Clare had asked if he wanted to go together. He said yes, he meant it. He got there feeling something closer to easy than he usually felt in those kinds of spaces. And at first it was fine, better than fine. He knew most of the people.
He talked to Marcus's wife who lived two streets over. He talked to the man from the corner house who'd had him look at a compressor unit last fall. He got a plate of food and stood next to Clare and talked and felt for a few minutes like someone who was allowed to just be there. Then a man named Tom late 50s hadn't met him before visiting his sister who lived on the block walked up to Darius while he was refilling his drink and said cheerfully, "Are you with the catering company? Great job today."
Everything went quiet inside Darius. The outside of him didn't move. The plate in his hand was steady. "No," he said. His voice was even, completely even.
"I live on the street." Tom's face rearranged itself into the specific expression of someone recalibrating without acknowledging that they'd been wrong. "Oh, great neighborhood it is," Darius said. Tom walked away. Clare appeared at his elbow 3 seconds later.
She'd been close enough to see it happen. You okay? Yes. He moved to put some distance between them, the old instinct, moving before his brain had approved the decision, and he caught himself and stopped and stood still instead. That caught Clare's attention immediately.
She didn't say anything. She just watched him. Later, after when they were standing outside in the quiet post gathering air, she finally said, "What was that?" When you almost moved away from me. I didn't move.
You almost did," she paused. "You caught yourself." He was quiet. He looked down at the empty cup in his hand. He thought about the right thing to say and the honest thing to say and decided they were the same thing tonight.
"It's a reflex," he said. "When something happens that draws attention to me, I create distance from everything, people, situations, it makes me smaller, harder to see. It's kept me out of trouble a lot." "I know," Clare said. "And I didn't do it.
I know her voice was quieter now. I saw you stop. I'm telling you it doesn't go away. The reflex doesn't go away because I meet one good person. I am not asking it to go away.
Then what are you asking? She looked at him directly. I'm asking you to let me be in the room when it happens. Not outside the room. Not protected from it.
She paused. I'm asking to be next to you even when it's uncomfortable for both of us. Darius looked at her for a long moment. He thought about Gerald Walsh on the sidewalk with his coffee mug. He thought about Tom and the catering company.
He thought about every room he'd ever walked into and immediately started calculating. That is not a small ask, he said. I know it isn't, Clare said. I'm asking it anyway. He looked at the street at the houses at the 30 ft of driveway and lawn that existed between front door and hers.
30 ft that he crossed now multiple times a week that had gone from feeling like the width of an ocean to feeling like a reasonable distance to feeling on the best days like barely anything at all. He looked back at Clare. Okay, he said one word quiet offered without decoration. But she heard everything in it. He could tell by the way she exhaled not with relief but with something more honest than relief.
The way you breathe when someone meets you where you actually are. They walked back to the street together. And for the first time, he didn't let go when she reached for his hand for exactly 4 and 1/2 seconds. And then he did let go a brief reflexive loosening. And he felt it happen and hated it.
The way you hate a thing your body does without your permission. Clare felt it too. She didn't pull away. She didn't make a face. She just let her hand drift naturally to her side and kept walking and didn't say anything about it until they were back on their own street back in the 30 ft of their own driveway with nobody watching.
Tell me that was an embarrassment. She said it wasn't embarrassment. Then what was it? He stopped walking, stood still on the driveway between their two houses, looked at her. It was fear, he said.
That is what it was. Not of you. Not of them exactly. He paused. Fear of becoming a story that someone else tells about me.
The kind of story where I am what I look like before I get to be who I am. Clare was very quiet for a moment. I understand that, she said. I know you understand it. I mean, I really understand it.
Not just I hear you. She looked at him steadily. But Darius, I need you to hear me say something and not get defensive. Okay. You spend so much time expecting people to judge you that sometimes you judge the situation before they even get the chance.
He went very still. It was not the kind of thing he was used to hearing. Not because it was harsh, but because it was surgical, the kind of sentence that finds the exact right place and presses it and you feel it because it's true. That's not fair, he said. I'm not trying to be fair.
I'm trying to be honest. Her voice didn't waver. I've watched you. You walk into a room and before anyone has done anything, you've already decided what they're going to do to you. And sometimes you're right.
Tonight with Tom, you were right. That was real and I saw it and I'm not dismissing it. She paused. But sometimes you close the curtains before you even know if anyone's looking. The silence between them was very full.
He thought about what she'd said. He turned it over slowly, the way he turned over problems that deserved a real look. You might be right, he said at last. I know I'm right, she said. Then softer.