Including me, she said, "Including you," he looked up. "That's not what I want then. What do you want?" And there it was the question he had been circling for months without letting himself near the center of it. What did he want?
Not what was safe, not what was manageable. Not what protected everyone around him, including himself, from the discomfort of his visibility. What did he actually want? I want to go back in there, he said. Clare blinked.
I want to go back in there and I want to introduce you for correctly, he said. And then I want to take your hand and I want to stand next to you in that room the way a man stands next to someone who matters to him. And I want to do that in front of Richard and Patterson and Sandra and every other person in there. He paused. That's what I want.
Clare looked at him for a long moment. Her eyes were very bright. You don't have to do that to prove something to me. I'm not doing it for you, he said. I'm doing it for me.
She held his gaze. Then she stepped back from the truck. "Okay," she said. They walked back across the parking lot together, back through the glass doors, back into the warm light and the noise and the room full of people. Darius walked in and he did not calculate the exits first.
He found Richard Colt near the company table and he crossed the room directly. And when Richard looked up, he said, "Richard, I don't think I introduced Clare properly earlier. This is Clare Bennett, my girlfriend." Richard's handshake was warm. His smile reached his eyes.
Nice to officially meet you, Clare. That was it. Nothing exploded. Nobody stared. The room kept moving around them the way rooms do when the universe is not.
In fact, oriented around any single moment of personal courage. Patterson saw him from across the room and nodded. Sandra caught Clare's eye and waved. A few people smiled. A few people looked mildly curious.
A few people were looking at their phones and had noticed nothing. The world did not reorganize itself, and that was the point. Darius reached down and found Clare's hand and held it. Just held it. Standing in the middle of that room with his supervisor and his neighbors and his industry contacts and the wide ordinariness of a civic gathering, he held her hand and breathed and felt the specific texture of choosing to be seen.
It was terrifying. It was also, he realized, entirely survivable. Clare's hand was very warm in his. She didn't squeeze it triumphantly. She just held on the way you hold on to something that belongs to you.