“You can’t actually think that,” Elizabeth said. Her arms were crossed over her chest and she was frowning at her husband. Whenever she frowned, her whole face got involved. Her eyebrows pinched down. Her eyes would squint. Her cheeks would go taut.

“I can actually think that,” Malik replied. He also had his arms crossed over his chest and a frown on his face. They were back at her parents’ house, arguing, which was unpleasant on all accounts. They were standing on a pink, plush carpet and arguing in front of a My Chemical Romance poster. Malik felt absurd about the whole thing.

“I was not flirting with Santa,” Elizabeth said. She stressed every word she spoke.

“No,” Malik agreed. “You were flirting with your ex-boyfriend while he was dressed like Santa.”

Elizabeth’s eyes dropped into slits. She looked like she wanted to punch a hole through the wall. Elizabeth had this terrible ex-boyfriend, Tyler De-something, who she dated in high school. Malik had to meet him once before at their five year reunion. Malik didn’t have a single pleasant thought about him. Tyler De-whatever had unkempt brown hair, wide shoulders, and he still wore shirts from Aeropostal even though he was a decade too old for that nonsense. He would say the most inane things, and everything he said bordered on offensive: kind of racist, kind of sexist, kind of homophobic. According to the stories Elizabeth told, Tyler De-whatever had spent their entire relationship pressuring her to do things she wasn’t interested in doing. At the time, she wore clothes that she didn’t like, went to movies she’d never wanted to see, and attended parties despite hating parties.

Anyway, Elizabeth’s terrible ex-boyfriend, Tyler De-something, was at the pancake breakfast with Santa. Except he wasn’t just at the pancake breakfast with Santa, he was literally the Santa that the pancake breakfast was with. So Sapphire was perched on this guy’s knee, babbling about this cool knight’s armour she’d seen, when Santa cocked an eyebrow at Elizabeth and said, “Lizzie Eubanks! Get out of town!”

“It’s Rober--oh my word. Ty...Santa,” she exclaimed, jaw-dropped, after she realized who was behind the fake beard and pillow-belly. Malik frowned and took a photo of his daughter with his wife’s ex-boyfriend before scooping his daughter back up into his arms. Then, Santa ignored the line of other children in order to stand too close to Elizabeth while asking her about her life. As they talked, Malik could have sworn Elizabeth was flustered, blushing and giggling.

“Malik,” she sighed, exasperated.

“You’ve been shutting down for weeks but as soon as we run into Tyler Jock-man-Jones you’re--” Malik started, but Elizabeth giggled at Jock-man-Jones and Malik had to really focus in order to continue. “You’re all ‘Ohhh, Tyler, that’s so funny,’ ” he said, using a fake, squeaky voice and fluttering his eyelashes for effect.

Elizabeth giggled again, shaking her head at him. She shoved him, playfully, in the ribcage and his hands met her waist without him giving it much thought. It had become really hard for him to continue with his argument. Elizabeth had been distant and moody for weeks, always ready for a rant or a wallow. Now, suddenly, she was giggling at him and playfully shoving him. He smiled down at her and her lips quirked into a smirk. Standing on tiptoes, she kissed him.

“For the record, Malik, that’s what it looks like when I flirt.”

“You were giggling at him, too,” Malik pointed out. He slipped his thumbs under the hem of her sweater and she pressed herself into his chest.

“I was nervous-irritated giggling,” she said, wrapping her hands around his back. “Tyler Delaney is the worst. He’s oafish and rude. And what kind of Santa ignores children in order to hit on a mom?”

Malik sort of snorted a laugh before tightening his embrace. He kissed the top of Lizzie’s head and then asked, not for the first time, “Lizzie? Will you please tell me what’s been going on?”

Before responding, she shivered against his chest and let out a shaky breath.Voice wobbling, she told him, “I’ve been off birth control for more than a year now.”

