Page 37 of The Marrying Kind
She gave me a long look, examining me. “We have fun together, and it would be easy to say yes.”
“But?” I filled in for her.
“But we don’t want the same things.”
“We both want to have fun in life,” I said as if I were going to make a big list like hers, but I faltered.
What had Ella told me she wanted? To travel the world, yes. To have new experiences worthy of her bucket list, definitely.
And what had I told her that I wanted? To stick around in one place. To run my business. To be with my family. To play for keeps.
As if reading my mind, she frowned. “I can’t be someone’s wife, Austen.”
My heart clenched in my chest, and I pushed through the feeling. “No? What about someone’s girlfriend?” I said, realizing how desperate my words sounded as they left my lips.
“I’m sorry. It’s just not something I’m cut out for right now.”
“Is this about your bucket list?” I tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear, and she leaned into the touch.
In one quick motion, she slipped from my arms, grabbed her coffee, and folded herself into a dining room chair. I followed and sank down across from her, my arms folding across my chest.
“Do you want to know about how my parents died?”
I stiffened for a second, then nodded. “I didn’t want to pry, but if you’re ready to talk about it, of course I do.”
“Well, I thought I knew what heartache was the day the police knocked on my door—did you know they really do that? Just like in the movies. Except in the movies, it’s someone else’s family.” She paused and sniffled.
My fists clenched with my desire to hold her. I sealed my lips and steeled myself, waiting for her to continue. Her gaze returned to mine, and I saw tears forming in those big eyes of hers.
“That wasn’t even the worst part, either. You’d think it was, hearing your parents were both killed in a car accident. Rolled the truck trying to avoid hitting a deer. But, no. the worst part came later.”
Ella pulled her knees into her chest and hugged her arms around them tightly. I couldn’t help myself as I shifted into the seat next to her and placed a hand on her knee. She rested her chin on it and continued in a faraway voice.
“My parents prioritized saving for retirement. They talked about it all the time. I never thought much about it then, but as soon as I found their retirement planner, that’s when everything hurt so much more.”
She peeked up at me then, her lip trembling.
“They’d saved their whole life and made detailed plans to travel, starting with Ireland and then working their way around Europe.” A ragged chuckle shook her. “I was shocked as hell for a minute, wondering who my parents even were. They were homebodies, never really went out and did anything, and I just thought that was who they were. Turns out, they were being thrifty all those years, saving their money to travel when they retired.”
Tears began to spill from her eyes.
“And that was the worst moment. Worse than the police visit. Worse than the funeral. When I realized that they had been waiting around, planning and saving, all for a future that was never going to come for them. They’d wasted their lives saving when they could have been enjoying their lives while they were alive.”
As I processed her words, all my questions about Ella were suddenly being answered. “So, that’s why you made a bucket list. Why you want to do it all now?”
“If I don’t make myself keep going, even when it becomes tempting to stop, I’ll feel like I’ve let them down. This trip is for them—to do a lifetime worth of adventures. I can probably only fund it for a year, then I’ll have to stop and work. But until then, I have to see all the things they never did. I can’t get stuck on a couch, waiting for my life to start.”
“That won’t happen, Ella. Even if you settled down with somebody, you’d never be someone stuck on a couch. That’s not who you are as a person.”
“I was, though, before I started this trip. My whole life, I was just like my parents, a self-proclaimed homebody. And while that might be the dream for some people, it had been in the back of my mind. Then when I found out about my parents’ trip, it was like all my worst fears were confirmed. I had been wasting my life.”
“So, you never want to get married, have a family?”
I sounded so pathetic, but couldn’t give a damn because Ella was slipping through my fingers. I was losing her to her plans to tour the world, which sounded amazing. I wanted all that for her, but selfishly, I wished she’d see what an adventure a life with me would be. Maybe it would involve a good amount of sitting on the couch in the evenings, when our kids were sleeping and we were pleasantly exhausted from a hard day’s work, but it wouldn’t be time wasted.
Ella pulled back from me then and muttered, “I can’t have a family.”
“Wait. Why not?” Not touching her was hard, but I could see she needed space.
