“Yes,” he admits. “But I couldn’t stomach it in the end. Hating you, that being the end of it? The thought of us as strangers, out in the world, and that’s it, that’s my life? Pride saved maybe, but what potential happiness lost... and is it weak, to want to hazard a chance at happiness, instead?”
And that, the idea: that she could make him happy?
Lili rests her head against his chest, looking at their hands. She traces her thumb over his knuckles.
Questions still hover:Have you forgiven me? Do you want to? Is this forgiveness?
Instead, Lili whispers: “Could I stay here tonight?”
Aleksandr pauses. “I need to speak to Sanaë.”
Her heart tightens. “Oh. Does she... does she stay here often?”
“No, not really,” he says. “But we should also... we should take things slow. This time.”
She nods—right. Trust, a gradual thing she has to regain. “Yes, that—that makes sense. Dating, I guess... we could start dating?”
“I don’t want to date you, Lili.”
All the breath gathered in her lungs—hope, beginnings of joy—stills.
“Oh. Oh—okay, I—”
Aleksandr frowns. “I want much more than that. I wasn’t lying, about children, with you.”
Hot tears swell in her tired eyes, as the tension—of what this is, where they are, where they’re going—continues to splinter. “Sorry—sorry,” she gasps. “Sorry, I—fuck—”
His hand settles against her cheek, brushing away tears. She feels shame for how openly her crying reveals the size of her distrust: of him, of the world, of good as something to be given rather than earned.
“How are you... how are you going to trust me again?” she whispers. “How am I going to deserve that?”
“Don’t you need to trust me, too?” he asks.
Unspoken:Isn’t that why you ran?
She starts crying harder. “What do you want?” he murmurs. “Tell me what you want, Lili.”
“I want to be with you,” she whispers. “I want a life, with you, but it’s—it’s hard for me to imagine that you’d want that, too—that it wouldn’t just disappear, someday—it’s reallyfuckinghard.”
“Ask me, then.”
“What?”
“Ask me, the things you’re scared to ask—just say it.”
She hesitates, welling heat of vulnerability. “Could you—could you really still see a life with me? Or—I mean, do you even want that—”
Aleksandr laughs, soft. It is quiet, but it is a real sound: with genuine warmth, and a tired smile that makes his eyes crinkle, fondness in the sadness. It makes her shame stutter. “Yes,” he says. “I want a life with you. I want to come home and see you here. Or when I’m gone, I want to know that you’re somewhere in the world—known to me, that we’re... that this is something. A life between us. That wherever you are, or whatever we each end up doing—that you come here, that this is what feels like home to you. That us, together, feels like something—like that—to you.”
And that—there aren’t words available to her yet, to describe that: to express how much, and with what depth she wants to reach out, and have that with him; and, too, how strongly she believes that having it will only mean losing it.
But if she thinks she deserves the horrible, unquestioningly, why can’t she deserve the good given to her, too? The blessed and inexplicable, rather than only the horrific?
Do we have to earn everything?
Can life not be a gift, sometimes?
Fear, a shape-shifting thing.
