“Am I forgiven?
There’s nothing to forgive.
Then why are you so angry?
Why is my happiness so important to you?
Because I care about you.
You really need to move on with your life.
I’ll be moving on with my career next year, but the only moving I want to do in this relationship is forward. I’m not leaving you next year. I intend to be in your life, and to have you in mine for the long haul. I appreciate what you have done for me, but that isn’t why I love you. When that comes to an end, I won’t stop loving you. Quite the contrary.
You’re too naïve to know how this works.
I’m not too naïve to know that you said that because you think I’m fooling myself about loving you. You think I love what you’ve done for me, and I’ve confused that with loving you. It’s one of the pitfalls of being good. You see, here’s the problem with looking in the mirror. Your reflection looks right back at you. I know that fear. I know the terror of wondering whether you’ll still be loved if you screw up. I love who you are, and what you do is partly evidence of that, but it’s coloured by so much else. If I only loved what you have done for me, I would be unable to see beyond your job, and then your having become all you are to me wouldn’t make any sense. I’ll admit I started out like that. But I’ve moved on from there because I’ve opened myself up to the possibility of love I never believed possible before. I have never loved anyone the way I love you, and that’s not because you have been a bigger influence in my life than anyone else, though you have been. It’s because I never knew it was possible to love like this before I met you.
Don’t you dare tell me you’ll never love anyone else like this again.
I wouldn’t. I can’t predict the future, and I’d hate to put that burden of my happiness on you, if there’s nothing you can do about it. But I will tell you that I don’t want to have to find out whether I’ll ever love like this again.
What are you saying?
I want a life with you. I want a bigger stake in that happiness of yours that I care so much about. I want a real share in it.
Are you sure you know what you’re asking for?
I know that I’m prepared to do what it takes. I’ll work with Mary for as long as I have to if you’ll give us a chance.
It isn’t that simple. Here’s turning that mirror right back on you. I know you won’t be happy if you don’t have a real opportunity to make this career work. You have to leave next year, or in no time at all, the stress will take away the person I love. You see, I’ve been through this before. I know how stress changes people. I know how unfulfilled dreams change people. The only chance we have rests with you leaving, and me staying.
Then promise me that when I come back, if neither of us is involved with anyone else, you’ll give our relationship a chance.
Don’t make promises you can’t keep.
I’m not.
Then you have a deal”
We stared at each other for what felt like an eternity. The challenge in her eyes had faded to an expression of quiet resignation. She expected me to come back from the States married with children, living the normal life she had imagined when she came back five years ago.
I wanted to kiss the idea right out of her head. I wanted to kiss it out of both of our heads. She lowered her eyes, and began to withdraw as I approached, but I took hold of her wrist, pulling her toward me with more force than I had intended.
The fear in her eyes stopped me short. I let got of her hand, embarrassed at the violence of my actions, and confused by their unfamiliar masculinity.
The touch of her cool hand on my cheek soothed away the shame and I yielded to the tenderness of her.
The kiss was all I had ever imagined. Her scent, her softness enveloped me, drawing out the most femininely sexualized incarnation of myself, and melding it with her delicious femininity in a way I had never imagined possible. We weren’t playing the roles of man and woman in a mimicry of that ancient ritual of heterosexual courtship that had frustrated me for so long. We were reinventing it. We were discovering a new kind of unity inaccessible to those unwilling to risk such an exploration. The two faces of the mirror became indistinguishable as her body’s responses to our embrace triggered equivalent ones in me that threatened my sanity. I wanted to push her further. God I wanted her so much.
But an awareness of the outside world had begun to intrude on my senses once more. There were voices in the corridor outside, and the sound of approaching footsteps. I broke the kiss, and rested my body against hers, letting our foreheads touch. We were exactly the same height, a perfect fit.
We pulled apart as the knock on the door sounded through her office.
