“Gotta keep you on your toes sometimes,” I quipped. Privately, it surprised me too. I felt settled. Again, he already said me love you long time, so. I could handle this. Probably.
“Well, it’s just, if you’re not being crazy, that means I have to be.” He looked at me, looked away, and his leg jumped nervously.
“You don’t have to freak out,” I reassured, because he was him and not me. Also, I felt even better now. If I stayed calm, Luke wouldnotbe calm? Finally, an incentive to stay calm.
“Really think I’m going to freak out,” he warned. His hands didn’t have anything to do, but they kept moving around like they could find something to do and then do that.
“This freaks you out?” Yikes. And we, or I, had been having so much fun.
Now this was bad.
Again, kids were practically light years away but maybe it wasn’t the worst thing in the world to know if his general thoughts on childrearing matched up with mine and whether he even wanted any child to rear… that sounded weird.
Luke implied he would teach children to drive. Which meant the children needed to exist. Unless he was also penciling a psychotic break into his future. But if he couldn’t imagine children with me? Maybe that wasn’t a great sign.
Sure, he said he never wanted to leave my side ever, but if we couldn’t even talk about this…
“It’s not about you,” he assured me quickly. “Having babies with anyone is a little much. I don’t know, we’ve been having fun this year, barely freaking out. And then we did freak out but now we’re not freaking out again, and I like that. The not freaking out part.”
Wow, him rambling and catching me up to speed on things I already knew? Really adorable. This was beginning to be fun again.
“Thought we were just going back to enjoying ourselves,” he continued. “No freaking out for as long as possible. Has my car always been so small?” He looked around, then leaned closer to me, like he was telling me a secret. “Ryan, the seriousness is back.”
“You started it.” Wow, we were talking about kids, not being kids ourselves.
Luke thought about that for a moment, then told me, “You started it the first time.”
“That is so immature,” I told him seriously.
His eyes narrowed, like he was going to call me on that, so I leaned forward and pecked his lips with my own. Luke smiled like he couldn’t help it and we both relaxed, leaning back in our seats. We were still in the car, obviously, and it was getting kind of hot in here, not in a sexy way unfortunately, so I turned it on and gave us some air.
Eventually, there would be driving. Not yet though. Serious conversations could be difficult enough without operating a vehicle. Being Ryan could be difficult enough without operating a vehicle. I didn’t operate the vehicle.
Fiddling with the radio to find some good background music, I told Luke, “I would get along great with kids.” Nothing to see here, just having a casual conversation. “Which is good, because I don’t know anything else about them.”
Kids were smaller than me and I should try very hard not to break them, that’s all I knew. Don’t give them sharp objects. Feed and water them twice a day. Don’t get them wet or feed them after midnight. No, that was gremlins.
Don’t give them clothes or they get set free? No, that was house elves.
“I have experience with kids,” Luke said. “Babies, even. There was Lily and younger cousins in my family. I can feed them and change diapers and generally ensure they’re still alive but having one of my own that I’m always responsible for?” His voice got a tad hysterical. “They’re so small! And a good friend of mine is Joey, who breakseverything,and what if they ask me what the capital of Madagascar is? I have no freaking clue what the capital of Madagascar is, Ryan.” He acted like this was a matter of vital importance.
“You could look it up,” I suggested.
“And that would do me good for all of three seconds,” he agreed, nodding over enthusiastically. Wow. “But then I’m going to completelyforget where Mongolia is.” He was getting so worked up.
“Madagascar,” I corrected, trying not to grin at him being adorable.
“See! It’s already all going wrong.” Having Luke be the weirdo instead of me was always fun.
“You’re adorable. Is this why you like it when I’m weird?” I liked it less but if Luke wanted to trade roles and then I could be the cool, athletic athlete… actually, I didn’t want to be that either. Was Cher on the table yet? Or Nicholas Cage?
“You’re normally weird because you’re thinking of a million things,” Luke told me. “And you see things differently, and you’re so passionate and excited about everything, even stuff you just invented in your head. I’m just a worrier.”
Oh. This was fun for me, but I didn’t want Luke to actually be distressed.
“Well, it’s not something we need to think or worry about in the near future, so we’ll make it simple.” First time for everything. “On the scale of never having any babies and cursing them when they’re even brought up—"
“People do that? What’s a baby ever done to them?”
