Page 121 of True Colors

That makes her smile, but it quickly dissipates. She pulls her hands away, slowly, and puts both of them on her lap and looks down.

There’s something fragile about her, as if she’s holding herself together.

“My starling, tell me what you’re thinking?” She’s probably going to kick me for calling her my anything, say that I don’t have the right, but she is my starling, my beautiful, incredible, delicate, brave love.

She surprises me by saying, “I h-heard you.”

I watch her, my thoughts turning over slowly, as I try to discern her meaning. “Heard me?”

She looks up now. “I…b-before we t-talked that day.” She doesn’t have to specify which day; it was the day I fucked my life up. “I heard you talk to Erin.”

I drag a hand down my face and groan as realization strikes. “Fuck!”

Her head moves in a slow, solemn nod. “You didn’t d-defend me when she said I was a risk to your ca-career. You a-agreed w-with her.”

My chest caves like it can’t hold the weight.

The waiter arrives with bread. Refills our wine glasses. Our water glasses. Retreats.

Through it all, I sit speechless.

I thought what I said to her face-to-face was awful, but now she’s telling me she heard Erin and me, and even though I can’t remember word for word what I said, I remember feeling enormous guilt for not defending Anouk to Erin—for believing I couldn’t.

My breath trembles out of me. “I was a coward. I let fear do my thinking and talking for me. I won’t ever do that again.”

She breaks off a piece of bread and eats it slowly.

“I trust you, Anouk. Your work. Your judgment. Your voice. I trusted you then, too. You weren’t the problem.”

“T-then what was?”

“I didn’t trust myself to make the right decisions, so I let myself be influenced. I let my insecurity take over.”

Our food arrives. We eat, making small talk about how good the food is. The old me would just stick to that and not go back to the difficult, the uncomfortable. But I’m not that man any longer.

I lean forward and rest my elbows on the white tablecloth. “For a long time, I confused leadership with control and polish. I believed that making things look right was more important than doing the right things.”

She doesn’t look convinced, but she also doesn’t look like she’s going to throw the wine in my face.

“Erin is leaving HelixSphere.”

Her eyes sharpen. “Tell me that you didn’t do that because of me.”

I frown, confused. “I didn’t. I did it because I don’t want to be led—or be surrounded—by colleagues who mistake apprehension for authority.”

She regards me with suspicion for a moment and then, as if she’s decided something about me, goes back to her pork chop without commenting.

After that, the conversation loosens its grip and wanders—to the project, to books, to nothing in particular, as it once did. The ease of it surprises me. I think it surprises Anouk, too.

After dinner, she doesn’t argue when I ask to take her home.

I load up her bicycle onto the hook of my car and drive to Haight.

It’s like old times, except I’m not holding her hand, and she isn’t smiling at me, looking at me like I’m the best thing in her life.

I am experiencing her loss every single second since she left my office that day. It’s just been a handful of days, but it feels like it’s been forever.

I walk her to her door. She opens it and steps inside and looks at me from the doorway. In the past, I’d have joined her, slept with her, made love to her. Now, I’m a guest who’s not allowed entry.