Page 14 of Here You Are

Cora yelled, “Give me the marker!” and added “Deliver the Baby” as one of the spots on the game board, which had everyone in the room bent over laughing.

Her husband interjected, “I’m only having one beer in case I need to drive us anywhere, so I can be sober enough to supervise the delivery for whoever lands on it. I’ve supervised once before, so I’m basically an expert.” Cora clinked her bottle against his in a toast and said, “That sounds like a great plan.”

Laura agreed. “If that’s what it takes to get this baby’s foot out of my ribcage, I’m game.”

It’s Morgan’s male friend’s turn. When he rolls the dice, he lands on “leave.” He looks around the table at us, walks over to get his coat, shrugs it on, and walks out the door.

“Did he really just leave?!” Morgan shouts at the group. Everyone is rolling around, dying of laughter.

He really did leave. And truth be told, I never saw that man ever again.

“Hey, Cass! Guess what?” Luke yelled across the apartment as he was walking through the door.

I popped out of the bedroom. “Chicken butt?”

“Ha. Classic. No, but really, I have some huge news to share with you,” he begins. “You know, I have been searching around for some other jobs in the tech field?”

I did know that. He was getting sick of his IT help desk job. He spent most of the day asking people if power cords were plugged in and then telling them to restart their computers.

“Of course I know that. Did you hear something?”

“I did. You're never going to believe where it is,” he says. “L.A., Cass. California.” He picks me up and spins me around.

I was in shock. This is completely out of left field. I knew he’d been looking, but I had no idea he was looking outside our area. L.A.? Did he really want to go there? And what did that mean for us? We had never talked about relocating, and we have such a good thing going here.

“Wow,” I say, “I had no idea you were applying for jobs outside of where we live.” He sets me down and puts his hands on my shoulders.

“I really wasn’t. I was just looking at some remote jobs, and this one popped up. They saw my resume and contacted me about another position, but it is based in California. They’ve already set up an interview. They’ve already said they’ll cover any moving expenses and help us with housing to start. This could be a great adventure for us, Cass! I know it would be hard to leave behind our friends and family, but it’s California. We could be tan and never have to scrape our car windshields again. What do you think?”

“I think you should do the interview. The interview doesn’t mean a commitment, and you could learn more. We don’t have to do anything unless you were offered a job. Then we would have to have a big discussion about what that looks like. Like, would that change your timeline for getting engaged? I know we haven’t been in a hurry, but I have to ask. Would I be moving across the country for a boyfriend or a fiancé?”

He looked at me, a little taken aback. “I haven’t even thought that far ahead. I just thought it would be an amazing opportunity to check out. We could figure out all of that stuff later.”

“Okay. I definitely think you should do the interview. It will give you a better idea about what is out there, and then we can see what happens.”

He pulls me in for a hug. Mentally, I am spiraling. I do want to support him in his career, yet other than living together, we haven't made any plans about what our future looks like. Luke has always been spontaneous. I have figured he would take a “fly by the seat of his pants” approach to an engagement as well. I spent the rest of the night telling myself he probably won’t even get the job.

He got the job.

Chapter 8

June 2013

When Luke came back from his interview, I already knew if he were offered the job, he would take it. No question. By the time the offer came in, I had resigned myself to the fact that he was leaving and expecting me to go with him.

His new job wasn’t supposed to start until July, so we had plenty of time to talk about the logistics and the future. Unfortunately, I started to see a theme. The theme was “I don’t know; we’ll figure it out.” I don’t know if it was wrong of me to want a commitment like an engagement to move so far away for a guy, but that’s what I wanted. Every time I brought it up, he seemed noncommittal and just shrugged off my concerns. I think he was so excited about the future that he was forgetting everything he had in the present. He was forgetting about me.

I wasn’t opposed to going with him. Not completely. However, I had just gotten into the flow of my new job, and I was loving it. The sky was the limit for what I could accomplish there. My boss was super chill, supportive, and managed by the motto “work as hard as you want to.”

I loved our friend group, our apartment, and being so close to Luke’s family. I had really become a part of their family, and I loved his parents so much. They gave me the feeling of the big, warm family I had always desired. My parents are good parents. They gave Cora and me everything we needed and provided all of the components of a safe and stable home. Still, there wasn’t the warmth, laughter, and silliness that Luke’s family shared.

There was one other thing that kept weighing on my mind. Luke never asked me to go with him. He never really asked me what I thought of him taking the job. I didn’t resent him for those things, but it did make me feel like he wasn’t considering my wants, needs, and dreams. I love him. He is smart, funny, caring, sexy, and kind—everything I could want in a man that I would spend the rest of my life with. I truly, truly love him, and there is no doubt in my mind that if things continued as they had for the last couple of years, this would be it for me.

But he hasn’t asked me to spend the rest of my life with him. He hadn’t asked me to marry him. He hadn’t even asked me to move with him. Everything has been an assumption. If I were in his position, would I assume he would come with me? Yeah, I think so. We were running out of time. I hadn’t taken any steps toward moving, leaving my job, or telling my family. It was always in the back of my mind: what happens if I stay? I would never ask him to give up his dream for me, so why would I ask him to do the same? Which leads me to think: shouldn’t I be part of his dream? Shouldn’t he love me enough to never make a decision like this without making sure I was fully on board? And if I were that in love with him, why did staying still feel like an option?

Luke came home from his last day of work giddy and bouncing off the walls. He had a decent amount of money saved up, so he decided to give himself a few weeks before the new job to pack and relax. The plan was to get to California at least a week before his new job started, so we could get settled in.

I was in the kitchen making us a quick supper, as we had been busy packing up the apartment. I had gone for a run before supper to try to burn off some nervous energy, but my body and soul were dragging. I felt so weighed down. We had been talking about the move and making plans, although it was all very half-hearted from my end. I still hadn’t given notice at my job, and we were just a couple of weeks away from leaving. Luke had already put down a deposit on an apartment for us. We had a move-in date. If I wanted to leave my job on good terms and have a solid reference for the future, I needed to give them at least two weeks’ notice.