I just want you to know that I noticed and I'm She stopped. I'm not pitying you. I want to be clear about that. I'm not capable of pitying you. I just She stopped again.
Unusual for her. The words arriving harder than normal. I don't want things to be hard for you. He looked at her straight. Things are fine, he said.
Things have been hard before and they'll be hard again and that's what life is. I don't need it to be easier. I need it to be mine. She held his gaze. That's the most honest thing I've heard in months.
I know. He picked up the book again. Go back to sleep or go home. You're not going to solve anything tonight. She looked at him like she wanted to argue.
Decided against it. Stood up, straightened her jacket, and found her bag. At the door, she paused. Darius. Yeah, you knew who I was from the second day at the facility.
Third minute, he said, not looking up from the book. And you never said anything. You didn't say anything either. No, but I She stopped. It doesn't bother you that I'm that there's a difference.
He looked up now. You mean the money, the position, the gap between what your life looks like and what mine looks like? Yes. He closed the book. He gave her the full weight of his attention, which was something that she had learned to recognize as a deliberate act, a choice he made, not a reflex.
It bothers me if it becomes a thing between us, he said. It doesn't bother me if it's just true. Rich people exist. I'm not rich. That's just information.
What it means depends on what we do with it. She was very still in his doorway. Most people would either be intimidated or trying to use me, she said. I'm not most people. No, she said you are genuinely not.
She left. He sat with the book in his hands and the apartment quiet around him. And for a long time, he didn't read anything. He just sat there in the good quiet of his own home with the thought that the world was large and strange, and occasionally it arranged things in ways you couldn't have predicted and probably wouldn't have asked for. And that turned out, against all reasonable expectation, to be exactly right.