Page 52 of Two for Charging

“I guess so.” Chris rolled onto his back again and examined the ceiling, the pillow still clutched tight to his chest.

“You said your brother always knows what he wants. Does that mean you don’t?” Michelle didn’t sound like she judged him for being clueless. That was nice of her.

“Sometimes? It’s weird.”

“Try me.”

“Okay, so, I always thought I wanted to get married and have kids, right?”

Michelle made a wordless sound of agreement.

“But whenever I date someone, this switch in my brain flips to ‘Oh no, wait. I don’t want this.’ And I’m not great at meeting girls by myself, and my mom really wants me to have someone, so she keeps introducing me to these women. And then, when it doesn’t work out, she gets all sad, and it makes me feel guilty for not being into them enough. Because, like, I want to have a relationship at some point, right?”

“I don’t know. Do you?”

Chris grunted in frustration. “I don’t know. I want someone to come home to and cuddle and talk about stuff with, but I’ve never enjoyed having sex, and every time a girl mentions marriage and kids, I freak out.”

“Okay,” Michelle said. “It’s okay, Chris.”

Chris looked down to find the pillow clenched so tight in his arms the seams strained. He hadn’t realized he was getting so worked up. “Sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize. I should apologize. You said you didn’t want to talk about dating and sex, and now we are anyway. I’m sorry.”

Smoothing out the creases on the pillowcase, Chris said, “It’s fine.”

“Is that what you told your mom, too, when she crossed a boundary you set up?”

“She didn’t—”

“Chris.”

He sighed. “I haven’t talked to her about it yet.” She would call later and tell him how she’d met this nice girl, and it had been an accident she’d given out his number. She’d done it before. And he would accept the excuse and tell her it was fine but to please not do it again, as if giving out someone’s phone number could happen unintentionally.

Michelle didn’t ask another question, but Chris found himself wanting to explain all the same now that he had started. Michelle needed to understand why his mom did these things. It wasn’t her fault.

“I don’t want to upset her, you know? She deals with so much from my dad and Matty. I don’t need to add on. I think that’s why she keeps trying so hard to set me up, you know? I’m the only one who isn’t always criticizing her, so she wants to make me happy.”

“You mentioned your dad bullying your brother.”

“Oh, not in a bad way or anything. He doesn’t get why Matty wants to go to university instead of getting a job, and he didn’t get why Matty wanted to date Tabitha, and he doesn’t get why Matty doesn’t care about sports. So they fight about it.”

“And your mom?”

“She tries to protect Matty from him, I guess, and Matty gets annoyed about that too.”

“Sounds like a lot of fighting going on.”

“Yeah. I know I’m not supposed to talk about hockey, but I guess I get so nervous about the team fighting because I was always stuck in the middle at home, you know?”

He hadn’t allowed himself to dwell on the thought too much, how nice not always being on the wrong side of an argument felt, but it was the first thing he’d noticed after moving to San Francisco. How quiet and harmonious things could be with people he saw daily. The loudest hotel room party had nothing on his parents and Matty all yelling at each other.

“Chris?”

He tore his gaze off the pillow in his arms. Michelle had her hands folded on the table, and she looked at him with a trace of a smile.

“Yeah?”

“Thank you for telling me about all of this. You made some great progress here.”