“So,” I say, “what do you want to do with yourself? You don’t want anything in the field of medicine, that we know. What are you thinking?”
“Honestly?” She slices her chicken breast carefully, her lips pressing together. Finally, she shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“How do you not know?”
Her hair swishes back and forth as she shakes her head. “I tell Joy I’m having a mid-life crisis,” she half-laughs. “I’ve spent my entire life, since turning eighteen, doing what I needed to do or what Eric wanted me to do.”
“I don’t think I like him.”
“I don’t. So that’s two of us,” she sighs. “I let him manipulate me. In the moment, I didn’t realize it, but I see it now.”
I set my silverware on the edge of my plate and look at her. “What happened with him? Do you mind me asking?”
Her fork drops too. “When I told him I was dropping out, he went ballistic. He said I was a liability to him, a nobody that would never amount to anything. There was something in the way he said it that time—”
“He’d said those things before?” I bite out, feeling my irritation soar.
She shrugs, trying to play it off. “Maybe. But that time . . . he just made me feel really bad. I don’t know why it was different that time than before. It was just a really ugly argument.”
“Explain ugly,” I say, narrowing my eyes.
“No,” she says, reading between the lines. “Nothing happened. God, no. He’s still alive. If he would have hurt me physically, I’d be locked up.”
“Mental abuse and physical abuse are no different.”
“I know,” she whispers. “But I made a decision that day that I’d had enough. I was at this point where I felt so . . . put in a corner. Does that make sense? Like my whole life was being scripted by someone else. I’d never done anything I wanted to do.” I fiddle with the corner of my napkin. “And it’s not like he even promised me the world for hanging in there. He told me flat-out we had no future.”
“He sounds like a complete tool.”
“Apparently I’m just the dating kind, not the kind for marriage.” Her eyes flick to mine with a sadness that slays me. I reach for her hand.
“You know what I think?”
“What’s that?”
“I think he’s right.”
Her gaze drops to the table, her shoulders slumping. I grin.
“You are just the dating kind for a guy like that. He doesn’t deserve to keep you long-term.”
The corners of her cheeks start to bend, but she doesn’t smile. I work harder for it.
“You are young. Beautiful. Smart. You have the whole world at your feet, Mallory. Why would you stifle your potential by staying with someone that wants to keep you in a box?”
She perks up, the smile I’m dying to see starts to slide across her cheeks. “You think so?”
“I know so. Now you just need a plan and I happen to be an excellent planner,” I chuckle. “What do you want to do with yourself?
“I was telling Sienna the other day that I might open a yoga studio someday.”
“And . . .”
She shrugs.
“That’s it?” I ask. “You want to maybe open a yoga studio at some point in the future?”
“Yeah, that’s it,” she says defensively. “Look, Graham. I’m starting all over. I know that’s hard for you to understand, being who you are, but I’m doing the best I can to basically recreate dreams and decide who I am in the midst of my life.”
“Hey,” I say, reaching for her hand and placing mine on top of it. “I didn’t mean anything by that. It came out as a jerk thing, and I didn’t mean it like that at all. I was wrong.”
“I know I get protective over myself right now. I just am so afraid I’ll slip and end up in some position where I’m cut down.”
“I’d never cut you down. The only people who cut others down are those threatened by their height. The higher you get, the more lovely I think you are.”
Her cheeks flush. Her hand rolls over and she squeezes mine. “That’s very nice of you to say.”
“I only speak the truth.”
She relaxes in her chair. “Tell me about you, Graham. What are your life plans?”
“I just want to keep doing what I’m doing until I can’t,” I say simply. “This business is my life. Growing up, I just wanted to be my dad. Not emulate him or pretend to be him—I wanted to be him. When he stepped back and made me President of the company, it was the proudest day of my life, you know? My father sort of passing the torch.”
“That’s awesome,” she grins. “But I feel like everything you do and say has to do with the business. What about outside of that? You have this huge family. Do you want that too?”
I bring my hand away from hers slowly. “I don’t think I’ll have a family as large as mine, no. I mean, there are six of us and I’m not getting any younger,” I chuckle.
“But do you want kids? Is a family a part of your future?”
Taking a sip of wine, I consider her question. More than that, I consider it in context of who she is and who I am and what this is between us. Or what it could be. And what I’m capable of letting it be. “Maybe someday,” I say, figuring that’s fair enough. “I’m not averse to having a family. Clearly, I love having a big family and I think that having children is always a blessing. But it’s not something I think I’m ready for right now, nor do I think I’ll be ready for it in the foreseeable future.”
“I didn’t think so,” she almost whispers. Her features glow as the candle in the middle of the table dances back and forth. She tosses me a smile that she has to try too hard to look natural and takes a sip of her wine.
“What about you?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
“A family? Someday, yeah, absolutely. I hope to have a family of my own. I’m not sure what the point of life is otherwise.” She glances at me softly. “I’ll be honest—I like being in a relationship. I liked the teamwork aspect of it and making dinner and going grocery shopping. I grew up watching my parents do those things together. They enjoyed that, looked forward to it. Maybe it was all they had together, I don’t know. It just seems like a part of life that really makes life . . . life.”
“Well, my parents certainly didn’t grocery shop together,” I say, trying to imagine my dad with a shopping cart. “But I can understand what you’re saying. For some people, relationships work.” I look her square in the eye. “They just aren’t for me.”
My chest tightens, my steak threatening to come up as I watch the fire in her eye start to wane. A part of me wants to grab her hand and tell her I want to have her in my life in some capacity, what that is, I don’t know. But that wouldn’t be fair. To either of us.
“I’m going to use the restroom,” she says, scooting her chair back.
“I’ll order the cake.”
“What?”
“Cake, Mallory. We’re having cake,” I say, trying to win back that smile.
“Make it vanilla with vanilla icing.”
“Really?” I ask. “Their dessert menu is two pages long and you’re getting vanilla cake with vanilla icing?”
“I figure vanilla has fewer calories than chocolate. This is balancing out the three sodas I had today,” she winks and takes off, leaving me chuckling behind her.