I have been jealous of someone who doesn't even exist, who you haven't even met. I have been in love with you for almost 4 years and I have been so afraid to say it that I've been protecting you from something you didn't even know was happening. She let out a long unsteady breath. And I just I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't keep carrying it without at least knowing knowing what.
Her eyes were very direct whether I was alone in it. Marcus was quiet for a long moment. He thought about a lot of things in that quiet. He thought about Denise, the good parts which came first and then the grief which came after and then the particular specific ache of realizing that the grief had changed shape over 4 years. It wasn't sharp anymore.
It was something wider and flatter that he'd learned to move through rather than around. He thought about Lily. He always thought about Lily. I thought about all the evenings he'd sat alone in that living room with the television on and the volume low, not really watching anything, just not wanting silence. He thought about Emma showing up at his door in the middle of an ice storm in pajamas and a coat.
Her face white with fear and the way he'd grabbed his keys without thinking, "Because. Because what? Because someone needed help and he could give it. That was the whole of it. That was all it had ever been.
Except now he was standing on a bridge in July and being told that that moment and all the small moments after it had meant something to someone in a way he hadn't known. And the strange thing, the true and honest strange thing was that standing here and hearing that Marcus didn't feel frightened. He felt something else. something warm and inconvenient and quietly electric, something that felt very much like recognition. I need to ask you something, he said. Emma nodded.
And I need you to be honest. Okay. Is this He chose his words carefully. Is this about you needing to say it and be done with it, or is this about you actually wanting something to happen? Emma didn't hesitate.
I want something to happen, she said. I've wanted something to happen for 4 years. I'm terrified, but I She stopped herself, steadied. I want something to happen. Marcus looked at her.
What are you terrified of? He asked. You, she said simply. Specifically, I'm afraid you're not ready. I'm afraid you're still.
She searched for the word. Still in the place where love feels like a loss waiting to happen. and I don't want to push you somewhere you don't want to go. That landed on him harder than he expected because she wasn't wrong. She had named something real. For 4 years, he had lived his life at a certain emotional altitude, high enough to function low enough to be safe, not too invested, not too open.
Moving through the days with Lily at the center, and everything else at a managed distance. He had told himself that was practicality. Emma was telling him gently directly from 4 ft away on a wooden bridge that it might also be fear. He took a breath. I don't know, he said.
If I'm ready, he paused. I don't know what ready is supposed to feel like. What does right now feel like? Emma asked. He looked at her.
Really looked. Brown eyes that paid attention. Shoulders that were starting very slowly to come down from the tension. hands that were still pressed together in front of her like she was holding something fragile between her palms. A woman who had driven through four years of silence because she was afraid of what she felt, who had showed up in the middle of an ice storm and every other quiet day since then with kindness that she'd apparently been carrying alongside something else. Who had written a note and left it under his door because she had run out of ways not to say it.
Honestly, Marcus said, "Please, it feels like I haven't had this conversation in a very long time," he said. "And it feels like he stopped, tried again. It feels like maybe I've been avoiding having it on purpose." Emma was very still. "Is that bad?" she asked quietly. "No," Marcus said.
"I don't think it is." He held out his hand. Emma looked at it for a second. Then she unclasped her hands and put one of them in his. It was a small gesture. Two people on a bridge in the last light of a Sunday evening.
Nothing cinematic about it, no music, no grand declaration, just a choice made by someone with a note in his back pocket and someone who had been brave enough to write it. But Marcus felt it in his whole chest, warm and real and slightly terrifying. One more thing, he said. What? My lawn?
He said. I thought the note was going to be about my lawn. Emma stared at him. Then she started laughing real full, her head dropping forward. And Marcus felt something in him loosen like a knot untied.
Your lawn is fine. She managed. You sure? Because Robert mentioned something about Marcus, your lawn is fine. He smiled.
It had been a while since he'd smiled like that. like something had permission. They stood on the bridge until the light went completely. And then they walked back through the park side by side, not quite holding hands anymore, but close enough that their arms touched with every other step, talking quietly about nothing in particular. Lily's field trip, the cardinal that kept coming to Emma's bird feeder, whether Robert Patterson's devotion to the Braves was a personality trait or a condition, and it was easy. It was the easiest thing Marcus had felt in four years, which he thought was something worth paying attention to.