He thought about it honestly. "Someone who works too hard and rests too little," he said. "Someone who spent so long being the person everyone else needs that she's gotten out of practice asking for what she needs herself." He paused. Someone who drove across the city in the rain because she'd decided something mattered and she was going to be honest about it regardless of the cost.
He looked at her. She would have respected that. Maya respected people who showed up. Victoria was quiet. You show up, he said.
That's not nothing. That's actually everything. The table was between them. The drawings were between them. The cups of coffee were between them.
And also nothing was between them because they had been moving toward this for months in the slow and deliberate way of two people who both understood what was at stake and had both decided it was worth it anyway. Daniel," she said. "Yeah, I need to say something and I need to say it directly, not around the edges of it." "Okay." She looked at him.
"I have spent the last 6 months being careful," she said, "About pacing, about not overwhelming you, about making sure that what was happening between us didn't disrupt your life in ways you hadn't chosen." She paused, "And I think I've been so careful that I haven't actually said the plain version of it." He waited. I love you, she said. I love you in the specific way.
That means I looked up anglerfish and drove to a parking lot in the rain and learned which side of the table your daughter puts her cup on. In the way, that means when something goes wrong. Yours is the first voice I want to hear. In the way, that means I'm not interested in being careful about it anymore. She held his gaze.
That's what I needed to say directly. The kitchen was very quiet. Daniel looked at this woman. This specific, complicated, remarkable woman who had shown up in a parking lot at 10:43 at night and told him she hadn't come for his work and he felt the last wall he hadn't known he was still holding. Come down without ceremony, without drama, without the fear he'd expected.
Just down. I know, he said. She raised an eyebrow slightly. I mean, he said, I love you, too. I've known it for a while.
I was just being careful, she said. Being careful, he confirmed. Daniel, I know. We're done being careful. He looked at her across Amera's drawings, across the coffee cups, across the 6 months and the rain and the science fair and the angler fish and the 47 seconds and the 40minute train call and all the Sunday dinners and the purple cast and the group text and the job that didn't exist before her and the crisis she'd fought and won because someone told her it was okay to want what she wanted.
Yeah. He said, "We're done being careful." She exhaled, and the exhale was the same one from the phone call the night she'd said she was tired. The release of something held too long, except this time it was not relief. It was arrival.