“Yeah?” Malik said, not really seeing the problem. Elizabeth had told him that she was going off of birth control, but when she told him she’d said that she wasn’t saying she wanted another, but she just didn’t want to prevent anything if it was supposed to happen. So Malik hadn’t thought much about it, after all, Elizabeth had been pretty uncertain about kids in general. Malik wanted four, but he was also happy with how things were.

“Yeah,” Lizzie said, voice harsh. “So it’s been more than a year, Malik.”

Her whole body was trembling. He took a step back so that his arms were still around her, still supporting her, but he could also see her. She was wiping her open palms over her eyes. “Babe? I think I must be missing something.”

“I think this is my fault,” she croaked, voice hoarse. “Like years of negative energy compounded together and now I can’t have any more kids.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Malik said. He felt bad for saying it as soon as he’d said it. He never wanted to invalidate her feelings. But also… “We haven’t even been trying. If you want to try for another, we can try for another. Then, if in a year--”

“I have been trying,” she interrupted. “And we didn’t even have to try with Sapphire. She just happened.”

“What do you mean you’ve been trying?”

“I mean I got this app on my phone to track my cycles and I bought a freaking thermometer and honestly do you think I just decided it would be fun for us to have sex in my parents’ house across the hall from my baby sister? Come on, Malik, that was obviously a timing thing,” she said.

“I--” Malik started, but immediately stopped. This was a terrible position for him to be in. For one thing, he was a little annoyed that she hadn’t told him that they were trying trying. He hadn’t known she was collecting data for it. He should have known. But, he couldn’t exactly call her out on it then, not when she was crying. She was crying so much that he was starting to worry that her dad might burst in and accuse him of upsetting her. Moreover, since all of this was so new to him, Malik didn’t know if Elizabeth was right to be worried. He didn’t know if he should be worried.

“Okay, here,” he said, pulling her towards the bed. They sat down and she rested her face against his chest. He slid his fingers into her hair and said, “Okay, it’s okay.”

“It’s not though,” she protested.

“I’m not really sure what to do here,” he said truthfully. “I didn’t...I didn’t even know this was something that you wanted. So, I’m not really sure how to--”

“Don’t you want more, too?” She asked.

“Well, yeah,” he said, running a hand over his head. “But it was such a struggle to get you to agree to the first one, so, I’d kind of made peace with the idea that that would be it.”

“So you don’t want another one?” she asked. Her brow was furrowed and she was frowning at him like maybe he was the one keeping her from getting pregnant.

“No, babe, I do, but I don’t know. I didn’t know that any of this was going on, so now I don’t know how to respond to it,” he tried to explain. Elizabeth didn’t respond, she just scowled. He took a breath and tried again, “Do you want to see someone? A specialist or something? Or maybe we just keep trying, and now, you know, with us both knowing that we’re trying maybe--”

Elizabeth sat back up and was pushing her curls away from her face. She exhaled a long, low breath and then said, “Can we...table this discussion for the rest of our trip? I don’t...I just want to feel normal again. Get my equilibrium back. My parents will get worried, and I don’t really want them finding out about all of this. Can you just, like, talk about something else for a second?”

“Right,” Malik said. “All right.”

After a few moments of silence, Lizzie laughed lightly and nudged Malik’s shoulder with her own. “You’re supposed to be saying something that makes me feel normal again.”

“I’m thinking!” Malik protested. Lizzie smiled at him and he kissed her. He still couldn’t hold his wife without feeling the cracks in her, but at least he finally knew where they were coming from.

They had baked potato soup and green bean casserole for dinner. After they ate, they played a hectic card game that the Eubanks loved. Malik had always been too slow to ever win a round of it. This year, though, Katelyn brought a fake boyfriend who was just learning it, so, for the first time Malik didn’t lose which was nice. That night, after Sapphire fell asleep, Malik whispered to his wife, “Do you feel like you’ve got your equilibrium back?”

“No,” she laughed. “But tomorrow my little brother’s coming home and he’s going to knock everyone off of their equilibrium, so being off balance is going to be the new normal around here.”

Malik shook his head and kissed her. “I love you, but, seriously, you might be a little bit psycho.”