You're sure about the job. You're unsure about everything that comes with it. He paused. So, I'm just removing one uncertainty as clearly as I can. Take the job.
Her eyes had gone bright. Not tears, not yet. Just the particular brightness of someone who has had a breath held for so long that when the permission to release it finally comes, the body doesn't quite know what to do first. You're tired of missing me already, she said. And I haven't even left.
I'll be tired of missing you, he said. That's different from wanting you not to go. She stared at him. Those are two different things, he said. The people who love you should want what's good for you, even when it's hard for them.
That's not a reward system. That's just what it means to actually give a damn about someone. The railing was cold under his hands. She was close enough that he could see the specific way she was trying not to let her face do what it was trying to do. So what does this mean?
She said for us. If there is an us, is there an us? I don't know yet, he said. But I know I don't want to spend the next 6 months pretending there isn't one just because it's complicated. Long distance is complicated.
So is living next door to someone for 2 years and borrowing tools you don't need. He said, "We're apparently good at complicated. " Something broke open in her expression. Not dramatically, not with tears, just a sudden, unguarded honesty that was more intimate than anything that had happened all evening in that restaurant full of family and performance and old histories. She laughed, "A real one, the kind that comes out of relief rather than humor. I owe you a coffee maker," she said.
"You owe me several things," he said. "We can negotiate. " She was still smiling, but her eyes had gone serious beneath the smile in the way that meant she was arriving somewhere true. "The problem isn't that I'm leaving," she said quietly. Like she was saying the realest version of something for the first time. The problem is that I don't want to leave without knowing whether what's between us is real or whether I just needed it to be real tonight and I've been letting that feeling do work it shouldn't be doing.
Andre was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "You listened to my music through the wall on Sunday mornings. " She blinked. "You borrowed a coffee maker you didn't need," he said. "And a drill and jumper cables. You sat on my porch for 3 hours talking about nothing.
And tonight, when your grandmother was interrogating me about my credit score, and your father was deciding whether to trust, and your ex-boyfriend was sitting across the table being aggressively decent. " He paused. "Your hand found mine twice. Without you deciding to do it. It just happened. She didn't say anything.