“I ended up getting promoted to partner,” I tell him, and there’s a flicker of something in his face, as if he let the mask slip for a second. “I’m not sure if it had to do with the fact that I brought up the sexual assault case again,” I continue. “I hope it wasn’t related. But anyway, today Harold asked me to help with the press release for the oil spill. And I quit. I know I should’ve stopped selling out ages ago, but I’m doing it now, so that’s something, right?”
I flash a grin at him, trying to force that old friendliness. He doesn’t return the smile, and it reminds me how far we are from where we once were and where I thought we were going to get.
“You made partner and then you quit?” Rory asks with the puzzled inflection of someone trying to solve a math problem that doesn’t add up.
“Correct.” The adrenaline from walking out of the office is still coursing through me, but I know that when it runs out, I’ll still be glad of my decision. It’s the kind of conviction that’s been percolating so long that, now that I’ve acted on it, there’s no part of me that wants to go back.
“Wow.” He’s still distant, hiding under an invisible veneer.
I want to show him it’s safe to come out. That it will always be safe. That I’ll protect him and take care of him, just like he’ll do for me.
Because standing before him now, all my arguments about why we’re better off apart have fallen and flattened. My life will be okay without Rory, but it’ll be so much better with him.
“Can we talk?” I ask, too sure of the truth to be shy.
“I can’t right now. Gotta keep track of the kids and chaperones.” He glances around nervously, then relaxes once he counts everyone.
“Afterward, then?” I pose.
“Alright.”
So we stand near each other for the next hour or so, keeping track of the students and doing our best to answer their questions about the oil spill and why anybody would let the ocean get hurt like that. From the outside, people might think Rory and I were coparents. The thought fills me with equal parts of hurt and hope.
“Byeee, Miss Kat!” Mala sings, as her mom takes her home for the end of the school day. “I must go check how many views my video has gotten. Do bring me the chocolate biscuits, won’t you?” With that, she trots off.
Once Rory’s triple-checked that all the kids have been collected, he turns back to me, visibly uncomfortable without any buffer. His posture is more slouched than usual, and the pep has been zapped from his step.
We wiggle our way out of the crowd, emerging to the outskirts of the square, beside a battered telephone box that’s in need of a new coat of red paint.
“I love you, Rory,” I say, and it reverberates with relief.
Rory blinks in surprise a few times in a row, looking even more taken aback than when I told him I’d quit. I don’t try to discernwhat he’s thinking and feeling; I just whiz along, spellbound by the surrender that comes from speaking my truth.
“And I know we started off in a weird way,” I tell him. “I had this fairy-tale idea in my head, and you’re different from that. But I don’t love you in spite of all that. I love youbecauseof that.”
I feel the pain again of watching him walk away at Jules’s wedding. But I know that wasn’t really him. It was a stress reaction, and I’m praying I can break through to the real Rory. That he’s still in there.
“If you’d been the prince I’d pictured, I’d be trying to be that rom-com character too, always filtering and polishing myself and feeling like I could never mess up,” I go on. “With you, there’s no performing. And I know I can’t force you to trust me, and I know these are just words that I’ll have to back up with actions, but what I’m saying is that I want to have that chance. I want to live near our families and hopefully have a family of our own someday and have a little house on a lake. And I have no clue what I want to do in my career, but I want to figure it out with you at my side, scooping from the same ice-cream pint.”
As quickly as I started, I stop. I’m tempted to take back everything I just said, but I’m glad I can’t. I stand there, waiting, infused with the atypical patience that I get around Rory, not wanting him to feel like he has to hurry up for me.
I brace myself for a goodbye. But the goodbye doesn’t come.
“Separate pints,” is what Rory says instead.
“What?”
“We’ll eat from separate pints,” he says. “So I can have my vanilla ice cream in peace while you go for the fancy stuff.” The protective layer is retreating from his face. A smile slips out, and there’s my Rory again, his eyes honey and sunshine and everything good.
I’m scared to ask it, but I do anyway. “Is that your way of saying you still love me?”
“I still love you,” he agrees, wrapping me up in one of those hugs that feels like home. “And I trust you.”
He apologizes for his reaction at the wedding and for his silence since. He tells me he got worried that he wouldn’t be what I wanted. That our life together wouldn’t be enough. “You’ve been on this high-power track straight to the moon,” he says. “And I’m not on the track. I don’t want to hold you back.”
The words cut me to the core. “You could never hold me back.”
The reality is that I’m the one who’s been holding myself back by staying stuck within the small, rigid box of my double-decker expectations. By thinking that the only way to be successful in love was to marry a prince, and that the only way to be successful at work was to reign from the C-suite. And that any other life path would be settling.
