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.
I said it as a joke in a corridor when I was 30 and foolish and had no idea what I was saying. I would like to say it now and mean it if you will allow me to.
She descended the last three steps. She was very close to him now. Close enough to see that he was breathing unevenly.
That his hands, without the hat, without the gloves, were not entirely steady. This man who was always steady.
This man who had built steadiness into an art form. I’ve been waiting 10 years for this. She whispered.
He heard it. The weight of all 10 years in four words. The choosing and the choosing again.
The patience that was never passivity. Something broke open in him at the words. Quietly, without drama, the way ice breaks in spring.
Not with violence, but with the long inevitability of a season finally changing. He reached for her hand.
Both of them. Bare. No gloves. No ceremony.
And held it in his with a care that was new in him. That he was clearly learning as he went.
He looked down at it for a moment. Then up at her. Will you allow me to speak to your father when he arrives?
The formality of the question was entirely at odds with the roughness still in his voice. And she loved both at once.
Yes. He let out a breath. Slow.
Long. The breath of a man who has been holding something for a very long time and is only now putting it down.
He brought her hand up and pressed his lips to her knuckles. Briefly. Warmly.
In the way of a man who intends to have many years to do this properly and is beginning now. You should go back upstairs.
It is past midnight and I have already compromised your reputation by approximately 10 different measures tonight. You knocked on the front door.
She pointed out. Very properly. At midnight. Without a hat.
The corner of his mouth moved. And there it was. The laugh she remembered from 20 years ago.
The one that transformed him. The truest thing in his face. My mother is going to be insufferable about this.