"Sabrina."
"I'm saying it because I want you to know. I'm saying it because I'm not going to keep waiting for the right time."
He was looking at me. His eyes were wet. "Sabrina, I have loved you since the alley."
I gasped, "You what?”
"Since the night I was drunk, and you took care of me when you didn’t have to. I have loved you since then. I haven't, in any of the weeks since, stopped,” he continued.
"Beau." My voice was shaking.
"I'm sorry, Sabrina. I don't know how to say it any other way than the way I'm saying it now. I'm sorry for what I did. I'm sorryfor who I did it to. I'm sorry I have made it about me when it wasn't about me. I'm sorry."
I leaned forward.
"Beau, what you did — "
"I know."
"I'm angry, I'm grateful, and I'm in love with you all at once. You didn’t have to do any of that, but you did, and I owe you my life for it for saving my daughter and for making things right."
"Yes."
"I have conditions."
"What is it?"
"I want the boring kind of man."
"Sabrina — "
"Listen to me, Beau. I've been a single mother for nine years. I haven't been a single mother because I love being one. I've been a single mother because the man who left me when I was nineteen wasn't a responsible one. I don't want a man who'll pin to a parking lot wall and kiss me just because of his passion and desire.I want a man who shows up, who sits in folding chairs at recitals, and doesn't check his phone, someone who is around for Bonnie and me. I want a man who stays, Beau."
"I'll stay, Sabrina. I promise."
"I'm not asking you to be Bonnie's father. I'm asking you to be the man who is in the room."
"I want to be that man."
I told him about Bonnie's father.
I hadn't told anyone in nine years what I told Beau in the next few minutes. I told him about Bonnie, at four years old, asking me at the kitchen table why she didn't have one. I told him about the longing in my daughter that I hadn't been able to address.
He listened. When I was done, he didn’t say anything right away, just sat with it for a few minutes.
"Sabrina, I want to be someone you ask for. I can’t make promises for now, but I’m working to be the man you need me to be."
I kissed him, and we sat on the couch.
I kissed him in his apartment with the press downstairs, his beard against my chin, his cold coffee forgotten on the entry table, and his hand finally, finally coming up to the side of my face after days of holding back.
We kissed for a long time.
I recognized, against his mouth, that he had loved me enough to give up everything he had spent his life building for a thing that was right. He had given up his authority at the foundation. He had given up his name in the news. He had handed his father's legacy over to a different man and was no longer allowed to allocate it.
He had done it because I'd asked him to make things right and because he had been, somewhere underneath all of it, the man I'd wanted him to be.
At some point, he pulled back.
