And I'm staying for 12 more months. I know. And this is still She stopped, tried again. This is still real even with all of it. That's still That's still true, he said quietly and without any hesitation at all.
She reached over and took his hand. Not for an audience, not for a performance, not because anyone was watching or expecting or hoping, just because his hand was there and she had learned over 9 months of all kinds of distance that when something real is within reach, you reach for it. He turned his hand over and held hers. They sat on the porch until 11:30 talking and not talking with equal comfort and at some point she leaned her head on his shoulder and he didn't say anything about it because there was nothing to say about it. And the neighborhood finished its Friday night around them and Maya was indeed awake until midnight and sent Clare a text at 11:58 that said, "I can hear you two on the porch.
Say hi from me. " Clare texted back. "Go to sleep," Maya replied, not tired. Andre reading over her shoulder said she's exactly like her mother was. Clare looked up at him. It was the first time he'd said that to her referenced Maya's mother, his wife, not with grief or with caution, but just plainly as a fact about the world as something he could say on his porch on a Friday night to the woman sitting beside him.
"Was she wonderful? " Clare asked. "She was," he said. "She would have liked you. She held that for a moment. The weight and gift of it.
I would have liked her, she said. He nodded once. The way he nodded when something was true and didn't need to be elaborated on. Inside the house, the light in Maya's room clicked off. Clare and Andre sat in the dark for a while longer.
And the 12 months ahead of them existed the way real things exist, not as a plan or a promise or a performance, but as a fact about the future that they had both separately and together decided to walk toward. She flew back to New York on Sunday afternoon. He stood at the departures curb the same way he always did present, unhurried, not trying to make the goodbye smaller than it was by rushing it. She hugged him long enough. Call me when you land, he said.
Every time she said, she walked in. She didn't turn back this time. Not because she didn't want to. She wanted to, but because she had made a decision between assigned Fridays 8 and Sunday afternoon that there was a version of loving someone where you walked forward instead of back. Where you trusted that the person behind you was still there, not because you checked, but because you knew.
She knew. She walked through the doors. Behind her. Andre stood on the curb until the doors closed. Then he got into the truck, sat for a moment, looked at his hands on the wheel.
His phone buzzed. Claire, still in the building, couldn't not. He looked at the message, looked at the doors, smiled. Andre, I know. I can still see your bag through the glass.