Parker AS DANGEROUS AS THE TRUTH

SO, SURE, LYING TO AMELIA after I had sex with her for the first time probably wasn’t the best idea. But the part that was true, the part that was important, was that I loved her. But also, I did want the babies. And now I didn’t just want them because they were a part of Greer. I wanted to be a father. And Amelia and I both knew that wasn’t going to happen with just the two of us.

Now, twenty-two dates later, my lie seemed amplified. Twenty-two was exactly how many times I had seen Amelia in the past six weeks, how many times I had held her in my arms and kissed her lips and felt that we were going to be together forever. It was also how many times I hadn’t told her that I wanted children. It was also exactly the number of times we hadn’t told our parents we were dating.

This was as real as either of us had ever dreamed. It was everything. It was the kind of love that made your heart pound but that also made you feel safe and secure. And even though Amelia still swore she didn’t want to get married again, I think we both knew that it was time for us to take another step, whatever that was. We were old enough to know what we wanted. And what we wanted was to be together.

That next, unspoken step required me moving out of Greer’s house, cleaning out her closets. It required untangling myself from her family and likely even McCann Media.

It was the only thing that was blocking us from moving forward, the one thing we really needed to address before making a lifelong commitment to each other, whatever that looked like. And yet it was the only thing we couldn’t talk about.

It was between us every time we made love, every time we held hands in a movie theater, every time we spent a long Sunday on a couch reading the same book and laughing at all the same places… Even now, as we held hands on flight 794 from New York, New York, to New Bern, North Carolina, Amelia’s head resting on my chest, dozing.

I laid my head on hers, and felt more than ever the fear I had that if I told her the truth it would all be over, the terror that if I didn’t, my secret would eat me alive or, at the very least, blow up in my face. I couldn’t lose another woman I loved. And so I sat, smelling the organic fragrance of her hair, listening to the beautiful sound of her breathing, holding my breath, praying she couldn’t sense what I wasn’t saying.

“Can you believe this is happening?” she asked sleepily.

I kissed the top of her head but didn’t answer.

“What do you think they’ll say?” she asked.