I have thought about that every day for 6 weeks and did not understand why until approximately 2 hours ago. She came down the stairs.
Slowly. Because this was not a moment to rush. She stopped three steps from the bottom, which put them at nearly the same height.
And she looked at him. I laughed. No excuse in it, just the plain accounting of it.
The You said something true and I laughed and I forgot and I have been an idiot for 10 years in ways I am only beginning to catalog. He looked at her with the kind of directness that costs a man something when it doesn’t come naturally.
I am 40 years old and I have spent a great deal of energy convincing myself and everyone around me that wanting something was no longer available to me as an option. I was wrong.
Specifically, particularly wrong about this. A step forward. About you.
She looked at him for a long moment. The candle in her hand threw light across his face and she could see the truth of what he was saying.
Not the composure of a man who has prepared a speech. But the stripped and simple truth of a man who has run out of architecture.
I told you I would wait for you. He continued. Very quietly.