Has she given up on us? Or is she doing it for my sake?
All these questions linger unspoken between us. And once again, I realize that it can't go on like this. Since my conversation with David, I've been gathering the courage to do the right thing at the right moment.
Now that moment has come.
Even though it could go wrong, we have to be honest with each other. And I'll start now.
"No, Aurora, you don't even know what you want," I say, finally addressing what I couldn't before. I fix my gaze on her intently. "You're not okay."
She gasps for breath. "That's not..."
It hurts. Everywhere. But it has to be done. "Neither of us is doing well," I say gently, stroking her cheeks. "And if we force ourselves to suppress it—which we would do if I danced with someone else—it will consume us one day."
With wide eyes, she stares at me. She's never seen me like this, and she's not alone in that. This is new territory for me. It definitely feels wrong. Especially when suddenly all her facialmuscles give in at once. "We're not doing that. We'll fight back," she says.
Part of me wanted to hear exactly that, but that's not important. Only the truth matters. "What happened was terrible. It's completely normal for it to throw us off track."
She nods. "I'm sorry."
"We'll take as much time as we need." I haven't shown her much of my own grief so far. Maybe that was wrong. Perhaps I should have openly said that my heart, too, is broken. "Both of us need to move past this."
Her eyes fill with tears again.
"I don't want this distance between us. We have to talk about everything weighing on us," I say with full awareness that this truth could destroy us.
And then something happens that I didn't expect. My fear loses its grip on me. All the burden falls off me.
She breathes out shakily, then wraps her arms around me. "Okay," she whispers, barely audible. "Asking you not to dance without me is not easy."
Finally, she's honest with me too. I breathe a sigh of relief.
"But there's no other way, and you know that as well as I do. Nothing will change between us, Maxime." How certain she sounds. Almost as if she's trying to convince herself as well.
Again, I search for signs of her true feelings. Again, I feel I can't settle for anything less until everything has been said. "And what if I don't want to dance without you?" I ask.
"Sometimes we have to do things we don't want to. That's life," she replies, exhausted. "Don't you long for us to be happy again?"
"Every single day."
Choosing a new dance partner is probably wrong, and it will never be right.
But right now, it seems to be the only way for us to move forward. Aurora will have time to recover without the pressure of dancing again, and I will have the chance to dance a new life into existence for both of us.
Everything inside me feels like it is cooling down a little, yet I nod. "Okay, I'll do it. For us."
"Thank you, that means everything to me." For the first time since the miscarriage, I see her smile genuinely. That's all I need to know that my decision is right.
Breathing a sigh of relief, she comes closer and kisses me. For minutes, all we do is melt into each other. When we part, I feel liberated. And I can even sense that she feels the same way.
It was right to finally talk about all of this, and at this moment, I swear to myself that I'll never let it get this far again.
Together, we turn our gaze to the wild beauty of the sea. Behind the mist, the archipelago emerges, barely visible but still there.
"Look over there," Aurora exclaims. Her index finger points at the water. "Are those dolphins?"
I lean over the railing as far as I can. Indeed! Three of the graceful creatures glide through the water about twenty yards away. Their bodies emerge between the waves again and again.
I reach for the zipper of my jacket to take out my phone from the inside pocket. "Wow. We have to photograph that."
"Already done." Aurora shows me the picture she took.
I beam at her. "That's going into our memory box."
Even in ten or twenty years, it will remind us of this day.
It will forever stand for the moment when we decided to show our destiny together that only we ourselves choose the paths we walk.
