His mouth tilts slightly. “The kind that don’t fix themselves.”
“Those are the worst ones.”
“Usually,” he agrees.
Silence settles again, but it’s not awkward. Just careful. Like we’re both aware there are places we could go and we’re choosing not to.
“My mother,” I say suddenly, surprising myself, “was very good at pretending everything was fine.”
He looks at me fully now. “Even when it wasn’t?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a learned skill.”
I huff quietly. “Unfortunately.”
He doesn’t smile, but something shifts in his expression. “My father thought control was the same thing as strength.”
I don’t hesitate. “I’m sorry.”
He shakes his head. “It taught me a lot.”
“Just not what he thought it would?”
“Exactly.”
I breathe out slowly. “Funny how that works.”
“Not funny,” he says. “But familiar.”
We sit with that for a moment. Then the words slip out of me before I can weigh them.
“I stayed too long,” I say, “because I was afraid of being alone.”
I brace for it. The shame. The internal correction. The voice that tells me I should’ve known better.
It doesn’t come. He just nods.
“I stayed too long,” he says quietly, “because I was afraid of becoming my father.”
I turn toward him. “That’s… different,” I say.
“Is it?”
I consider it. “No,” I admit. “I guess it isn’t.”
Time moves strangely after that. The cabin lights stay dim. The engines keep their steady rhythm. At some point, a flightattendant passes through quietly, checking belts and blankets like a guardian making sure the world hasn’t tilted too far.
I realize, distantly, that my shoulders have dropped. That my jaw doesn’t hurt from clenching. That I haven’t checked my phone in over an hour.
By the time the captain’s voice announces our descent, my throat feels tight in a different way.
We’ve been talking for nearly two hours. Two hours, and I’ve told this man more about myself than I told Marco in two years. Not details. Not the worst of it. But truths. Clean ones. Unfiltered by fear of consequences.
He hasn’t asked about the bruises. Not once. He hasn’t tried to fix anything or offer solutions or tell me what I should do next. He’s listened. Really listened. Like my words matter simply because they’re mine.
The realization is dizzying.
