“Of tentacles,” I finished.
“Oh. Yeah.”
It sounded like I’d been wrong, and he’d been about to say something else. Damn, I should have let him finish.
“So were you?” he asked.
“Was I what?”
“With me. All day.”
“Some of the time. One of us was with you all afternoon.”
He sat in silence, staring at the empty fireplace, and I was desperate to know what he was thinking.
It was unnatural for Sonny to stay so quiet. He was always the one who talked and he expressed himself so freely, it was a marvel to watch.
At last, I couldn’t stand the silence any longer and I said, “You know staring at that fireplace won’t make a fire appear.”
“Huh? Oh yeah. Right.”
That wasn’t an explanation for how he was feeling, though, so I had to ask again. Only, this time I had to ask an actual question and not just hope that Sonny would tell me what I wanted to know because Sonny always did.
Look at me, learning not to cut myself off and to express myself properly. Erik would be proud.
The thought of Erik made me squirm again, and I blurted out, “So why do you want to know? Whether we were with you or not?”
“I just wondered, that’s all. Apparently I was talking out loud. I wasn’t sure whether I’d said it or only thought it.”
I swallowed. I knew where this was going.
This was the time to actually admit what I wanted and put myself out there, just like Erik had said.
Sonny twisted round on the couch to face me, his big eyes staring at me out of his pale face, his fair hair still sticking up a little from where he’d towel-dried it.
“I think I told you that I love you.”
“Yes.”
It wasn’t what I meant to say. I meant to say so much more, but my words somehow got tangled up in my mouth and that was the only word that came out.
Sonny kept eye contact with me, as though he could read my very soul if he looked hard enough.
“You haven’t asked if I meant it.”
“I know you mean it. You’ve told me before.”
His eyes went wide. “You mean all those times when I told you I love you, you actually heard me?”
I nodded.
“You pretended you didn’t hear.”
“I—”
It was hard to explain why. I hadn’t worked out what I’d been thinking and feeling at the time, so trying to justify it now seemed an impossible task. But what Erik had said stuck with me. I’d made that choice, and it wasn’t my choice to make. It was ours. Mine and Sonny’s together.
Ironic, since we’d made every choice together for years anyway. Why had I made this one alone?
