I want to deny it. Want to produce some plausible explanation that doesn’t involve admitting that I’m terrified of how easy this felt, how natural, how much I want it to keep happening.
“Gisele—”
“I’m not going to push.” She says it simply, without drama. “You opened up, you got scared, you’re pulling back. That’s a pattern. I see it.”
Of course she sees it. She sees everything.
“And?”
“And nothing.” She shrugs. “I’m not going to force you to process something you’re not ready for. That’s not how this works.”
The absence of pressure is somehow worse than pressure would have been. If she pushed, I could push back. If shedemanded an explanation, I could construct one that kept her at arm’s length.
But this—this calm acceptance, this willingness to let me have my retreat without fighting for more—leaves me with nothing to resist.
“I had fun,” I hear myself say. “At the diner. That’s what scared me.”
“I know.”
“I’m not supposed to—” I stop, start again. “This was supposed to be about fixing me. Learning emotional skills. Not about...”
“Not about what?”
I can’t say it. Can’t name the thing that’s been building since she kissed me, since before she kissed me, since the moment I sat down in the middle of Main Street and she was the only person I wanted to see.
Then again, she’s always been that person.
“Nothing.” I shake my head. “It’s nothing.”
“Okay.”
We drive the rest of the way in silence. The supply store is exactly as mundane as expected—aisles of professional hair products, wholesale prices, fluorescent lighting that makes everyone look slightly ill. I push the cart while Gisele fills it, and we don’t talk about the diner or the pancakes or the thing I almost admitted.
The drive back to Sorrowville is quiet, too. Not uncomfortable, exactly, but weighted with everything unsaid.
When she drops me at my truck, I linger by her window for a moment.
The engine is still running. She’s waiting for me to say something or not say something, and I can tell from the way she’s not looking at me—eyes straight ahead, hands loose on the wheel—that she’s giving me room to make the choice.
I should say same time tomorrow. That’s the safe thing. That’s the thing that fits inside the structure we built, the one where I’m the project and she’s the person running it and everything has a label and a place and nothing is messy or exposed.
“I was off the whole trip,” I say instead.
She doesn’t move. “I know. I saw the video.”
“Not just the penalty.” I look at the windshield, the street, anywhere that isn’t her face. “The whole four days. Practice, games, the bus.” I stop then start again. “I keep functioning better when you’re around. I don’t know what to do with that.”
The silence that follows isn’t uncomfortable. It’s just full.
“Bennett—”
“I missed you.” The words come out rougher than I intend, stripped down to just the fact of them. “Not the sessions. Not the exercises. You.” I finally look at her. “That’s what I couldn’t figure out how to text. But I wish I would have.”
She holds my gaze for a long moment. An expression moves across her face that I can’t fully read.
“Same time tomorrow,” she says softly.
It’s not a deflection. Coming from her, right now, it sounds like a promise.
