"I know you don't," I said. "I know it's hard. I know the fear is real." I kept my voice even. "But, Felix , I have been waiting. I have been so careful and so patient and I have handed you every exit and I have saidit's okayevery time and I have managed my own feelings with both hands for two years because I didn't want to make it harder for you." My voice stayed level. The levelness was costing me something I was going to feel later. "And I am asking you, right now, as honestly as I know how to be , is there a version of this where you choose it? Is there a version where the fear stops being bigger than the thing you're afraid of losing?"
He was quiet for a long time.
The city moved outside. The light stayed flat and honest.
"I don't know," he said.
"That's not,"
"I don't know, Shay." Something in his voice, finally , not the controlled register, not the even delivery, something underneath that, something that had pressure in it. "I don't know how to , I've been trying to," He stopped. "The system,"
"I know about the system." I looked at him. "I have always known about the system. I have watched you run it for four years and I have respected it and I have worked around it and I have been , I have tried to be easy, Felix. I tried to be the version of myself that didn't make it harder. I stopped being loud for you. Do you understand that? I quieted myself. I stopped taking up space because I thought if I was smaller, if I was careful enough, if I made it easy enough," I stopped.
My voice had done something. I brought it back.
"It didn't work," I said. "Being small didn't work. Being careful didn't work. Being easy didn't work. And I don't know what else I have."
Felix looked at me.
For the first time in the conversation, he looked at me with the look , not the controlled face, not the architecture, but the thing underneath it, cracked open, almost relief, almost terror, the specific expression of a man who was hearing something true and finding it devastating.
"Shay," he said. Like an apology. Like something more.
"Don't," I said. Quiet. Final. "Don't say my name like that if you're not going to say the thing after it."
He stopped.
The apartment was very still.
I looked at him for a long moment. At the man I had wanted for two years, who had kissed me back twice, who had touched my face without thinking, who had sat in a parking lot withbecause I,unfinished and gotten in his car. Who had been in this apartment with me a hundred times and known where everything was and made the pasta and known the pepper and sat in forty percent of every couch we'd shared and saidwe can'tlike a prayer he was trying to believe.
I loved him.
I knew that. I had known it for longer than two years, probably, if I was being honest, which I was being, which was the whole point of today.
I loved him and he could not say it and I had nothing left.
"Okay," I said.
Not theokayfrom the couch. Not the one with no bottom. This one was different , smaller, flatter, the sound of a door closing from the inside.
I picked up my jacket from where I'd set it on the chair by the door.
I walked to the door.
Felix said: "Shay,"
I turned the handle.
"Shay, wait,"
I opened the door.
I walked through it.
I pulled it closed behind me.
Quietly.
