Page 204 of Say My Name

“Oh my God. You already thought about buying one.”

“I’m evaluating available information.”

“You’ve known for two hours.”

“I work quickly.”

She taps the pen against the table once, as if marking a clause. “No unsupervised medical purchases.”

“We can discuss that with your doctor.”

“Our doctor.”

My hand freezes over the paper. I. One word, and she’s rewritten everything. It’s not her plan and my participation. It’s ours.

Elena’s cheeks turn pink, but her gaze is steady. She doesn’t take it back.

I continue writing.

“I will tell you what I know, what I want, and what scares me.”

Her attention returns to the page.

“I will listen when you ask me not to solve something. I will choose you when the choice is difficult. We will talk before silence becomes a way out.”

I pause, the pen hovering over the bottom of the page. The old agreement contained clauses for termination, for separation. Protections against the worst possible outcome. This one needs the opposite.

I write the final, most important term.

I love you. This isn’t an emotional entanglement to eliminate. This is the point. No exit clauses.

I turn the page toward her.

Elena reads it slowly.

Her eyes fill by the time she reaches the last line. She presses the heels of her hands to her eyes for a moment, then looks back at the page.

“I need you to stop making me cry.”

“I can add that as an objective. I won’t guarantee performance.”

She laughs softly and reads the page again.

“What happens if one of us breaches the terms?”

“We say it out loud. We apologize. We repair what we can.”

“No termination clause?”

“No.”

“No expiration after conception?”

“Absolutely fucking not.”

She plucks the pen from my fingers.

“You don’t need to sign it,” I say.