Cary was in no hurry to break the silence. They sat there for long minutes, both of them breathing loud.
Shiloh kept thinking of new objections... Of all the things Cary hadn’t said. And all the times he hadn’t said them.
The night they graduated from high school, Cary and Mikey and Shiloh had stayed out all night on Mikey’s back deck. Mikey fell asleep, and Cary and Shiloh lay there on a spread-out sleeping bag, looking up at the stars, then watching the sun rise—and Cary had never once said they were “beyond dating.”
They sat a hundred nights in Shiloh’s driveway, a thousand afternoons on her front steps.
The day he walked away from her, she lost her best friend and her true love, and she still wasn’t sure how she was supposed to have stopped him.
This wasn’t a problem Shiloh could solve at thirty-three. At nineteen, she didn’t have a chance.
She’d never had a chance.
“You’re right,” Cary said.
Shiloh lifted her head—she wasn’t expecting him to be the first to speak.
Cary looked tired, like the fight had gone out of him. “I’m sorry,” he said, meeting her eyes. Then he looked down. “I should have been more clear, when I came to see you—even if I still don’t believe that you wanted to hear it.”
Shiloh sat very still.
“I should have said...” His words sounded carefully measured. He was staring at his lap. “‘Shiloh, I think that we’re meant to be together. I know you don’t want me to join the Navy and that this isn’t the life you want for yourself. But I’m still yours, if you’ll have me.’”
It was a terrible thing to hear...
Fourteen years after it was true.
Tears streamed down Shiloh’s cheeks.
“What wouldyouhave said,” Cary asked, before she’d gathered her senses, “if you had been being honest that weekend?”
He hung his head while he waited for her to answer.
It took a while.
Shiloh’s voice was hollow when she finally found it. She looked at the ceiling.
“I would have said—‘Cary, I’m in love with you, and I’m so scared to lose you. I don’t know where I fit in your life. I’m yours for the taking, but... I don’t think you’ll ever take me.’”
Cary exhaled hard. Like he hadn’t really wanted to hear that.
Shiloh could sympathize.
“To be fair...” She still couldn’t face him. “I think it’s taken me this long to put that into words.”
“Yeah,” he agreed quietly. “Me too.”
Shiloh turned in the chair so she could lean her forehead on one of its arms. She’d gotten very practiced at long, terrible conversations at the end of her marriage. She had two or three favorite crash positions.
“Hey,” Cary said.
“What.”
“Look at me.”
Shiloh looked up.
He looked utterly defeated. And incredibly handsome.
