Page 137 of Say My Name

“You leaned into me and asked me to stay. I told you I went to that bar because of you. I told you I’ve rearranged rooms and schedules around you for years. You looked at me like you understood what I was saying.”

“I did understand.”

“Then explain how we get from that night to a spreadsheet where our child lives in two homes and we meet for custody exchanges.”

“It isn’t a custody exchange.”

“What would you call it?”

“Shared parenting.”

“From separate houses.”

“Yes.”

“Because that’s what you want?”

“Because it’s what we agreed to.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

Her jaw tightens. It’s the same retreat I’ve seen before, the same wall she throws up when feeling starts to feel like risk. Not this time. “The agreement exists for a reason.”

“Then tell me the reason.”

“I already have.”

“You keep telling me what the document says. I’m asking what you want.”

She pushes away from the table and stands. “You’re treating this like I’ve done something wrong by planning for the structure we both signed.”

I watch her move toward the kitchen, putting distance between us with a glass she doesn’t need to carry. She sets it beside the sink, though the dishwasher is open two feet away.

“I’m asking whether any part of the last seven months has changed what you want your life to look like.”

She grips the edge of the counter and stares down at it. “Of course things have changed.”

“Which things?”

“We know each other differently now. We crossed boundaries. We allowed this to become more personal than either of us intended.”

“I intended it.” The words are quiet, but they cost me something. Her head lifts, and I know the words landed.

The same fear flashes across her face that I saw last month when I asked her to choose me while she was afraid. She knew then that I wasn’t speaking about dinners or sex. She knows it now.

I rise from the table, though I don’t move closer. If I touch her, she’ll either soften or pull away, and I need her answer to be her own.

“You may not have planned this,” I say. “I did. Maybe I didn’t admit the full extent of it when we signed those papers, but I knew I wanted you. Every time you called me outside the schedule, canceled the clinic, or let me stay, I thought you were moving toward admitting the same.”

“I do want you.”

The answer hits hard enough that I have to take a breath before I speak.

“For how long?”

Her face changes.

“The contract doesn’t define our personal relationship,” she says.