Page 82 of The Square

I look down at Danny, who is frowning up at me.

“I lost my love, Danny. It just disappeared one day.”

He swallows hard now. Nodding.

“But then I noticed Alec wasn’t coming home as much and I started to miss him. I started calling him during the day. I started thinking I’d go out. Go do things. Get back to work.”

Alec sighs. He knows where this is headed. Because he was there.

“And there was one night when Alec came back and took my hand, and took me to bed, much the same way he’d done many times before—and I felt it again. That old excitement. That flutter in my stomach. And I thought… OK. I’m getting better now. So for one night I fell back in love with you, Alec.”

“And then you found out about Eliza,” he says.

“And I fell out.”

Alec looks at me with those same bloodshot and tired eyes and asks, “Do you love me now?”

I nod. Because it’s true. I do. “But it was Danny who caused that love to come back.”

“Of course it was,” Alec murmurs.

“It was watching Danny fall in love with you, for the first time, I realize now, back on the yacht as we made our way to the Cook Islands that made me see what we had, and what I was missing, and what we could be again.”

I look down at Danny. “You were so sad, and it wasn’t because you loved me or the idea of us. It was because you thought Alec was dead. It was because you thought you were too late. You thought you’d never get another chance to see him and tell him how you felt.”

Danny just nods.

“And I realized that there’s no time for regrets. There’s no time for grudges. Because life is short, and it could end instantly, at any moment. And I didn’t want to die feeling like Danny. Like I had love to give and I lost my chance. So yes, Alec van den Berg. I love you again. And I’m sorry for my betrayal. I’m sorry I hurt you. And if you can’t forgive me, I’ll understand. But either way, I want you to know… that I forgive you.”

I want to say more. Poetic things like… this triangle we’ve been making was always precarious. Always skewed in one awkward direction one moment, then another the next.

And it wasn’t until now that we had the chance to make all the sides equal. Make all the love equal.

But only if we let it.

I want to say… We control the shape of our love. We decide what it looks like. We can put all this back together again if we really want to.

But I can’t say that. Because I’m not the glue. Danny isn’t the glue. Alec isn’t the glue.

Our shape can’t pull itself together until we’re all on the same page.

It’s a mutual decision that we must all make together, and I don’t know how that could possibly happen after all we’ve been through and everything that’s left to be considered.

So I don’t say anything.