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Because now it wasn’t just words on a page.
It was right there, spilling out of him.
And the second it did she had to put her face in her hands.
Then somehow try to say her own version of everything he’d just done, through her fingers. In a voice that sounded cracked right down the center.
“Oh Jesus, of course I like you more. I don’t even just like you. I love you, Alfie. I love you, I’ve always loved you. That look when you did my hair, that wasn’t just me being touched. That was melovingyou. I cradled your face because I couldn’t not. And when I ran from you, when I was so hurt, it wasn’t because you were rude. It was because I had read a thousand things about you and hoped for just a second that you were the sort of different I could already see. That you were like me on the inside. And you weren’t in that moment.” She caught her breath thinking of it. Of that crushing despair—and everything that followed. Before she finished: “But then you were. You are. You’re the best man I’ve ever known.”
And oh, she wanted to die once she had.
Because she’d admitted it all now.
Anything could happen, from that point on.
Like him taking the hands she still had over her face, and gently urging them down. So she could see him, looking the same as she had probably looked when she read those blasted words, and heard him say these blasted things: like his world had turned on its head, and every second of that upending was complete and utter bliss.
Even if it made him as ridiculous as she had been.
“Also, probably the most foolish man, though, I’m thinking now,” he said, after a moment of deep and somehow incredibly satisfying silence. And he was holding her hands as he did it,too. He didn’t let go. She was starting to think he might never let go now. In fact, she couldn’t even think how he ever had.
Because she’d had her reasons.
But what had his been?
“Why were you that foolish, though? How didn’t you know?” she asked.
And now it was his turn to look sheepish. He scrunched his face up on one side, hard enough that it almost closed his left eye. Then it seemed to take him a lot of effort to get the words out. Like it was the most embarrassing thing in the world.
Even though actually, it was this:
“Because you kept telling me that I wasn’t your type. And when I told you what I thought your type was, you didn’t disagree. And even though that became pretty ridiculous, after a while, I dunno. I just believed it. It made sense, given everything I felt about myself. I thought I was too brutish for you. Too much of a lad. Then even after I felt like less of one, in your eyes, even after I was honest about myself and you seemed to like it and then you were greedy for me the way you were… you said you just wanted me out of your system,” he said.
After which, she had to very unfortunately concede:
He hadn’t been that ridiculous at all.
Because she had told him at least some of those things.
And now she had to correct them all. Fiercely, so he’d never forget.
“But I never meant any of it. I never thought of you that way. You aren’t that way to me. I was just so afraid, it seemed like giving you an out was the best option. It seemed like the best thing to do—to tell you that we could have this thing, then just stop,” she said.
Then watched him glance, briefly, at the heavens.
“And then I agreed. I said sure, yeah, let’s do that.”
“To be fair to you, I did make it sound reasonable.”
“You did. It seemed like the most sensible thing in the world at the time.”
She shook her head. “Even though it was the silliest, really.”
“Oh god, it was all so silly I could kick myself.”
He laughed, then. And shook his head.
But he was squeezing her hands so tight as he did it.
