He picked up on the second ring. Hey, he said, "You okay?" "I need to tell you something," she said. And I need you to let me finish before you say anything. A beat.
Okay. She told him about Ranata's offer. All of it. The satellite office, the title, the one week a month in Atlanta. She told him without inflection, without performing excitement or performing caution, just the facts laid out clean, the way she laid out all important information. now because she had learned that the way you present something tells the other person how they're supposed to feel about it and she didn't want to do that to him.
She wanted him to feel what he actually felt. When she finished, there was a silence. Not an empty one, a full one, Clare, he said. Yeah. Are you telling me you might move to Nashville?
I'm telling you, I've been offered a job in Nashville that I would take because it's a good opportunity for me professionally and personally. And the fact that you happen to be in Nashville is part of the personal but not the whole reason. Another silence. Are those things separable? He asked.
Yes, she said. Because if you weren't in Nashville, I would still be considering this. The career case is real, but I want you to know, she paused. I want you to know that I am not coming to Nashville because of you. I would be coming to Nashville for work and for myself and because I have spent the last five months learning that city and it turns out I really like it.
A beat and also because you're there and Lily is there and I'm tired of the construction on I65 southbound. He made a sound that was almost a laugh. Say something real, she said. I'm trying to figure out what the right response is. He said, "There isn't a right response.
There's just your actual response." A pause. "I want you to come." He said, "I want that so much. I'm trying very hard not to say it in a way that sounds like I'm asking you to make a decision based on me."
"I know," she said. "I'm saying it doesn't change the decision. The decision is mine and I've already made it." "I'm telling you, so you know." He was quiet.
"You've already decided," he said. Yes. When about 10 minutes after Ranata left my office and you called me after I knew what I wanted, she said. In that order, always in that order, something in his voice shifted. Okay, he said.
Okay, Clare. Okay, Marcus, she said. She could hear him breathing on the other end of the line. She could hear in that breathing the weight of everything they had been and done and chosen two people who had been broken into different shapes finding somehow that the shapes fit. January, he said.