My tongs turned over the vegetables. I was happy loving Millie as we were. For so long, I told myself she didn’t need to know. I didn’t want her to feel pressured or think I needed more than she already was.
“There’s not much to say,” I replied. “My father’s passed. My mother wants me to be married and give her good, Russian grandchildren.”
“And that’s not what you want?”
I shook my head. “I’m not against children, but….”
“But?”
“But my parents big dream was their own apartment and a family car,” I admitted. “They were never given much of a chance to want more than that. I-I’ve seen too much of the world, Millie. There are things I want beyond a wife, a house, and that white-picket fence people talk about.”
“I don’t remember when was the last time I actually saw one of those,” Millie remarked, hoping it would lighten the mood. “I think your place is much nicer than that house you’re talking about too.”
“Does your family pressure you to want something else?”
“They can’t,” she answered simply. “They’re no longer living.”
“I’m sorry, Millie.”
A wistful look filled her eyes. As she brushed her hair from her rosy lips, tucking behind her hear, Millie’s gaze seemed to go back in time.”
“My parents were already older when my sister and I were born,” she explained. “Mom was already in her forties, and I guess you could say her body had its ‘liquidation sale’. They had been hippies in their youth, big Grateful Dead fans, and they never stopped smoking cigarettes. It wasn’t shocking when they died in their sixties, so it’s just me and Meara now. Well, I’ve got some cousins down in Kentucky too, but I don’t really know them well.”
I thought of all my extended I hardly knew and the people my mother called family, even if they were of no relation. As Millie took another drink of her wine glass, I couldn’t imagine what her life felt like.
“You have me now too,” I said before ever thinking twice.
Millie smiled, her free hand combing through my hair. “Well, isn’t that a nice thought?”
When she looked at me like that, it was impossible for me not to kiss her. I let the tongs rest on the black slate counter as my hands craved to touch the curves of her waist. I didn’t care if all of our dinner burned to a crisp. The only flavor I wanted to taste was the one on Millie’s tongue, but the oven’s alarm pulled us apart.
“And you know,” she whispered jokingly, “if my birth control implant ever fails, your mother might just get that grandchild she wants so badly.”
Though we laughed together, I couldn’t help but glimpse a surreal future where Millie stood in that church hall with a baby shrouded in layers of white fabric. That possibility was so far away. Our relationship had only begun, but I had to admit, with Millie in that distant picture, it didn’t seem so bad.