“Go be thirty, Kael. Be the wanderer you were born to be. You are kind beyond words. You carry a lot of baggage for people, but you also know how to let it go before it breaks your back. I don’t regret my life’s path. Don’t ever regret yours. And don’t let someone take you down a road you don’t want to explore. I’m sure you’ve left an unintentional trail of broken hearts because it’s impossible to not love you.”
“You love me?”
I released his finger and brushed past him. “Does it matter?”
“I think it matters to you.”
Laughing in the most painful way, I planted myself on the opposite side of the kitchen as far away from him as possible. “Once. I think we should have had sex once and moved on. That’s as casual as I can be. That was my lesson to learn. I let Craig go because I knew he loved me in a way I couldn’t reciprocate any longer. And unrequited love is awful—for both people.”
“Jesus …” he whispered, resting his hands on his hips while glancing up at the ceiling. “You think I’m incapable of love. You think my not wanting a wife and children means I don’t want love … or that I don’t know how to love.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know what you feel. And maybe that’s because I can’t imagine what my life would have been like without marriage and children. I just know that when Craig died, part of me died. And the only thing that kept me together was the comfort of my children. Love, in my life, has been defined by everything you don’t want. So … I don’t know how you feel. If you don’t have family, what do you have?”
“I have the people in my life. And maybe it’s not the same people now as it was ten years ago. And ten years from now, it might not be the same people as now. I’ve met many people on my travels. And in those moments, they were my friends … they were my family.”
“Women … you’ve had relationships. You’ve been monogamous?”
“Yes.”
“And how did that end?”
“Mostly good. Sometimes bad.”
“Because they wanted you to commit to more?”
His face twisted and he shook his head. “Because one side or the other was no longer feeling satisfied with the relationship. So it was time to move on. And I suppose in a perfect world people would fall in and out of love at the same time, but it’s not a perfect world.”
“Have you ever lived with a woman?”
He nodded. “Once. We were roommates?”
“Not intimate?”
“We had sex. Then it ended.”
“Because you had sex?”
“Because we were roommates.”
I frowned.
“For the record … I haven’t lived very long with anyone, male or female. I like my space. It keeps me grounded and happy. And therefore, I have more energy and desire to spend my time helping others because I’m not sitting around being pissed off at a million tiny little things someone does that drives me insane.”
Ouch.
I flinched.
“You asked. I’m giving you total honesty. I think kids are great. I was really good at being one. I just don’t want the responsibility, and I don’t think this world needs to add to its population at the moment when we haven’t figured out how to take care of all the humans who are already here.”
“You don’t want to commit to eighteen years with another human to raise a child? Or you’re saving the Earth?”
“Maybe a bit of both.”
Really … he deserved all the credit for his honesty, even if it was blunt and a bit harsh for my love-marriage-baby soul. I let his words sink in for a few seconds—maybe a few minutes—while he showed patience and stayed.
Why was he staying? I told him to leave. I let him go. I begged him to leave.
“Have you ever had your heart broken?”
“Yes.”
Not the answered I expected. Yet it gave me … hope. It made me feel not so alone. Captain America wasn’t invincible after all.
“Are you thinking about your mom? Was that the one time you’ve had your heart broken? When she died?”
A soft smile crept up his face. Adoration. It looked good on him. I think I got that same look whenever anyone talked to me about my kids.
“Yes. She broke my heart when she died. But she wasn’t the first. I know what unrequited love feels like. And it’s awful. But it’s life. No regrets.”