Or is he just simply letting me go? I can't tell. I know what his silence means when he's angry, when he's tired, when he's overwhelmed, when he's trying not to laugh. I know the difference between his thinking quiet and his hurting quiet and his just-existing quiet.
But this I can't read and it scares me because I don'tknow if it's love or acceptance or grief or some combination of all three that he's sealed shut so firmly even I can't get in.
"You okay?" Erin asks.
I realize I've been staring at the floor for too long.
"Yeah." I pick up the broom. "Just thinking about tulips."
She doesn't believe me. I can tell by the way she pauses, her pen hovering over her order book, but she lets it go.
I finish sweeping a floor that's already clean as Erin goes back to her inventory. The shop settles into its end-of-day calm, and I stand in the middle of it and wonder how a room can feel so empty when you're not even gone yet.
That night, he comes to me. We'd agreed earlier, over text, that he would stay home. He's been leaving his dad alone too much, and it's one thing that Will knows about us and is happy for us, but it's another thing entirely to sleep in Callahan's childhood bed while his father is down the hall. There are boundaries we are not yet willing to cross.
I'm on my couch in the dark, legs tucked under me, chin on my hands, staring out the big window at the street below when I hear the door. I cross the apartment and open it, and he's standing in the hallway with his jacket on and his keys in his hand, his face drawn tight in a way that gets me every single time.
His eyes find mine and his whole face softens, so slight that anyone else would miss it. I never miss it. I treasure it, every single time, him letting himself be seen only by me.
"Hey," he says.
"Hey."
He steps inside and pulls me into him before I've even closed the door. His arms wrap around me, his chin resting on the top of my head, his jacket cold against my cheek fromthe March night outside. We stand there in my dark hallway and neither of us speaks.
He doesn't congratulate me again. He's already said the right things over text, and he's not the kind of man who repeats himself just to fill silence.
"Talk to me," I whisper.
He shakes his head against my hair and I am grateful for it, because I don't have words either.
He takes my hand and leads me to the bed where he sits down on the edge and pulls me down beside him. And then he lifts my hand, presses his mouth to my knuckles, his lips warm against each one. A kiss for every finger.
So I just sit beside him and let him hold my hand against his mouth and understand that this is the conversation. This is his version of everything.
We lie down, fully clothed, on top of the covers. He pulls me against him, my back to his front, and his face presses into my hair.
I feel his body doing the work of calming itself down, and I follow. I lie there and let him hold me and stare at the big window, at the streetlight outside, at the glow of the shop signs across the street flickering in their stubborn, broken way.
The acceptance seems to have changed everything, like a tectonic shift under the surface, too deep to see but impossible to ignore.
My leaving is not only a concept anymore. It has a date and a program and a schedule. I have a living situation I need to figure out, a city I need to relearn, a future I need to step into.
Every one of those details is a brick in a wall between us and we're both pretending we can't see it.
"It'll be okay," I whisper, not believing myself.
He kisses the back of my neck, his answer to everything he can't say.
I close my eyes and hold his hand against my stomach and feel his heartbeat against my spine, steady and present and here.
He came to me even though he has nothing to say and no words to give me. He came because he couldn't stay away, and that's the closest thing to a confession he knows how to give.
Tonight, the future is a thing that exists only on the other side of a door neither of us is willing to open. So we lie here instead, holding on to each other while we still can.
And I tell myself that's enough.
35
