Page 46 of Jake and Conner
"Yeah?" Jake sounded almost amused by my request. "Okay then. Let's get up."
Almost the exact same moment that he said that, a clattering noise sounded from the dining room. Then another noise, as if one of the plates had fallen from the table and splintered against the wooden floor.
We looked at each other.
"What was that?" I asked.
"I have a suspicion," Jake said. "Do you see the dogs anywhere?"
"Oh no." It dawned on me what he was talking about.
Quickly, we both rose from the couch and made our way into the dining room where we found Kitty and Bailey stand around a broken plate, lapping up sauce and pieces of meat from the floor. Neither of them even looked up as we came in.
"Bad dogs!" Jake said. This got their attention, but only for a second. The food was still far more interesting than we were. Eventually, Jake grabbed Bailey by the collar and dragged her away from the plate on the ground. I followed his example with my own dog.
"I don't want to make a trip to my dad's house tonight because you two swallowed ceramic shards," Jake muttered, glaring at the dogs.
We locked the dogs in the living room and then we worked together to clean up the mess in the dining room.
"Totally not how I'd pictured tonight going," Jake said, wiping the floor, but he had a smile on his face.
"No, me neither," I agreed. "Those dogs can be a handful." But they'd made me forget, for at least a few minutes, what else had been on my mind.
"We should have been more careful. In a way, I guess this is training for when..." Jake didn't finish that sentence, as if suddenly realizing that he shouldn't have started it at all. His posture stiffened as he got up again. "Forget I said anything."
"It's okay," I said, knowing full well what he'd been imagining while we were cleaning--that one day we wouldn't be grumbling about our dogs but about our children.
I wasn't making any plans for that to happen.
But I wasn't making any plans for it not to happen, either.
"It's not a taboo subject," I said when Jake shot me a dubious look. "In fact, I don't think there should beanytaboo subjects between us."
"You said you wanted to take things slow," Jake reminded me. "I figured it was better not to talk about family planning."
"Thanks, but I don't want you to tip-toe around me either. I know you want children someday. You don't have to pretend that you don't. I'm good as long as you don't start to demand that we reproduce right this second."
"You know I wouldn't."
"I know." Stepping up to him, I gave him a kiss. "I love you."
"I love you too." Our lips met again and we stopped talking about babies.
We loved each other and that was all that mattered.
At least for tonight.
19
Conner
Jake took me out to search for Mark four times over the next month, but we never found anything. If he was in hiding, he was hiding himself well. Either that, or he had left the town altogether. I had no way of knowing which it was. Going out to look for him felt good, though, like I was at least doingsomething. And when our searches turned out fruitless, I found myself wanting to do more.
I sat in my office chair, staring at the screen of my computer, reading another email. Another newsletter. More demos, more protests. They were always going on somewhere, even in December.
I hadn't been an active participant in a long time. Maybe it had beentoolong. Back when I'd been in college, I'd been out there trying to effect change every other week. Sometimes two weeks in a row, kept going by a quiet fire raging inside of me. I'd burned for my cause.
These days, I could still feel the sparks of those flames I used to carry in my heart, but they rarely ignited the way they had when I was a teen. I was more settled now, I told myself, more systematic about the way I wanted to help omegas in need.
