He set the coffee down.
"Ford."
"Yeah?"
"You're a smart man."
"I'm not feelin' very smart right now."
"You're a smart man, and you let a woman you love make a decision about your life based on a story you didn't bother to correct."
I closed my eyes.
He wasn't raising his voice. Shane hadn't raised his voice in fourteen years. Raising it would have been the kindness. The level, slow version—talking me through a job I'd gotten wrong the way he'd talk a probie—was the one that landed.
"She told me to go, Shane."
"She told you to go because she thought she knew what you wanted. She didn't know what you wanted. She knew what you'd been telling yourself you wanted for twelve years. You let her make a call about your life with the version of you you handed her on a bank in November. You didn't hand her the rest of it."
"I didn't want to override her."
"Tellin' the truth isn't overriding. Tellin' the truth is what you owed her before she opened her mouth at that lake."
I stared at the counter.
"Ford. Look at me."
I looked at him.
"Are you in love with her?"
I didn't have to think about it.
"Yes."
"Has she said it to you?"
"Yes."
"Have you said it to her?"
"Yes."
"You said it to her, and you didn't tell her you'd been deciding for two months not to take the slot."
"I said it to her, and I didn't tell her."
Shane let a breath out. He'd been waiting to see something in a friend, and the friend had finally said it, and what was on my face was not a thing he was going to comment on.
"Ford."
"Yeah."
"You're not gonna outgrow this. You hear me?"
"Yeah."
"That regret. The regret of not telling her. You think you're gonna outgrow it. You're not. You're gonna wake up at five every morning for the rest of your life and find a new way to turn it over. I've watched men do this. The shape of it changes. The size of it doesn't."
