“Hey,” I say.
“Hey.”
The silence stretches, and I feel the instinct rise — frame the conversation, set the terms, open with the summary, then offer a solution to the problem that drove us apart — and my mouth goes ahead and does it.
“I’ve been thinking about everything that happened, and I want you to know I understand the harm, and?—”
I stop.
“I’m sorry, Sloane,” I say, quieter. “For the other day, but also because… well… I don’t know how to do this — any of it — without reaching for a fix.”
“I know,” she says, smiling sadly. “And I don’t know how to do it without instinctively trying to protect myself or close myself off.”
There’s an edge to her words, and I understand it. She opened herself up to me once, dared to be herself, and got burned. Asking her to do it again is a huge leap, and could come at a real cost, but the important thing is that now I know that.
“I don’t have a plan for this,” I say. “Because I don’t know who I am in a room I’m not running.”
“That’s the truest thing you’ve said.” She huffs. “I didn’t need you to fix Mason or go to Franklin or make the report.”
“I—”
“No, Rowan.” She cuts me off. “If we’re going to have a future, I need you next to me. Not in front of me, not carrying me, not handling me — next to me.”
I make myself sit in it a second before I answer.
“I don’t know how to do that,” I say, flat, no cushion on it. “Stand next to something when it’s broken and not reach for the tape. It feels like giving up.”
“It isn’t.” She finally looks straight at me, and her eyes are wet. “It’s loving someone, despite the mess.”
“You’re right,” I say. “I should have said four words before I did any of it: what do you want done?”
“That’s five words, Rowan.” She laughs, although it’s a sob. “But I guess you are a hockey player.”
I laugh.
“But thank you for saying that.” She smiles. “I did the same thing to you.”
I look at her.
“I decided what you could carry, and I decided the kind thing was to distance myself from you before I got heavy. I called it a boundary. It wasn’t.”
“Sloane—”
“Let me finish, because I’m only doing this once.” She sighs. “I’m sorry for not trusting you with the truth, and for deciding for us both.”
There’s silence between us, even as a door opens and shuts down the hall, and I stand with what she has handed me. I came in here with it all assigned — my fault, my fix, my apology to deliver in order — and she has just taken half of it back, not to let me off but because it’s true.
“We’re both pretty fucked up,” she says.
“Terrible pairing,” I say.
“I’m done with making myself small and palatable for everyone around me,” she says.
“Good,” I say, and I mean it more than anything I’ve managed all night. “Be too much.”
And then I do the thing I should have done days ago, on the other side of that door, instead of standing there reading her a list. I reach for her, and I don’t tell her how this goes. I give her the space to make her own decision.
“So I’m asking, and I’ll be around for however long you decide to take to answer,” I say. “What do you want done, with this and with us?”
