“You think I don’t know that?” she whispered. “You think I ain’t watched the same shit? My parents wasn’t exactly some fairy tale either, Royce.”
I looked up at her.
“I am scared,” she said, lettin’ the tears fall now. “I’m scared of failin’. I’m scared of you leavin’ one day. I’m scared of wakein’ up and we don’t recognize each other. I’m scared of us hurtin’ each other in ways we can’t take back.”
She took a deep breath.
“But I’m still here,” she said. “I’m still pickin’ you. Every day. Even when I’m scared. That’s what this is supposed to be. Not the absence of fear, but choosin’ each other in it.”
My chest ached.
“You not the only one who got ghosts,” she continued. “But I refuse to let what I seen ruin what I got. What we got. So you either gotta be all in with me, scared and all, or let me go so I can stop buildin’ a life with somebody who’s already halfway out the door in his head.”
My throat closed up.
“April…” I started.
She held up her hand. “No. I need you to say it. Out loud. What’s really wrong. Not the half-truth version that make you sound noble.”
She had me there.
I sat back down, elbows on my knees, hands laced.
“I don’t trust myself not to fuck it up,” I said quietly. “That’s the real. I know I love you. That’s not in question. I know I want you. I know I don’t want nobody else. But I also know my own patterns. I know how I run when shit get too real. I know my temper. I know the shit I’m capable of when I get scared. I don’t wanna be the man you look back on like, ‘Damn, I picked wrong.’”
She came and sat next to me on the bed, not too close, but close enough.
“Royce,” she said, voice soft now. “You not protectin’ me by pushin’ me away. You hurtin’ me. Slowly. You think not sayin’ it out loud mean it don’t exist, but I feel it every day.”
I swallowed hard.
“I’m scared too,” she repeated. “But I don’t mind us bein’ scared together if we actually talk about it. If we actually do somethin’ about it. I would rather us standin’ in front of each other like this, ugly cryin’ and tellin’ the truth, than us pretendin’ everything fine till it explode.”
I looked over at her, tears blurrin’ my own vision now.
“I wanna marry you,” I said, voice crackin’. “I really do. I just keep picturin’ the worst-case scenario. Bein’ without you. Havin’ you regret this. Endin’ up like…” I stopped, shakin’ my head. “Like all them examples I hate.”
“Then let’s stop lettin’ them be the blueprint,” she said. “We not them. We got Nana. We got Roman and Mo to show us what it look like to love for real even if it end ugly. We got each other. We gon’ make mistakes, but we don’t have to repeat the same ones we seen.”
Silence stretched.
Then she said, “We can push the wedding back, if that’s what you need.”
My head snapped up. “What?”
“I’m not sayin’ call it off,” she clarified. “I’m sayin’ if this date got you chokin’ every time you look at the calendar, we can move it. A couple months. Enough time to get our minds right. Do therapy. Talk through our fears with somebody that know what they talkin’ about.”
My first instinct was to say yes.
More time sounded like a lifeline.
Then I pictured her tellin’ people that the wedding was pushed back. Pictured folks speculatin’, whisperin’. Pictured the look on Nana Hope face.
“We don’t gotta do no stranger therapy,” I said. “We got Nana. She a life coach anyway. She know both of us. She know our history. We could go to her. Sit down, really talk. Not just Sunday dinner small talk.”
April’s eyes brightened a little. “You would do that?”
“Yeah,” I said, noddin’. “If you down, we can go this weekend. Tell her we need more than just her sweet potato pie this time. We need a session.”
