“No,” he says. “It doesn’t look like it is.”
I nod once. “When she’s not in front of me, I think about where she is. If she’s all right. If someone’s said something to her. Done something. If she’s sleeping. If she’s upset.” I pause. “And when she is in front of me, I still want her. That part hasn’t exactly become easier.”
Maksim snorts softly. “Clearly.”
I ignore that.
“I don’t like seeing her afraid,” I say. “I don’t like that she thinks she has to handle everything by herself. I don’t like that she keeps looking at me like she wants to trust me and doesn’t know if that would be the stupidest thing she could do.”
Maksim watches me for a long second.
Then he says, “That sounds bad.”
I let out a short laugh. “For who?”
“For both of you.” He turns his glass once in his hand. “You care about her.”
“Yes.”
The answer comes easily. Too easily, maybe.
Maksim notices that too. “More than you planned to.”
“I didn’t plan any of it.”
“No,” he says. “That’s usually how this happens.”
The room goes quiet again.
Then he asks, “And the baby?”
I lean back and look at the ceiling for a second before I answer. “I told her I didn’t care whose it was.”
“Did you mean it?”
“Yes.”
He studies my face. “That’s not the same thing as not wanting it to be yours.”
I look at him again. “No,” I say. “It isn’t.”
He nods slowly. Then, after a pause, “You’re in deep.”
I could deny it. Say it’s too soon. Say too much has happened too fast for any of this to mean what it looks like. But that would be a lie, and I’m too tired to lie to him.
“Yes,” I say.
Maksim exhales and rubs a hand over his jaw. “I was hoping you’d say no.”
“I know.”
“Because this is going to get complicated.”
“It already is.”
He can’t argue with that.
For a while neither of us speaks. He drinks. I don’t.