"I should have told you before last night. Before we—"
"Stop. Look at me." I look at him. His eyes through the tears are fierce. "You told me when you were ready. That's exactly when you were supposed to tell me. And I'm grateful you trust me enough to say it now."
"You're not... you don't think I'm..."
"Don't finish that sentence." His thumbs wipe the tears from my cheeks but more come to replace them. "I think you are the bravest person I have ever met in my life. I think you survived things that would have destroyed most people and you came out the other side still standing. I think you are kind and smart and strong and worth more than every single person who ever hurt you combined."
The sobs hit harder. I fold forward and my forehead lands against his chest and he holds me. His arms come around me and his hand cups the back of my head. He holds me while I cry, body-shaking, voice-breaking, snot-running crying that comes from somewhere so deep it doesn't have a name. He holds me through all of it. He doesn't shush me. He doesn't tell me it's okay. He just holds me and lets me empty out.
When the crying slows, when my breathing evens out from ragged to just unsteady, he speaks.
"Here's what we're going to do," he says. He's a man who always has a plan and is going to take care of things. "We're going to eat breakfast and get dressed. And then we're going to drive to the clinic and we're going to get tested. Both of us together."
I lift my head. "Both of us?"
"That's right. You and me. I haven't been tested in over a year because I've been solo for what seems like forever, and I should be tested too. That's what you do when you're starting up with someone. You go together. You're not going alone, Stormy. We're doing it together. Same waiting room. Same paperwork. Same bad magazines."
"Tex—"
"This is not negotiable. You are not walking into that clinic by yourself. I will be sitting next to you filling out forms and complaining about the fluorescent lighting because clinic lighting makes everyone look terrible and I refuse to look terrible in your presence. Also, those gowns. If they try to put me in one of those paper gowns, I'm going to look like a refrigerator wrapped in a napkin. Nobody needs to see my big ass hanging out the back. I'm bringing my own shirt. I'm staging a one-man protest against clinic fashion."
A sound comes out of me that's half sob and half laugh. I don't know which one wins. His hand is on the back of my neck, and he's looking at me with eyes that are still wet but steady.
"One more thing," he says. "And I need you to hear this. Really hear it and believe it."
I look at him.
"No matter what those tests say. No matter what comes back. It doesn't change anything. Not one thing. Not how I feel about you. Not what you mean to me. Not what we are. If something comes back that we need to deal with, we deal with it together. There are treatments, there are options, there are ways to handle anything that comes up. We'll figure it out. The results won't make a difference to me."
"You can't promise that. You don't know what—"
"Yes, I most definitely can promise that. Iampromising that. Right now." He takes my face in his hands again. "Stormy. I was willing to wait for you forever. I spent six weeks standing six inches away from you, not touching you, not kissing you, just being near you, because having you in my life without ever touching you was better than not having you at all. Do you think a test result is going to change that? Do you think there is anything on this earth that could make me let you go?"
I can't speak. I open my mouth and nothing comes out because the words are too big and my throat is too tight. The thing I'm feeling is so enormous that language can't hold it.
"Whatever they did to you," he says, and his voice drops to barely a whisper, "whatever they left behind, we carry it together. You don't carry anything alone anymore. That's over. That ended the day I made a U-turn on a beach road and picked up the most stubborn, beautiful, brave person I've ever met."
I kiss him. Not with desire. With gratitude so big it has its own gravity. I kiss him and he tastes like tears, his and mine, salt like the Gulf water that almost took me and salt from the tears that are giving me back to him.
"Okay," I say when I pull back. I'm completely wrecked. "Okay. We'll go this morning."
"Now on to breakfast," he says. "I'm making pancakes because this is a pancake kind of morning and if you argue with me about pancakes I will be deeply offended."
"I'll never turn down pancakes."
"Smart man. The pancakes are non-negotiable. I have a ranking system for mornings, Stormy. Regular mornings get eggs. Good mornings get bacon. Mornings where someone Icare about trusts me with a big deal that matters get pancakes with blueberries. It's a whole system. Sheila doesn't know about it. She thinks she gets the best breakfast. She gets the second-best breakfast. You get the best. Don't tell her. She'll reorganize my entire kitchen out of spite."
He gets up like it's a normal morning and goes downstairs. I hear the familiar sounds of him starting breakfast. Pans on the stove. The fridge opening. His voice, humming, because he's always making noise, always filling the silence, and right now his noise is the most comforting sound in the world.
I sit on the edge of the bed. My face is swollen, my eyes are raw and my body feels hollowed out in the way it does after you cry that hard, and the space it leaves behind is empty, but clean.
I told him. Not everything. Not the terrible details, not the names, not the full horror of it. But enough that he knows the shape of what happened to me. Enough that when he looks at me now, he sees the whole picture, not just the parts I was willing to show before.
He's still here. Making pancakes. Humming. Planning a trip to the clinic like it's a trip to Walmart.
I go downstairs and sit on my stool. He slides a cup of coffee across the counter.
"Blueberry pancakes in five minutes," he says.
