Page 113 of Yours, For Good

"They're probably a lot to carry back and forth, so you can leave them here until you know where you'll live. I can send them there when you're ready…"

It was already difficult to speak. I took a deep breath to contain the emotions that built in my throat.

"Why does this sound like goodbye?" she asked.

"It's only goodbye if you want it to be."

She shook her head. "I'm not leaving until tomorrow, and maybe… maybe if I change my ticket…"

I pressed my lips together. "The books are just a small gesture. It's only a part of what I hoped to say tonight."

"Okay…"

I steeled myself to reveal my heart to her, and hope I didn't mangle the speech I'd practiced in my head for a week.

Blood rushed in my ears.

"I love you, Nora."

Her lips parted, and her eyes widened in a mix of hope and surprise. She hugged the book closer.

"For a long time," I said, "I didn't recognize it for what it was. That was my failing. I knew it was big, and important, and… peaceful? Trusting? Fuck, I still can't find the words."

I shook my head. My hand rested on the desk, but I didn't notice until Nora's fingers wrapped around it. A silent request to keep talking.

I gulped. "For a long time, I wondered if I was capable of feeling this. I had only felt the ghost of it, and it didn't seem like the kind of thing I could bet on. It may make you laugh, but… I asked my grandmother at the young age of sixteen, how to recognize it."

Nora left her book on the desk and took a step closer to me. "What did she say?"

"That she knew because she fought her parents trying to convince them to let her marry the man she loved— she had never been anything but an exemplary daughter. She pushed herself out of her comfort zone for him. She pushed the limits."

"This is another truth— we're both doing that."

I nodded, recognizing more of the game we'd been playing. We were both pushing our limits.

I lifted a hand to her face, and caressed her freckles with the path of my thumb. "When she couldn't marry him and had to accept the proposal her parents wanted, she said her heart broke. Seeing her beloved marry someone else did it. And when she walked down the aisle, heart in pieces, she still loved the same person. Those things told her she truly loved him."

"I don't want my heart to break. That's the whole point."

"I wish I could protect you from it, but I can't. As much as I know I'll never walk away from this, there is nothing I can do to guarantee lightning won't strike. It would take nothing short of an act of nature to tear us apart, but I have no way to reassure you. There's nothing I can promise to make that the truth. So I have to give you something else, and hope it'll help you forgive me. Help you trust me. Us."

She gazed at me with glassy eyes and a line of pain between her eyebrows, but she let me speak.

"Tell me, love." I licked my bottom lip, tasting the L word there, finding it sweet. "What will make you happy?"

"I don't know— how could I choose today—"

"I'm not asking you to choose today, but you deserve to find out if you want to move on without me. How can you make this choice if you don't know how you feel? If you stay, fear and grief will hide in the shadows and haunt us— they will hide your true feelings."

"If I have doubts, it's only because I'm scared. But maybe I don't have to be sure—" She bit her lip, tears pooling in her eyes. It tore at my heart.

I couldn't breathe properly, so my attempt at a deep breath ended up shallow anyway. "When you're gone, maybe you will miss me. Maybe you'll have the space you need to figure out how you feel about me, and if you really can forgive me one day. Decide if what we have is worth taking the risk. You have always found refuge in time and space— from our first kiss to after I confessed everything. So I'm giving you those things again."

She shook her head, fighting me even if she couldn't say the words.

Agony embedded itself in my guts, but I kept going. "You deserve to know— find out if you'd rather face grief today. If the life you envisioned for yourself is where you find your true happiness. Carrying these questions will only slow you down and I think… you're someone who's meant to soar."

A tear fell from her eyelashes, and I wiped it away with my thumb.