Page 105 of Disgrace

John—so close she could see the flakes of gold in his hazel eyes—smiled. “I do when I feel like punishing myself. Nothing is ever really guaranteed, you know.”

She did know.

“Doesn’t matter to me,” Siena told him. “I still think about it. I need to. It helps.”

“What do you think about, then?”

“Us.”

John’s smile deepened. “Be specific.”

“Everything. A wedding. I’d go for ivory, likely. In a church, maybe, but I wouldn’t be offended if it wasn’t, too. I wouldn’t want to walk alone, though.”

“No?”

“You could walk with me. Be different.”

John laughed. “I would absolutely walk with you, donna. You never have to be alone.”

“And I think about what comes after all of that, too. Life, kids—”

Siena’s words trailed off when she felt John stiffen above her. She met his gaze, but could plainly see the way he tried to hide his discomfort.

“What?” she asked.

“Kids is kind of touchy topic for me,” he said, shrugging.

John dropped to the bed beside her. He used a hand to rest his head on as he stared at her, waiting for a reply. Siena didn’t really know how to reply.

“Why?”

“It isn’t obvious?” he asked.

“No.”

John waved a hand toward his own body. “This, Siena.”

“I’m lost.”

“I didn’t wake up one day with bipolar—I didn’t catch it like a sickness, babe. I’ve had it in my genetics from the day I was born, and puberty was the switch turning it on for me. There’s no cure for it, either. You learn to manage it, and to stay at relatively stable levels that still fluctuate no matter what you do. There’s a genetic component. Something in my DNA that was there from someone else in my family. Passed on, you know?”

“John—”

“Having kids means continuing this on—or possibly. You don’t know for sure, right? My parents had four kids, and I was the one that found the barrel of the gun in the game of genetic roulette, so to speak. I’m not sure I want to do this to one of my kids. I know what it felt like to be confused for more than half my life, and to constantly feel like I was drowning.”

“But there’s nothing wrong with you.”

John gave her a look.

Siena only gave it right back.

“Siena,” he said, a little too patronizing for her liking. “I didn’t say something was wrong. There is something different, though.”

“You don’t want kids at all?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You’re not saying differently, either.”