He said nothing.
I waited.
He opened his mouth.
He closed it.
His jaw worked in the way it had in the parking lot, the way it had in the hotel room, the way it did when the real words were right there and the system was failing to contain them and he was failing to contain the system.
He did not say it.
He said: "The team is under a microscope."
Something cold moved through my chest.
"Shay,"
"Don't."
"You know what it was like for Charlie and Henry. The photographs, the speculation, management pulling Charlie in for a,"
"Don't." The word came out harder than I intended. I brought it back. Kept my voice level. "Don't use Charlie and Henry against me."
"I'm not using them against you, I'm telling you what the reality,"
"They are fine, Felix." I looked at him. "You can see them. Every week. At dinner, at practice, wherever , you can see them being fine. You can see what it looks like when two people on this team are together and it isfine. So don't stand there and use them as a reason when the reason you're using them for doesn't exist anymore."
His jaw tightened. "It was harder than it looked,"
"I know it was hard! I know the photographs and the speculation and the management conversations , I know all of it, I watched Charlie go through it. And he went through it because Henry was worth it." My voice stayed level. It cost me something to keep it level. "That's the point. He decided Henry was worth the hard. And they are fine. They are better than fine. So if you're going to tell me no, I need you to find a different reason, because that one doesn't hold."
Felix looked at the window.
"Management watches everything right now," he said. "My contract is up in,"
"I know when your contract is up."
"If there's any perception that the line chemistry is personal, that we're,"
"The line chemistryispersonal. It has always been personal. You and I have been personal since the first week you were on this team and everyone knows it and no one has said a word because it looks like , it looks like what it is, which is two peoplewho know each other." I stopped. Started again. "The contract argument doesn't hold either, Felix. And you know it doesn't. You know what our numbers look like together. Management is not pulling that line apart."
He was quiet.
I had said the true things. I had prepared them and they had been accurate and I had delivered them clearly and none of it had moved him and I could feel the space between us , three feet, the same three feet as the parking lot, the same three feet as every room we had been in since October , doing the same thing it always did, which was hold.
"Then what is it?" I asked.
Quiet. Low. The real question underneath all the other questions.
"What is the actual reason, Felix. Not the team. Not the contract. Not Charlie and Henry. What is the actual, specific, real reason that you kissed me back twice and are still standing on the other side of this room."
He looked at his window.
He looked at his hands.
He looked at the crack in the ceiling , his ceiling, his crack, the one he knew, branching left , and I watched him look at it and I thought about all the nights he had been awake looking at that crack and what he had been thinking when he looked at it and I was so tired of being on the other side of his distance.
"I don't know how to do this," he said. Very quiet. The same words from the balcony, from a different man than he'd been then, from a man who had been further along in the knowing for months now.
