Renee's read on Judge Callaway what the 60-day evaluation meant in practical terms. What came next? They talked about Cornerstone's funding picture, which was stabilizing, they talked about Ava and Morgan and Octopus facts. And then after the dishes were cleared, and they were sitting across from each other at her kitchen table with the evening settled in around them, Clare looked at him and said, ""So, where are we?"" He had been waiting for that question since Friday. He had been preparing for it since Sunday.
He looked at her directly with no management, no calibration, no protective distance. "I'm in love with you," he said. The kitchen was absolutely still. Clare looked at him. "I think I have been for a while," he said.
I don't know exactly when it changed, but I know it wasn't the kiss that changed it. The kiss just stopped letting me pretend it hadn't changed. He put his hands flat on the table, the same gesture he'd made at the diner 6 weeks ago, but different now. Not bracing, just present. "I'm still scared.
I want to be honest about that. The fear doesn't go away because I say this out loud, but you told me fear and handling it can be true at the same time and I believe you. Clare's eyes had gone bright. She was not looking away. I'm also aware, he continued, that I have historically been very bad at this at receiving things at staying open when staying open gets hard.
I walked away once during these six weeks and I don't want to walk away again, but I also can't promise you I'll be perfect at it because I'm not a man who makes promises he can't be certain he'll keep. She was still looking at him completely still. So, I'm not going to promise you perfect, he said. I'm going to promise you honest and present and that when I'm scared, I'll say so instead of shutting the door. He exhaled slowly.
And I'm going to tell you that the thing Ava said that you look at me like I'm the main part of the room, she's right. And "I want you to know that it goes both ways. It has been going both ways for longer than I was willing to admit. The silence after that was not empty. It was the specific silence of two people who have arrived at the same place and are recognizing each other in it.
Clare reached across the table and put her hand over his. Her hand was warm and steady and familiar in the way that only nine years of knowing someone can make a person feel familiar like coming back to somewhere you have always been without ever having realized it. "I've been in love with you for a year," she said. At least probably longer. She looked at him with those steady eyes and I have been terrified that saying it was going to cost me the friendship which was the thing I was most afraid to lose.
She paused. I proposed six weeks because I needed to know whether what was between us was strong enough to survive being honest about it. "Is it?" He said. She looked at him for a long moment.
And then she smiled. Not the polished smile she wore for the world. Not the professional warmth she deployed in board meetings and community events, but the real one, the one he had seen approximately 40 times in 9 years and always felt like a privilege. "Yeah," she said. "I think it is."