Page 48 of False Confidence

“I don’t know where to start,” Jasmine said quietly, wringing her hands. “It all feels so fucking trivial. My parents have lofty expectations. So what? They made sure I had everything I needed, I graduated college debt free, I never had to worry about going without. They weren’t abusive or neglectful. They weren’t like Maggie’s parents.”

“Did you really have everything you needed? It doesn’t sound like they were particularly nurturing or loving.”

“No, but isn’t that just what parents are like? Yours are the exception. My parents aren’t bad people. I’m just not what they want. They love Xander and Rose. Xan is the perfect mini-me for my dad to turn into a businessman, and Rosie never so much as put a toe out of line growing up.” The words streamed from her like water, like now she’d started, she couldn’t stop them.

“Xan is the serious one, the innovator, the perfect son. Rose is the younger and prettier one who somehow got the brains, too. And I’m… me. And I’m not saying that to be self-deprecating. I really do like who I am. Mostly. I just don’t have a thing, like Xan and Rose do. I don’t want what they do out of life.”

“What do you want out of life?” Liam asked.

“I just want to be happy.” Tears rolled silently down her cheeks, damn near shattering him. “I want a family I can feel like myself in. My job is exactly what I’ve always wanted—challenging, but not stressful. My apartment is shitty, but I like it. I don’t need anything fancy. I just want to be content. What do you want out of life?” She returned the question like she needed a break from thinking about herself.

Liam was still reeling from her answer—it sounded so fucking simple. Fuck anyone who had made her think it was unachievable. He would stop at nothing to make sure she was more than content.

He cleared his throat, threading his fingers through hers. What did he want out of life? Her. It probably wasn’t the time to drop that in, though. “Honestly? I’m pretty content these days,” he said, instead, squeezing her hand.

The tension in Jasmine’s shoulder melted a fraction, and Liam felt like he could take a full breath for the first time since they’d started talking about this.

“What about long term?”

“I don’t know,” Liam said with a nonchalant shrug, like he hadn’t been falling asleep to visions of a future with her since they’d first met. “I want to be a dad. Maybe have a house with a backyard for the kids to run around in. And I guess I look at my dad and Maggie, my moms, my grandparents, and I want that, you know?”

“Yeah,” she agreed, laying her head on his shoulder. “Me too. But if anyone else asks, I’ll lie about it.”

He chuckled. “I’d expect nothing less.” He wound his arms around her shoulders and tucked her in close to him.

“You have to tell me something at least a little shitty about your parents now to balance this out.”

Liam didn’t even have to think to know there was nothing to add. “As you’ve pointed out, my parents are great.”

“Come on. They must have done something to piss you off when you were a teenager on the brink of rebellion.”

“What kind of teenager do you think I was?” he asked, sounding more affronted than intended. “I never even got grounded, thank you very much.”

“Of course not.”

Liam hummed, trying to think of a time when he’d been mad at his parents. Something light enough to lift some of Jasmine’s tension “Okay, when I was a kid, I was super obsessed with Snoopy. I’m talking bedding, posters, t-shirts, everything was Snoopy.”

Jasmine relaxed at the change of subject, and Liam took the chance to wipe her cheeks in case more tears fell. “I was wondering about the Snoopy figurine on the bookshelf,” she replied, nodding to the bookshelf in question. Most of his collection was in boxes in his moms’ basement, but that figurine had followed him to college and beyond.

“I was so obsessed that I desperately wanted a dog. Not a beagle, like Snoopy, because I did my research and they’re a shit ton of work, but I just wanted a dog. My parents said no. They worked all day, and I was at school, so there was no one to stay home with a dog. It makes sense as an adult, but I was pretty pissed about it for a long time.”

It was nothing compared to what she’d told him about her parents, but Jasmine smiled at the story, and he couldn’t ask for anything more.

“That’s adorable. You should get one now. You can take it to the office with you, and it would be dad-practice.”

Liam hadn’t considered that he could finally get a dog, now that he didn’t have to go to the museum every day. “I could. We should look into that. Thank you for talking to me, darling. I really think it’s going to help, and I like getting inside that beautiful brain of yours.”

“You’re going to make me do this more, aren’t you?” Jasmine grumbled, sighing when he nodded. “I miss when everything felt simpler. Do you ever wish you could just go to sleep and wake up twenty again?”

“Definitely not. I didn’t know you when I was twenty,” he said, simply, and Jasmine looked a little stunned. She recovered quickly, wiggling her eyebrows.

“And if you had? What then?”

“Well, you would have been thirteen, so… I guess I could have babysat you?”

“Shut up. If we’d both met at twenty. What then?”

“Then we’d probably be married with a bunch of babies, living happily ever after with no idea what broken hearts and decades of fake orgasms felt like.”

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