The words hit with humiliating precision.
Straight through my soul.
I’d have wanted you to stay.
I lean forward, elbow on knee, hand over my mouth.
“And would I have?” I ask.
That comes out almost against my will.
Too honest.
Too bare.
Mark is quiet so long I think he might refuse.
Then he says, low and certain, “I think part of you already had.”
My eyes sting.
Ridiculous.
Absolutely ridiculous.
I laugh once to cover it.
“That sounds suspiciously like psychoanalysis.”
“No. Just…. a fact.”
I shake my head.
Even now.
Even in the middle of this.
He can still do that.
Make me feel like I am both spiralling and somehow not alone in it.
For a second neither of us speaks.
I hear the sea behind him.
Actually hear it.
Low and constant.
Whitstable breathing through the line.
And I hate how much that sound does to me.
“I nearly stayed,” I say before I can stop myself.
The confession sits there.
Raw.
