Phil was silent. He waited for her to continue.

“You’re not going to say anything?”

“I don’t know what you want me to say.” He kept his eyes on the television at the foot of the bed, which was off. He could feel her eyes on his cheek.

She began to cry.

“I’ve always told myself I didn’t want to be one of those nagging girlfriends. But you’re always at the ballpark in the summer. And I thought we’d get more serious this winter, but you were at your mother’s half the time. Like, every other day.”

“She’s all alone down there, Elizabeth,” Phil responded harshly.

“She’s in her sixties. She can fend for herself. And that’s not my point. I think it’s great that you spend so much time with your mother. It’s just weird that you rarely ever invite me. We live a half hour away from the house you grew up in, and I think I’ve been there twice.”

“That’s because you spend holidays with your family in California,” Phil said.

“And every time I go to California, I invite you,” Elizabeth continued. “You’ve never come to visit my family. There’s something weird with your mom, Phil. It’s like she likes me, but you don’t want her to. It’s like…It’s like you don’t want to share her.”

Phil was silent again. His stomach let out a loud growl.

“What do you want me to do?” Phil asked in his most annoyed voice.

Elizabeth sniffled and took a deep breath. More confidently she said, slowly, “I think we should move in together.”

Phil turned his eyes back to the dark television, avoiding her stare. His face was red. “Absolutely not. It’s not happening.”

“Why?” she demanded, the tears falling again.

“First of all, we haven’t been together that long. Second of all, and I’ve told you this, my family is traditionally religious. I’m not moving in with anybody before marriage.”

“Are you kidding me?” Elizabeth said. “This is really about God?”

Elizabeth crossed her legs on the bed and put a pillow over her lap. She took another deep breath, trying to calm herself. “Didn’t you tell me that your brother moved in with his wife before they got married?”

“Yeah,” Phil said, biting his lip, irritated with himself that he’d shared that detail about his brother’s relationship. “But we all pretended it wasn’t happening. We lied to my mom. I’m sure she knew they were living together, but I can assure you that she didn’t like it.”

“So, are you telling me we’re not going to move in together, or that we eventually will move in together but we’ll have to lie to your mom, or that we should get married first?”

Phil was quiet again. He wasn’t quite sure what he’d meant to imply. He’d assumed that Elizabeth would eventually move back to California without him. He was sad about their ill-fated relationship, and had even wallowed in some alcohol-induced self-pity about the impending breakup with friends from the ballpark, but he’d never considered how the separation would play itself out. He’d convinced himself that Elizabeth knew her fate, that their time together had an expiration date. She wasn’t from Baltimore. There was no reason for her to stay. And in the end, Phil didn’t see himself with a woman like Elizabeth, who shopped for vegan cookies and talked about buying an electric car. They were from different worlds.