Why did you come here Sophia? Not the job, not the apartment. Not the practical version, the real version. Why here? She looked at him.
Because you are the only place I have ever felt safe, she said. Even now, even after everything, even knowing you had every reason to turn me away at that door, she held his gaze. You are still, for reasons I clearly have not been smart enough to make peace with. The only place I have ever felt like I was allowed to be exactly what I was. James said nothing.
And I know that's not fair to you, she said. I know I don't have the right to say that. I know I gave that up when I left. I'm just She exhaled. You asked for the real version.
That's the real version. He stood up. He went to the kitchen and he stood at the sink with both hands on the counter and he looked at the window and the night outside it and he breathed slowly in and out. Sophia stayed on the couch. She didn't follow him.
She understood somehow that this was one of those moments where the best thing she could do was stay exactly where she was and let him have the room. He stood there for three full minutes. Then he came back. He sat at the kitchen table this time, not on the couch. And he said, "Sit over here."
She came and sat across from him. He looked at her. "Here is where I am," he said. "Honestly, I am angry. I am going to be angry for a while, and I am not going to pretend I'm not.
There was a child ours and you carried that alone and then you lost it alone and then you kept it from me for six years and I am going to need time to process that because it is one of the most significant things that has ever been kept from me and I deserve to feel everything I feel about it. She nodded and he said he stopped and I am not going to make you leave. I am not going to make you take that baby and go out and start over again in the middle of nothing just because I am angry because two things can be true. Sophia looked at him. We are going to have to talk about this more.
He said a lot more at a level I am not capable of tonight because I need sleep and I need time to think and I need you to give me that without interpreting it as rejection. Okay, she said. And you are going to have to be patient with me going through this. You don't get to manage my reaction. You don't get to decide what's reasonable for me to feel.
You just have to let me feel it. Okay. She said again. And one more thing, she waited. Tomorrow, he said, I want you to tell me the rest.
Whatever else is in there, whatever other room you haven't let me into yet, because I can feel that there's more and I am done finding things out in installments." Sophia's expression shifted in a way that told him with absolute clarity that he was right. There was more. Tomorrow, she said. "Tomorrow," he said.