Chapter 53 New Terms
Elias POV
We talk for two hours on that wall.
Not intensely, not with the high-wire tension of the hard conversations we have been having. Just talking, the kind that covers ground without forcing it. The away game, the hotel with the broken lift that made half the team walk six floors. The piece Preet wrote and the messages that have been coming in since it went up. The article that someone from a larger publication apparently shared overnight, which neither of us knew until Ivy texted me about it mid-conversation.
At some point the light changes and the evening shift of campus starts to arrive, the dinner crowd, the people finished with afternoon commitments, and we are still sitting there.
"Can I ask you something?" he says.
"You have been asking me things for two hours."
"This one is different."
I turn to look at him. "Okay."
He takes a breath. "What do you actually need from me? Not what I've been doing wrong. Not a list of things to fix. What does this look like, for you, when it's right?"
The question is careful and genuine and it costs him something to ask it, I can see that in the way he holds himself while he waits.
I think about it properly. Not the first easy answer that comes up but the real one.
"I need you to tell me things when they happen," I say. "Not when you've managed them into something presentable. When they happen."
He nods.
"I need to not find out things about my own life secondhand."
"Okay."
"And I need," I pause, finding the words, "to not be the thing you are bravest about in private. If you are going to be with me I need it to be in the same way in a room with other people as it is when we are alone."
He is quiet for a moment. "I shared the article."
"I know. That was good. That was the right direction."
"But it's not enough."
"It's a start," I say. "Starts are good. I just need the start to keep going."
He thinks for a while. I let him.
When he speaks again his voice is different, quieter, more internal.
"I'm not going to get it right every time," he says. "I need you to know that I know that. There are going to be moments where the old instinct kicks in and I make it smaller than it should be because I'm scared of something I haven't fully worked out yet."
"I know that," I say.
"I just need you not to take that as the answer. Not as the finished version of me."
"I don't," I say. "I never have."
He looks at me. Something in his face is very open right now, more open than usual, like the careful arrangement of it has been set down for a moment.
"I'm not going to ask you to be less," he says. "I spent a long time, too long, needing you to be smaller so I could stay comfortable. I'm done with that."
"What changed?"
He thinks about it. "I read something this morning that reminded me you were never the complicated part. I was."
I look at him for a long moment.
"The line about continuity," I say.
"Yeah."
"You really read it three times."
"Maybe four," he admits.
We walk back toward the main quad as the evening properly settles. The campus lights have come on, the buildings bright against the darkening sky, the paths emptying as people find their way inside.
We are not touching but we are walking close, close enough that the intention is clear to anyone paying attention, and neither of us is adjusting for that.
"So," he says.
"So."
"New terms."
I look at him. "Is that what this is?"
"I think so. I think we needed to take the old version apart to see what was actually worth keeping."
"And what is?"
He is quiet for a moment. When he answers his voice is simple and direct without any of the weight he usually carries when he is trying to be honest about something real.
"You," he says. "You're worth keeping. All of it. Every inconvenient, impossible, visible inch of you."
I stop walking.
He stops too. Looks back at me.
"Too much?" he asks.
"No," I say.
I close the distance between us and I put my hand against his chest, feeling the steady beat underneath, and he covers it with his own hand and we stand there on the path in the campus evening while everything moves around us.
New terms.
Yeah.
I think that is exactly what this is.