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“Let’s just pretend that we were together, and we wanted to have a child. Would you expect me to quit my job and stay home to raise him or her?”
“No.”
She sounded surprised. “You wouldn’t?”
I glanced at her. “No. As I said, my career is important, and I would like to think that I would fall in love with a woman who appreciates that and has a love for her own job. I would never try to tell my wife, or girlfriend, or whatever they are what they should do with their career.”
“So, you would support them no matter what?”
“Yeah.”
She threw her hands in the air. “See! Now that’s how a relationship is supposed to be.”
I turned back to what I was doing, not wanting to think about her being in a relationship with anyone else. “I take it you haven’t seen eye to eye in the past with some men.”
“No, I haven’t. Pretty much every man I have been even slightly serious with has all but said they would love for me to cook, but I need to cook for them while I’m barefoot and pregnant at home. Some have even tried to get me to quit this job so that I can work more normal hours. They don’t realize that these are normal hours for me.”
I chuckled; she was cute when she was pissed. I was dying to know if Blake was one of those people, but it wasn’t my place to ask.
“What are your normal hours?”
“I’m usually at the restaurant by two, and I’m here until midnight most nights.” She sighed. “I guess that is kind of hard to expect someone else to tolerate if they work a day job.”
“It could make a relationship tricky,” I replied as I screwed the camera into place.
“Would you be able to deal with it? I mean, if you dated a woman who worked a schedule like me, would you have a problem with it?”
Jesus, I didn’t want to think about this. “Probably not, because I have a crazy schedule that she would have to deal with.”
She was quiet for a few moments, and then I finished and climbed down the ladder. I set the drill to the side and closed the ladder, laying it on the floor along the wall so it wouldn’t tip. When I turned around, she was standing a foot away from me.
Time stood still as we stared each other down. I needed to get this done and get out of here. “Why are you staring at me, Ali?”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“You know what.”
“Do I? As far as I know, you could be sorry that you have me here at one-thirty in the morning.”
She squinted at me as she pursed her lips. “You know that is not why.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and leaned a shoulder against the wall. I had a feeling that until we aired this shit, I wasn’t going to get anything else done. I might as well let Ali talk, accept her apology, and then get back to work. “Fine, you don’t owe me an apology, Ali. You picked the man that you thought would be the best for you.”
“Do you really think that?”
“Think what? I assume that is why you chose Blake. You thought he was the better option. I haven’t seen your dances with him, so I have no idea how you two connected with one another. For all I know, you two had a stronger connection than we did.”
“No,” she said softly and then stepped forward. “We didn’t.”
I eyed her carefully. What was she saying? What was the point of this whole conversation other than to bring up the pain of not being picked?
“I’m sorry for not choosing you, Harvey. I should have. You were right; I was playing it safe. I was afraid of how you made me feel. Afraid that after it was all over and the excitement wore down, it wouldn’t feel the same. That I wouldn’t be enough for a man like you.”
My lips parted in surprise, and I straightened, my arms falling to my sides slowly as I spoke. “How could you ever think you wouldn’t be enough for any man, Ali?”
“I don’t know. That’s just how I’ve always felt. Like I couldn’t give a man what he wanted because I was also so focused on my own life. I’ve been called selfish many times because I am devoted to my career.”
