Page 153 of The Love Operation

Then he shifts in his seat, pushing up a little. “You had this vision,” he says. “Of who we were going to be. Where we were headed. You were so certain—about us, your career, your purpose, mine too.”

He looks away, eyes scanning the floor. Then he exhales as his gaze returns to mine. “I tried to match you—I really tried—but I wasn’t sure like you were. Except about you. I was always sure I wanted you. But I could feel myself disappearing. Not because you ever asked me to be less, but because I thought loving you meant I had to be more. Someone different. Someone bigger. Someone I wasn’t.”

He runs a hand through his hair, and his face takes on a pained expression. “The truth is, you didn’t want just me. You wanted the version of me that fit the life you were building. The one who could run beside you and never fall behind. And I wasn’t him.”

My fingers curl around the carved arm of the chair. The raccoon goes blurry, comes back into focus, goes blurry again.

His voice falters slightly. “I kept trying to tell you what I was feeling. I didn’t always have the right words. Maybe I didn’t push hard enough. But you were already chasing the future so fast, and—” He hesitates. “I don’t think you ever truly heard me.”

There’s a long pause. I feel his words in the core of me. He’s not wrong. I didn’t listen—I translated. I made everything fit the plan.

Running. Chasing. That’s what I’ve been doing. I am the hummingbird that never stops. Except hummingbirds do stop.

He drags his hand down his face, then scoots forward, as if the next thing he says is something he truly wants me to hear.

“I didn’t leave because I didn’t love you,” he says. “I left because I didn’t want to become the guy who resented you for making me someone I wasn’t. Or worse, the guy you resented for holding you back. In the end, I couldn’t pretend anymore that I was enough for you.”

My eyes sting. I can’t sit still any longer.

I walk to the window and press my palms to the glass, looking out but not really seeing.

For years, I saw the end of our story through one lens. But in the span of minutes, it shatters. Not just reframed—rewritten.

But it’s not minutes, really. This was always coming—waiting for me to open my eyes. Or maybe just stop long enough to look.

I want to be hurt by what he said, but my memories have already softened the blow. They were priming me for this truth. They may not have been recordings of the past, but they were pointing here, pointing at me.

The memory stirs. Suddenly, I’m back there, pulled into it like gravity.

But this time, it’s different. We’re not at a picnic table. We’re in my dorm room.

I hear his voice again. The hesitations. His posture. His face when he tried to explain.

And this time . . . I hear it all.

I wasn’t listening. I heard what I expected to hear. I filled in the blanks with my own fears.

A cold sweat prickles at the base of my neck.

Then I’m back—in this room, in this moment, with the truth still ringing.

I turn back to Benedict. “I thought we were at a picnic table when you broke up with me, but we were—”

“In your dorm room,” he says, just as I whisper, “In my dorm room.”

“I would’ve never had that conversation in public,” he says so simply. So sure.

My throat tightens, and I squeeze the back of the chair I’d been sitting in. “I’ve spent years trying to figure out what was wrong with me,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper, eyes trained on the cold, unlit fireplace. “When I started revisiting my memories, I thought I’d finally found the truth—that I wanted things to work so badly, I ignored the cracks.”

I sit again, the weight of it all dragging me down. I can feel Benedict watching, but I’m not ready to meet his eyes again.

“I think I was moving too fast to see most of them. And if I did see the cracks, I filled them in to mold my life—and everyone close to me—into the version I saw in my head.”

I think about my other relationships and what I saw in my memories, and I know Delenn was right. I bet if I went back and looked through this new lens, I’d see everything differently.

I don’t know how long I sit there before I suddenly inhale and turn toward Benedict, a thought pressing in so hard it feels like it might split me open. “When did your family have their accident?” I ask.

He freezes, color draining from his face. My breathing speeds—shallow, fast. Little bursts of light bloom at the edges of my vision.