Page 66 of Close Reading

My eyes burn. The burning surprises me. I came here prepared for her anger, for her hurt, for the conversation about the department. I did not come prepared for her to describe the kitchen floor as the most open moment of her life and to tell me that she was alone in it.

“That night was real,” I say. My voice is not steady. “Priya. The kitchen floor was real. All of it. The wall was down. When I was on that floor with you, when I said I love you— the wall was down. That was me. All of me. I need you to know that.”

“Then how⁠—”

“It came back up.” The words come out rough. I am crying. “The email came. And the fear came back. And I put it back on— the wall, the managing, all of it, not because the kitchen floor wasn’t real. Because the real is the thing that scares me most. The more open I am with you, the more the reflex tells me to close. Close now. Before she sees the part that isn’t enough.”

She is quiet.

“I don’t want the wall,” I say. I wipe my face with the back of my hand. The gesture is graceless and I do not care. “I want you. I want you so much my stomach hurts with it. I want the kitchen floor every day. I want to stay open. I just— the wall comes back up and I don’t always feel it happening. It’s like breathing. I don’t decide to breathe.”

“I know,” she says softly.

She is looking at me. Her eyes are bright and damp. The steadiness she has been maintaining through this conversation is fraying at the edges.

“I was so in love with you that night,” she says. “On the floor. The chai everywhere and you crying and the— God, your body— I was just—” Her voice catches. “I was just yours. Completely. And I thought you were mine.”

“I was.”

“And then you weren’t.”

“I was. I am. The wall coming back up doesn’t mean⁠—”

“It means I was in the brave rooms.” She says it quietly, not as an accusation, but as a realization arriving as she speaks it. “The wall was down on the kitchen floor. I believe that. But it went back up after, and I didn’t feel it happen because from where I was standing everything looked the same. You were brave with me in bed and brave with me on the floor and brave when you said I love you. The wall was still standing in the room where you were afraid. And I was in the brave rooms believing I was in all the rooms.”

I set the mug down. The sentences I was building collapse. She has read me better than I have read myself.

“Yes,” I say. “That is exactly what happened.”

She wipes her eyes with the heel of her hand. “God. Okay.” A breath. “I need— I can’t be the only one who’s open. I can’t be lying on a kitchen floor with my whole heart out and not know that you’re—” She waves a hand. “Somewhere else. I need to know you’re with me. Even when you’re scared. Especially when you’re scared.”

“The wall is— it’s older than us. When I’m afraid I take over. I manage. I become the one in charge so I’m never the one being held. It looks like competence. It’s not.”

“I know that.”

“I want to show you my scared parts. The parts that don’t know how to let you hold them yet.”

“Yet,” she says. Her eyes are wet now. The tears are here, running down her face, and she is not wiping them away.

I cross the kitchen. I have been standing in the doorway this entire conversation, holding my mug, holding my ground, holding the distance. I came to say hard things and did not want it closed until they were said. The things have been said.

I stand in front of her. I reach up and wipe the tear from her cheek with my thumb.

“I love you,” I say. “Priya.” My voice is soft and I am blinking back tears. “I want you in all the rooms.”

She catches my hand against her face. Holds it there. Closes her eyes.

“I love you too,” she says. Into my palm. “All of it. The wall and the woman behind it.” Her voice is rough and steady at the same time. “But I’m going to push sometimes. And the pushing is me reaching for the part you don’t want to give me.”

“I know.”

“You have to let me.”

“I will.”

“Even when every instinct says take control.”

“Even then.”