right answer to that question. Because if he doesn’t say yes, it means that…
“You look freaked out,” Natalie says, eyes turning towards the ceiling, definitely annoyed with him now. “Please stop looking freaked out. We’re adults, we’ve been together for three years and it’s something you talk about when you’re in a relationship. Getting married, having kids… It’s not in our immediate future, but, you know, it might be relevant one day.”
“Right,” Elliot says. He needs to say more than that. His face is burning hot. He’s about to fucking panic. About getting married.
“Elliot.”
“Yeah?”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I sort of assumed that this was the direction we were headed in?”
Elliot can’t really blame her for assuming that, because that’s usually the direction that you’re headed in when you love each other and you’re in a serious relationship.
Natalie gets back out of bed, which means that shit’s about to hit the fan. She’s better at arguing when she’s standing up. It must be some sort of lawyer thing. In any case, Elliot’s in trouble. “Listen,” Natalie says, “I’m going to be straight with you here. I want to get married. And I want to have kids. And I want those things with you. I love you, Elliot. But if we’re looking at two different futures here, I don’t know if…”
Elliot looks at her, that girl he met while he was buying a ridiculous amount of dumplings. He knows what this is. He can recognize an ultimatum when he sees it. If he doesn’t tell her that he wants to get married eventually, this is it for them. Natalie has obviously been waiting for him to propose and never said a word about it until now, and maybe Elliot should have known, but he didn’t even think about it. He thought he had more time.
He should have an answer to all this. He should know if he wants to spend the rest of his life with her, but he doesn’t. He should tell her that he loves her, too, that he needs a little more time, but will he know in a month? In a year?
Does he even want kids? Most of the guys have families, a kid, or four. Dima’s wife is often at their games with their son, who waves at Dima through the glass and it’s cute, but Elliot can’t really see Natalie behind the glass with their kid. It’s not even that he thinks he’d make a bad father, he’d probably be a decent one, at the very least, but the idea is still foreign to him.
“Nat, I…” Elliot bites down on his bottom lip. He can’t even tell her that he loves her right now, because he’d say it to deflect, to somehow make things right.
Natalie nods. “I see.”
“I’m sorry, I just… This is a lot right now.”
“Just tell me if you want to get married,” Natalie says. “Yes? No?”
Elliot doesn’t know.
“Yes, but not to me?”
Oh. This is bad. Because… what if she’s right?
“Okay,” Natalie says when Elliot says absolutely nothing, because this is only just sinking in for him now, too. She has tears in her eyes and it’s his fault. She nods. “Okay.”
“Nat.”
“You should go.”
“No, come on, let’s talk about this,” Elliot says, even though there’s no fixing this. He can’t make himself love her enough to give her what she wants, and he also can’t promise her something that he doesn’t really want. He can’t propose to her to end an argument.
“Elliot, I don’t think we have anything to talk about.”
Maybe they don’t.
“You want me to leave?” Elliot asks. Hell, he wants to leave. He’s wanted to leave ever since they got here.
Natalie nods.
Three years together and now he’s packing his bags, pulling his clothes back on. His car is downstairs, so he can drive… somewhere. It’s almost ten, so he won’t make it that far before he gets tired. It’s like he’s on autopilot, throwing his stuff back into his suitcase, Natalie sitting in the window seat, wearing a silk robe, watching him, tears running down her cheeks.
This was the worst time to have this conversation.
“I’ll explain things to my parents,” Natalie says. She takes him to the door, like she wants to make sure that he’s actually leaving, the house quiet. That’s the last thing she says to him.
The last thing he says is, “I’m sorry.” Not that it does much good, not that it fixes anything.
He goes back to New York for a few days. He doesn’t hear from her. He flies to Toronto like he was supposed to, stays with
