The silence stretched between them after her one-word response. Ben didn't have anything comforting to say on the subject, so he thought it best to say nothing at all. He hadn't come up here to make things worse, after all; he'd come to apologize. He'd technically done that, so he ought to just go, but this seemed like the wrong note to end on if he was going to say goodbye. She'd just gotten out a liquor bottle, and he didn't particularly want to leave her alone with it and her thoughts for the whole evening. He knew all too well how that sort of situation ended.

"Hey, um," he said after a long while, looking not at her but at his feet. "I, uh... Maybe we could..."

(Ben had never had to verbalize this before; it always just sort of happened, but for obvious reasons it seemed unlikely to occur spontaneously in this case).

"I've been looking into things we could do to, uhm, keep you from — you know. Getting pregnant again," he said awkwardly. "Since we're... you know, married. I figured sooner or later..."