Page 118 of Just One More Thing

He doesn’t look away. “Okay.”

“You told me you loved me. And I said thank you.”

“I remember,” he says quietly.

“I’ve thought about it every day for ten years.” I meet his eyes, then have to look at the edge of the blanket for a moment because his face is too open and I’m not as brave as I’d like to advertise.

“I need you to know that. That it wasn’t nothing. That I didn’t walk away from that moment and forget about it.

“I panicked,” I say, which feels like saying a hurricane was windy. “You said something so big, and you were so sure. You said it like it was obvious. And I was standing there staring at your life getting bigger and louder and headed somewhere, and I got scared.”

“Of what?”

“Of not being enough. Of being enough and ruining it later. Of not deserving a love that... certain.”

I hate how much I still believe it.

“You were about to take me into your life,” I say. “Into stadiums. Into a future. Into a version of myself that had to be seen by millions. I was terrified I’d mess it up. Mess you up. Ruin everything.”

He looks out at the water, and I see him take a deep breath and let out a bigger exhale. “So you said thank you.”

“So I said thank you. Because I didn’t know how to say any of that, and I gave what is, without question, the worst possible response to I love you ever uttered in the English language.”

“You know what I thought?” he asks.

“What?”

“I thought you meant thanks but no thanks. Like I handed you something and you didn’t want it. I spent a long time thinking you heard me and just… handed it back.”

Tears spill before I can stop them.

I swipe at them fast, annoyed with my own face for betraying me in front of an audience of one best friend and one bulldog.

“Jake, no?—“

“I’m not telling you to make you feel bad,” he says gently. “I’m telling you because it’s my truth.”

“Why didn’t you tell me when I came back this summer?”

“Because I didn’t want you here out of guilt. I wanted you here because you wanted me.”

“God, Jake I did want you,” I say immediately. “But I was twenty, and I didn’t have the words for what scared me.”

“I know.”

“I’m sorry.” My voice shakes now, and there’s no point pretending otherwise. “I’m sorry for disappearing. For ten years of silence because I was too afraid to fix one sentence.”

He doesn’t answer right away.

He stares at the water, and I let him, because he’s earned every second of silence he wants.

“I’m not carrying it anymore,” he says finally. “I want you to know that. I made my peace with it. Not the losing you part, but the anger. I’m not carrying the anger anymore.”

He reaches across the blanket and takes my hand.

The sun touches the edge of the water and starts to slip under. The sky goes deep purple, then pink, and the ocean takes all of it.

“I’m still figuring out what leaving here looks like,” I say quietly. My fingers tighten around my cup hard enough that if it were glass, it might crack. “But I’m not doing it the way I did before. I’m not vanishing. I’m not punishing us both because I get scared.”