Hold on. “Living together?” I wanted another sip of wine but my hand was trembling and I didn’t trust myself not to spill it all over the table. “Why on earth would you want to do that? You barely know me. What the hell is in it for you?”
It was pure madness.
Wasn’t it?
Michael took a second, like he was collecting his thoughts. I waited, heart racing.
The whole thing was absurd.
But it would prevent my deportation.
“I hate dating,” he said. “The games, the false starts, the lack of transparency. We’ve talked about that. I want to be in a relationship. I want to come home to someone every night and have inside jokes and the right to put my hand on my partner’s knee at a dinner party. I don’t want to spend the next however long looking for that and failing. Why the hell couldn’t it be us, Felicia?”
My throat felt tight, but not out of panic. It was hope rising. “So… cut through the red tape, is that what you’re saying? Just get right to it.”
He nodded. “Why not? Living together, having to pretend to know everything about each other for the INS interview means we’ll have a crash course in actually getting to know each other.”
“What if we find out we can’t stand each other?”
“It’s only forty days. It’s up to you how much you want to stay in New York. You can leave now or you can leave in forty days if we don’t work out. Or if we do work out, you stay.”
So much utter confidence.
It must be nice to have that kind of belief that you were doing the right thing. I suddenly felt like I wanted to call a psychic and ask her what the future held.
But this was not an entirely horrible idea. It was the only solution that would allow me to stay in New York.
“If I stay, we’re together, then? That’s it? Are we still engaged at that point or just revert back to dating?” Since the man had it all figured out.
“We stay engaged and get married before the fiancée visa expires. I’ll buy you that brownstone on the Upper West Side.”
Oh, God, there was a brownstone involved? Damn it. He was right. I couldn’t say no to him. Thinking hard, I picked up my glass and took a sip, swishing the wine around in my mouth. What was the true downside here? There was one, maybe seven, I just needed to make sure I named them all first before I made a decision.
Who was I kidding? I’d already made my decision.
“Then we can start a family.”
I almost spit the wine out. “Michael! Children? Have you lost your mind?”
“Don’t you want children?”
That stymied me. “Well. I mean, yes. But eventually, when it makes sense. When I’ve got engaged and married in the proper order.” Though to be honest, spending time with Savannah’s baby, Sully, had been tugging on my heart strings lately. I had kind of been thinking that if and when I got married, I wouldn’t mind having a baby straightaway.
But that was all theoretical.
“This is the proper order. Engaged, married, baby.” Michael swirled the wine in his glass. “If you don’t want to even entertain the possibility of having a baby, then I’m out.”
The waitress had just reached our table but I ignored her.
“You’re out?” I demanded, shocked.
“If you don’t want a baby, yes.”
The poor waitress just retreated without a word, actually backing up before turning around and heading toward the kitchen.
“Yes. I mean, we can have fun until you leave but I can’t get engaged unless you agree to the possibility of children—meaning if we work out, and if we get married.”
“That’s a lot of ifs.?