Hardin denies he could marry Tessa or have children with her

Hardin denies that marriage or children could form part of a future with Tessa Young in an exchange prompted by Smith, whose innocent questions make explicit a conflict the couple has not yet worked through. Hardin treats the conversation as a joke; Tessa hears an unambiguous limit on their future. The distinction between not wanting marriage now and ruling it out altogether becomes a source of lasting insecurity, returning later as a dispute about whether Hardin has considered what she wants from their relationship.

The Conversation with Smith

Smith settles on the couch beside Hardin, edging closer despite Hardin’s caution around children. Tessa watches from nearby. The contrast amuses her: Smith seems to like Hardin, although she believes Hardin dislikes children. Their easy domestic setting gives the exchange its deceptive lightness. Hardin jokes possessively that Tessa belongs to him, and Smith asks whether that means she is his wife.

Hardin immediately rejects the suggestion. When Smith asks who Tessa is to him, Hardin calls her his girlfriend. Smith then asks whether he wants her to become his wife, and whether he means never. Hardin answers that he does not want marriage, not ever. Smith follows with a question about having a baby, which Hardin also rejects. The sequence is brief, but its steps matter: a teasing claim of closeness leads to a plain account of the future Hardin says he will not share.

The exchange is not presented as a prepared declaration between the couple. Hardin answers a child’s questions casually, without first checking how Tessa might receive his certainty. That manner sharpens the effect. Tessa notes that he speaks as though the answer is obvious, almost as if the subject were a joke; for her, the words are not light. The scene’s emotional force comes from this mismatch between the ease of his delivery and the seriousness of what she understands him to have ruled out.

Tessa’s Response

Tessa does not want to marry in the near future. She is nineteen, and the thought of making immediate plans for marriage does not describe what she is asking of Hardin. What hurts is the absolute refusal: she has understood him to want to remain with her, yet his answer makes marriage seem impossible rather than simply premature. The difference between postponing a commitment and denying that it could ever happen is the heart of her reaction.

His rejection of having a baby widens the question beyond a wedding. Tessa privately wonders whether she could accept a future without children and whether being loved by Hardin would make that future feel right. She is not certain that she wants children immediately, or even that she has an answer; rather, she recognizes that the possibility matters to her and that Hardin has dismissed it without discussion. Her thoughts move from his words to a larger uncertainty about whether the life she has imagined can coexist with the relationship she wants to preserve.

The setting intensifies rather than resolves that uncertainty. Tessa continues with the household tasks, including cleaning the kitchen and loading the dishwasher, while Hardin remains with Smith. The ordinary routine proceeds around a question she cannot settle. She eventually checks on them again before going to prepare her things for the next day, carrying the unanswered issue with her rather than raising it in that moment.

From an Offhand Answer to a Stated Need

In a later confrontation, Tessa explains that the issue is not a demand to marry soon. She says she would like to marry someday because she needs security, and that Hardin has not considered what she wants for herself and her future. She connects the hurt to a wider pattern in which his friends, parties, and plans seem to take priority, while she feels excluded from decisions that affect their life together. His earlier answer becomes more than a disagreement about marriage: it exemplifies her fear that he assumes the relationship will proceed on his terms without asking what she needs.

That later conversation also places the future question alongside other breaches of trust. Tessa recalls Hardin being drunk and staying out all night with another woman, and insists that she should not be treated as though she is more invested in the relationship than he is. Hardin acknowledges that she is right, although he does not know how to respond. The marriage dispute therefore remains entangled with the couple’s larger struggle over consideration, honesty, and whether either of them feels secure enough to trust the other.

Their communication has already been strained. Tessa has asked Hardin to open up and tell her exactly how he feels; Hardin counters that she has also kept her own feelings to herself. She then recognizes that her thoughts have become so jumbled that she has not communicated them clearly, and admits to feeling confused about their relationship and his betrayal. This pattern helps explain why the conversation with Smith carries such weight: a pivotal question about their future surfaces in an indirect, unguarded moment instead of a deliberate conversation between partners.

Consequences and Significance

The scene does not establish whether the couple can agree about marriage, children, or the shape of a shared future. Its consequence is to make Tessa confront those questions as real points of incompatibility, even while she still wants the relationship to work. Later, when she tells Hardin that security matters to her, she distinguishes the possibility of marriage someday from a demand for it now. That clarification gives the earlier exchange its fuller meaning: she is asking to have her hopes taken seriously, not asking him to make an immediate promise.

The episode also exposes a sharp imbalance in how the two understand permanence. Hardin can claim Tessa as his girlfriend and speak as though he wants her beside him, yet his answer to Smith denies the future that Tessa associates with lasting commitment. Later arguments over her place in his priorities and her sense of being temporary show how that denial feeds a broader fear that he expects closeness without making room for her expectations. The questions Smith asks are simple; the uncertainty they uncover is not.