“I don’t know how to do this without hurting you,” he says.
“We’ll figure it out.”
“I’m going to be terrible at it.”
“I have genuinely the lowest possible expectations.”
That does it.
The rare smile.
The real one.
Breaking through all of it.
Like sunlight through something that’s been closed for too long.
“Ro,” he says.
“Yeah.”
“I’m so sorry.” The real one. From the bottom of him. “For all of it. Every morning I was gone. Every time I made you feel like you weren’t enough. For Georgetown. For the hospital. For thirteen years of making you question something you should have never had to question.”
My eyes are burning.
“I know,” I say.
“You deserved better than —”
“I deserved you,” I say. “I’ve always deserved you. The real you. I just had to wait for you to believe that too.”
He pulls me in.
Both arms.
All the way.
Tight enough that I feel his heartbeat.
Tight enough that I can feel him exhaling something he’s been carrying for years.
I hold him back just as hard.
We stand there in the middle of my room.
Where everything has always happened.
And I feel it.
• • •
The thing that’s been missing from every version of this.
Both of us.
Here.
At the same time.
