She was incredible. Everything he wanted.
Was he really going to do this?
Yes.
What he needed mattered. He mattered.
“I’d like to talk for a minute,” he told her.
Immediately, a crease appeared between her brows. But she settled back into her desk chair, her eyes studying him with care. “Martin? Are you okay? You look…I don’t know. Conflicted.”
He could only offer her the truth. “I don’t know if I’m okay yet.”
“Well, that’s ominous.” She leaned her elbows on her desk, clasped her hands, and gave him her full attention. “What’s going on?”
His swallow didn’t ease any of the dryness in his throat. “I don’t want to badger you, so I won’t ask this again.”
He saw the moment she realized the purpose of this conversation. The stakes.
Her face paled from ivory to paper, and her fingers started to fidget in that very un-Rose-like way. She fiddled with her stapler. Straightened a stack of folders on her desk. Lined her green pens—her favorites for grading—in a tidy row.
If he didn’t ask now, he’d never respect himself again.
“Prom is this weekend. Saturday night. Will you be my date?”
Her amber eyes immediately filled with tears, and he knew. He knew.
But he let her say it in her own time, because this was it. The last intimate conversation they’d ever have. So he allowed himself to memorize that beloved face, now crumpled in grief. Allowed himself take in Rose Owens, magnificent and stalwart and too damaged to give him what he needed, one final time.
But that was unfair. Her needs didn’t match his. That was all.
He could just as well say he was too damaged to give her whatsheneeded.
“I…” Her breath shuddered hard enough to shake her shoulders. “I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Okay.” The light of her lamp spangled in his vision, and he concentrated on blinking back the aching press of his own grief. “I understand.”
He did. But that didn’t mean her decision wouldn’t pierce him for the rest of his life.
The smile she attempted through her tears didn’t convince either of them. “I take it that means we’re not having dinner together.”
Unable to speak, he shook his head.
Someday, the sound of her quiet little sob would stop echoing in his skull. Not anytime soon, though.
“I’ll be…” Another hitching breath, and she blindly snatched at a tissue. “I’ll be thinking of you and Bea. Tell her to have fun at college but remember her future. And when you g-get”—he’d never heard such an ugly, wrenching sound come from another human’s throat—“l-lonely, c-call one of your old friends.”
He bit his lip and looked up at the tiles on the ceiling until he’d gotten himself somewhat in order. “I will.”
Silence wedged between them, driving them further and further distant from one another.
Her voice was tiny. Cracked. “May I kiss you one last time?”
He circled her desk. Bracketed her with a hand on each chair arm, because she loved being surrounded by him. It made her feel safe, although she’d never admitted it, not out loud.
Her lips were soft beneath his, trembling and salty.
He supposed his were salty too.
