Family Affair by Caprice Crane

can’t take it anymore. I reach across the table and take both of his hands in mine.
    “Just say it,” I urge, with a gentle squeeze.
    Brett’s eyes dart up and to the left, his brow furrowing. “Say
what?”
    “Just … say it.” I repeat. “I know. And I’m ready, too.” He looks surprised. “You are?”
    “Yes!” I insist. “It’s time.”
    “Really?” he asks, suddenly sounding not so sure.
    “I mean,
we
were practically kids when we met,” I say.
    “Exactly,” he agrees. “We were kids.”
    “And now we’re grown up.”
    “And we learn things about ourselves,” he says, picking up where I left off. “And maybe who we were when we met, and what we wanted is different now. Because we’re different now. In fact, a few of the guys were talking about a biochemistry class and they mentioned how every seven years cells completely regenerate—so by that logic, we actually
are
different people.”
    “Well,” I counter, “I’ve known for a while this is where things should go with us.”
    “You did?”
    “Of course. It kind of brings things full circle.”
    “Wow,” he says, falling back in his chair and letting his shoulders drop away from his ears for the first time since we sat down. “So you’d say…you agree that we…we should maybe think about different options for moving forward?”
    Does he think I can’t get pregnant? Does he forget that little thing we’ve been using called birth control? How about the weight gain I’ve suffered all these years from the hormones in that freakin’ pill? We haven’t even tried and already he wants to
adopt?
    “I don’t think we really need to go there yet, babe. We should atleast
try
to do it ourselves first. Keep it simple. Plus, I hear the legal aspects and paperwork are a real bitch.”
    “Wow.” His face is a mixture of unreadable emotions. “You are … you’re really surprising me here, Layla. This is not how I thought this conversation was going to go. I mean… I…I guess I’m relieved, if surprised. So do you think we should set a time to really do this? Maybe pick a neutral spot?”
    “You mean like a hotel?” I ask.
    “We could use a hotel, I guess. I wasn’t thinking of a specific place. I just thought…I don’t know. So how do we proceed? Is it a temporary thing?”
    “Temporary?” I ask.
    “I mean, how far are we taking this?”
    “You mean how many?”
    “How many what?” he asks.
    “Kids, you goose.”
    “Wait … what?”
    “Are you asking me how many kids I’ll want to have, ultimately? I don’t know. I figured we’d just start with the one and take it from there.”

brett
    Holy shit. Is she pregnant? Are we in the same conversation? Am I in the twilight zone? I knew things were going way too smoothly
.
    “A baby?” she says, which echoes in my head over and over again. “You look really confused.”
    And then it all starts to hit me in these fast-paced, montagelike flashes, punching me in the face, knocking into my pea-brain a terrifying scenario: the recent weirdness.
Bam
. Her mood swings.
Punch
. The amount of ice cream she’s been sucking down.
Thump
. Her talk about taking up knitting.
Smack
. Layla moving furniture out of the extra room the other day.
Whack
. The ceiling-hanging mobile she bought—fuck, wasn’t that a prop for a photo shoot? How could I have missed all those signals? But now she realizes that we’re having difficulties and—
    “Are you
pregnant?”
I blurt.
    “Already?” she asks, like she’s surprised by the question.
    “Are you pregnant?” I repeat.
    “No!” she says.
    “Phew!” I let out a heavy sigh. “Thank God.”
    “I beg your pardon?” she says, seeming taken aback.
    “Well, we wouldn’t want to bring a child into the world just as we were …”
    Layla’s eyes widen. The relief I felt three seconds earlier gets replaced with panic again. Were we having two different conversations after all?
    “What were we talking about?” I ask.
    “You tell