Nia heated leftover rice. Xavier set the table for two because not setting it felt like surrender. They ate without the television. Midway through the meal Nia said, "Ask me the questions you've been saving."
Xavier put his fork down. "Have you already decided."
"No."
"Have you been leaning yes."
She considered lying by softener and did not. "Yes. I've been leaning yes since the second call. I kept telling myself leaning wasn't deciding."
"Would you have told me if I hadn't seen the phone."
The question sat between them like a third plate. Nia watched a grain of rice stick to the edge of her bowl.
"I want to say yes," she said. "The true answer is I don't know. I had a speech planned for after the Trust made it formal. I had a calendar reminder for October twelfth titled Talk to X. I also had a version of myself that kept moving the reminder. So the honest answer is: I meant to. I was also practicing not meaning to. Both can be true. That is the part I am most ashamed of."
Xavier nodded slowly. "My father always said he was going to tell my mother when the project closed. Projects never close. They just rename themselves."
"I am not your father."
"I know." He rubbed his eyes. "I also know that secrecy doesn't care about your intentions. It only cares about the shape it makes in the other person's chest."
They washed dishes side by side. Their shoulders touched once at the sink and neither pulled away. In bed, they lay on their backs and stared at the ceiling the way people do when the dark is safer than faces.
"I keep thinking about the sticky note," Xavier said. "Client Meeting. Please do not disturb. You wrote please. Like manners could make the lie gentle."
Nia turned toward him. "I wrote please because I am a person who says please even when she is doing wrong. That is not virtue. That is habit dressed up as care."
He almost smiled. It hurt. "Do you still want to marry me."
"Yes," she said, without pause. "Do you still want to marry me."
"Yes," he said, and then, because honesty had become the only currency that spent, "and I am angry enough that the yes feels expensive. I need the anger to have room. If I swallow it to keep you comfortable, I will charge you interest later."
"Keep the anger," Nia said. "Just don't use it to rewrite who I am. I lied. I am not a liar as a profession. Those are different sentences."