“Yes.”
“Sex is the small part. That's the only thing we haven't given eachother. Everything else, we've been giving. Neither of us thinks the physical is the deep end of this.”
I nodded.
“So what are we drawing the line at? Because if it’s sex, that’s the easiest thing … I don't think that's actually the line. I think the line is something else and we're calling it sex because that’s simpler to argue about.”
I sat with her there, and thought about it head-on. If she walked out of my life tomorrow with no warning, it would take me apart. The thing I'd built my adult life around never letting happen, had happened. I’d already handed it to her.
“This doesn’t have to change anything,” she said into the quiet.
“It already did.”
Her eyes came up.
“You matter more than I planned for. More than I let myself want you to. I don’t know what to do with that.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Okay.”
“Are you getting it somewhere else?”
My head came up. “No. Not since you walked onto that football field.”
She blinked.
I cleared my throat. “I didn't realize I'd stopped. I just didn't have a reason to start. There hasn't been anyone since then.”
“I haven't either,” she said. “Since Malik.”
I'd known. I had put it together in pieces over the time we'd known each other. The things she'd said, the things she hadn't, the way her body moved away from certain conversations. I hadn’t let myself think about it directly. But I had known.
Hearing her say it out loud was different. She hadn't let a man near her since the one who'd shredded her, and that door had been shut ever since. Now she was thinking about opening it. Now I knew for sure I’d made the right call to stop things. It mattered too much to let it happen half-ready on a couch. She didn't deserve a mechanical transaction, a man showing up for the physical release. She deserved thewhole thing.
“I gave everything I could to that marriage,” she said. “And when it came apart I didn’t recognize the woman left standing there. I don’t know if I’ve got it in me to be that wrong about something again. So I can’t sit here and tell you I’m one-hundred percent ready. I don’t know if I am.”
There was a fear under mine I couldn’t put on the table either, with my father’s name on it. It got as far as my throat. She was watching my face, and nodded as if I’d said it.
“But… I do want it,” she said quietly. “I’m afraid of it, but I want it anyway. I haven’t wanted anything in a long time, and I want this.” Her eyes came back to mine. “I feel more at home and safer with you than I have with anybody. Ever. I don’t know what to do with that one either.”
I held still and let her say all of it.
“The part that scares me most isn’t me though, it’s Micah.” Her voice dropped. “He loves you, Julian. Like a kid who decided you’re his. If we do this and it falls apart, I don’t just lose a friend. He loses you. And I’ve already handed that boy one loss I couldn’t do a thing to stop.”
“I wouldn't do that to him. To Micah,” I said. “I don’t know where this goes between you and me. I can’t predict that. But I can tell you I wouldn't do to him what was done to my siblings. I wouldn't disappear on a child who let me in. If this doesn't work, I wouldn't make him pay for it.”
She breathed out and nodded. “Julian?”
“Hmm?”
“It happened to you too.”
“What happened?”
“You said you wouldn’t do what was done to your siblings. I’m saying it was done to you too.”
“I was nineteen. An adult, Alyssa.”
