“It’s not serious,” he says, finally.
“Were we serious?” she whispers. “To you, were we serious?”
Aleksandr laughs, once. It’s not a sound of joy.
“Lili, I would have done anything for you.”
She closes her eyes.
Me, too.
Me, still.
“You said, the moment you realized you had to let this go,” he says. “What made you decide to come here and talk?”
“We got back last night,” she murmurs. “Yesterday, I was wandering through Charles de Gaulle alone, looking at the departures board. I’d seen the photo, I was learning to accept it. I’d finally spoken to my friends, opened up to them. But when I saw all those flights, all those different places in the world, possible lives, and people, I realized—I realized none of it meant anything to me, without you. That’s—that’s why I came.”
A siren blares behind them, an ambulance driving down Sixth.
Aleksandr doesn’t say anything.
“What about you?” she asks, already nauseous in anticipation of the answer. “When did you realize? That you had to let this go, that it was over?”
“I haven’t.”
Oh.
It’s almost sickening—letting something like hope start to grow again, crawling and green.
What is forgiveness but the hope for trust, again? The beginnings of a sort of faith. To have him would be unimaginable, and unknown; to be without him, the same.
She will have a life to live, either way.
She would like it to be with him.
“I—I don’t know if I can ask you this,” she whispers. “But could we... could we work through this?”
“What do you mean, when you say this?”
“You and me,” she says. “Is there any chance—could you ever forgive me?”
He sighs, with exhaustion and sadness. “For what purpose? What else do you want from me, Lili?”
What else do you want from me? When are you going to fucking be done with me? Is this finally it?
“You,” she says, immediately.
You,she thinks.You are a hunger that keeps existing, past the point of satiation, for me.
“I want you to be mine,” she says. “If you’d have me, if you’d want to—if you’d want to work through this. With me.”
Aleksandr shakes his head, disbelief—but still, not yet a rejection; not yet a refusal. “Fuck, Lili—you can’t just come back into my life, and expect me to make room for you, like this.”
“I know,” she whispers.
He lets out a difficult breath. “Maybe it’s better if we—”
Aleksandr breaks off, running a hand over his face.
