Graham stared at me. The stare lasted long enough to be uncomfortable, which was the point.
"You're an idiot," he said.
"I'm aware."
"No, I need you to hear this, Callum. You are an idiot. Not a well-meaning idiot. Not an accidentally-said-the-wrong-thing idiot. A calculated, self-sabotaging idiot who had a woman standing in front of him asking to be chosen and decided to run the same play he's been running since Clinton was president."
I deserved every word of that. "I know."
"Do you? You know what you did? You proved Jessica right. Every rotten thing she said about you—that you'll always choose work, that you'll bail when itgets real—you confirmed it in real time. In front of the woman you're in love with."
"I'm not?—"
"Don't." Graham held up a hand. "Don't insult my intelligence. I've watched you design a coffee shop for this woman in secret. I've watched you drive to Elm Street on your lunch break and come back with sawdust on your shoes and a look on your face I haven't seen in fifteen years. You're in love with her. The building proves it. The plans prove it. The fact that you haven't slept in two days proves it." He dropped his hand. "So let me ask you a question, and I want an honest answer. What do you want?"
The apartment was quiet. The city hummed beyond the windows. My cold coffee sat between us, a prop in a conversation I'd been avoiding my whole life.
What did I want?
I wanted Willow Monroe on my kitchen island, bare feet swinging against the cabinets, stealing my coffee and critiquing my wardrobe. I wanted her in my bed, reaching for me in her sleep, her strawberry shampoo on my pillowcase. I wanted Saturday mornings at flea markets and cannoli in cramped bakeries and the sound of her laugh—the real one, the unguarded one—bouncing off my pristine walls and leaving marks I'd never want to remove.
I wanted to build her a coffee shop. Not as a grandgesture. Not as a transaction. As proof that I saw her. That her dreams were worth a foundation and four walls and a roof, and that I was capable of constructing a life around a person instead of around a career.
I wanted to be the man she'd defended to Elena. The one who kept her photo half-hidden behind the lamp. The one who played piano again. The one who was trying.
I wanted to be different than the man who drove away.
"I want her," I said. "I want Willow."
"Then what are you doing sitting in this apartment feeling sorry for yourself?"
"It's not that simple?—"
"It is that simple. You made it complicated. You took a simple thing—a woman who loves you, asking you to love her back—and you ran it through twenty years of emotional bureaucracy until it looked impossible." Graham stood. "Uncomplicate it."
He walked to the door. Stopped.
"Monday morning, Callum. The office. We need to talk about Riverside." He looked at me. "And whatever you're going to do about Willow, do it before you lose the right to do anything at all."
The door closed behind him.
I sat at the kitchen island for a long time after heleft. The cold coffee grew colder. The apartment held its breath.
Then I picked up the phone and called Elena.
She answered on the second ring. "Dad."
"I messed up."
"I know. Graham told me. He called yesterday and I nearly booked a flight." Her voice was tight—angry and concerned in equal measure, which was Elena's default when it came to me. "Tell me what happened."
I told her. All of it—Jessica at the dinner, the powder room conversation Willow had described, the parking lot fight, the ten syllables that ended it. I didn't spin it. Didn't soften it. Just laid the facts out the way I'd lay out a structural analysis: here are the loads, here's where the failure occurred, here's the part that was my fault.
All of it was my fault.
Elena was quiet when I finished. Then: "Do you remember what I said to you at the hotel? That Willow fought for you without anyone asking her to?"
"Yes."
