Page 417 of Face Off

She wants me to call. She also wants to come home, and I know she means me.

Those could be the same request, or they could be two different truths she finally trusted me enough to place inside the same confession. Calling because she admitted she wanted it would violate the boundary we agreed upon. Telling her to pack would turn her choice into another decision I made before she could make it for herself.

I refuse to misunderstand her simply because the answer I want is sitting directly in front of me.

Charm has spent her entire life hoping someone would interpret what she couldn’t say and remove the terror of choosing for herself. The woman writing this email doesn’t need me to rescue her from the consequences of her honesty. She needs me to hear it without stealing ownership of what comes next.

I press reply and hold my thumb above the keyboard while every sentence I could write competes to become the wrong one. I want to tell her I miss her. I want to answer every reason she gave for loving me with one of my own. I want to tell her I’m done living four hundred miles from the only woman who has ever made distance feel like an amputation.

None of those responses answers the question standing between us.

I begin typing.

Charm,

I understand you.

I understand what you meant when you called me home, and I heard everything you trusted me enough to say. Home is waiting for you when you’re ready, but I cannot decide what ready means or tell you when to come back. That choice has to belong entirely to you.

I need you to answer one question without asking me to interpret anything around it. Do you need me to call you tonight, or do you need me to know you want to come home?

If you need my voice, tell me plainly.

Ryan

I read the email twice. The response sounds harder than what I feel, but anything softer risks becoming an invitation she accepts because I offered it instead of a choice she makes because she is ready.

Before sending it, I add one more line.

I missed you today too.

The message disappears before I can reconsider it.

Thirty-five minutes later, I read her email again. Another thirteen pass before I nearly send a second response and force myself to put the phone down. Charm asked me to trust the woman she has become, and trust cannot mean believing in her only when she answers quickly enough to relieve me.

Sometime after midnight, exhaustion takes the decision away from me. I fall asleep beneath the light with the anthology open across my chest and Charm’s unanswered confession waiting beside me.

My phone never rings.

I wake at four in the morning with the lamp still burning, an anthology on the decline of the Roman Empire spread across my chest, and my phone beside me exactly where I left it.

There are no missed calls, emails, or messages from Charm.

I stare at the screen until disappointment becomes irritation, then sit up and read her email again. The sentences haven’t changed while I slept. She still wished I would call. She still called me home. She still asked me to write soon because she needed to know I understood her.

I understood enough to answer without taking the choice away from her.

Apparently, waiting inside my apartment for another message is no longer enough for me.

Four in the morning is an unreasonable time to make a life-altering decision, which makes it consistent with every meaningful decision Charm and I have ever made.

I get out of bed, shower, and pull on black jeans, a white shirt, and a sweatshirt before packing enough clothes to survive the weekend if this goes better than I expect. If it goes worse, I can drive back tonight and spend Saturday pretending exhaustion is the reason I’m incapable of speaking.

I’m not driving to Michigan to collect Charm or demand the future her email placed within reach. I’m going because she has spent months proving she can stand inside her choices, and I am finished using caution to avoid telling her mine.

I want her back.

I want her in Milwaukee, inside the home I built after losing her, with enough space to bring every part of the life she created without me. I want the difficult conversations, the Sunday calls from the opposite side of my couch, and the fear she promised would return. I want the woman who sent me that email after spending an entire day refusing to turn pain into someone else’s responsibility.