“That’s what I thought.”
“Marcus, please?—”
“I like you, Diane.” His voice was quiet now, almost gentle. “God help me, I like you more than I’ve liked anyone since Sarah. More than I wanted to like anyone ever again.” He exhaled slowly. “But I can’t be your escape hatch. I can’t be the peaceful option you keep in your back pocket while you decide if something better might come along. I deserve better than that.”
He paused. Met my eyes.
“So do you.”
“Please. Just let me?—”
“Goodbye, Diane.”
He closed the door.
I heard the lock click.
And I stood on the sidewalk, phone buzzing in my pocket, and felt something inside me crack open.
I don’t knowhow long I stood there.
Minutes, maybe. Or hours. Time had stopped meaning anything. There was just the closed door, and the darkened shop, and the hollow, ringing silence where Marcus used to be.
A woman walked past with her dog. Gave me a concerned look. I probably looked insane—standing frozen on the sidewalk, staring at a closed door, tears I hadn’t noticed streaming down my face.
When had I started crying?
The phone kept buzzing—6,987 matches, 7,012, 7,045—demanding attention, demanding I look at all the options, all the possibilities, all the doors I’d kept open because I was too scared to walk through any of them.
I didn’t want any of them.
For the first time since this nightmare started, I looked at the numbers—thousands of possibilities, infinite options—and felt nothing.
Not interest. Not curiosity. Not even the familiar comfort ofat least I have choices.
Just emptiness.
Because none of them were Marcus.
None of them had made me tea without asking. None of them had cleared a chair just for me. None of them had sharedstories about their dead wife and made me laugh about Victorian mourning hair. None of them had looked at me—really looked—and demanded I be more than what I was showing the world.
None of them had called me out.
That was it. The thing that made Marcus different. He didn’t let me hide. He saw the terrified mess underneath all my jokes and deflections, and instead of accepting it, he’d demanded I do better.
Not in a Todd way—not criticizing, not making me feel like a failure. In a way that saidI see you. I know you can be more. I’m waiting for you to prove it.
And I’d frozen.
He’d asked me to choose him, and I’d frozen.
The same way I’d frozen with the architect who said “expecially.” The same way I’d frozen with every man who’d gotten close enough to see the real me. The same way I’d been freezing for five years, too scared to commit to anything because commitment meant risk and risk meant pain.
But not committing was pain too. Just a different kind.
Marcus’s pain, waiting for someone who couldn’t say yes. My pain, watching the best thing I’d found in years walk away because I was too scared to reach for it. The quiet, grinding pain of a life spent keeping every door open and never walking through any of them.
So you’ll waste the rest of your life on nothing instead?
