Chapter 158 Table Mountain

Chapter 158 Table Mountain
They took the cable car up Table Mountain on their second full day, the whole city spreading out below them in a way that still made Sofia's breath catch, even having seen it once before; Cape Town laid out like something designed rather than grown, ocean on both sides and the mountain itself flat and impossible against the sky.

The cable car itself rotated slowly as it climbed, giving them the whole panorama in careful stages, and Sofia found herself narrating it under her breath the way Emma might have, cataloguing each new angle before it slid away to make room for the next. Tyler watched her do it, amused, saying nothing, letting her have the small private joy of it uninterrupted.

"Same weather as last year," Tyler said, leaning against the rail at the top, wind pulling at his hair. "Clear enough to see all the way to Robben Island."

"Harriet said that's rare. The cloud usually rolls in by afternoon." Sofia shaded her eyes, tracing the coastline south toward the peninsula. "We got lucky twice now. Same view, same weather, exactly a year apart."

"Maybe it's not luck. Maybe the mountain likes us."

"I'll allow that theory." She leaned into him, his arm coming around her automatically; the two of them quiet for a while, just looking, the wind loud enough at that height to make conversation feel almost unnecessary.

They found a small table at the restaurant near the upper station, and over lunch Sofia found herself telling him things she hadn't planned to say, the altitude and the wine and the sheer size of the view loosening something in her that usually stayed carefully held.

"I used to think love was something you had to constantly defend," she said, turning her wine glass slowly by the stem. "Like a border you had to guard, because the second you relaxed, someone would cross it and take something from you. Marcus taught me that, even though I didn't understand it was him teaching me until years after I'd left."

"And now?"

"Now I think real love is the opposite of a border. It's more like this mountain, actually. Something you can stand on top of and see everything from, instead of something you have to keep fencing people out of." She looked at him, found him watching her with the particular full attention he still gave her after two years, like she was still the most interesting thing in any room. "I didn't know I could feel this safe with another person. I used to think safety was something you built alone, brick by brick, and just hoped nobody knocked it down."

"You still get to keep the bricks," Tyler said carefully. "I'm not asking you to tear anything down. I want to be inside the walls with you instead of standing outside them wondering if you'll ever let me in."

"You've been inside for a while now." She reached across the table for his hand. "I don't know if I've told you that clearly enough. You're not knocking anymore, Tyler. You live here."

He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckles slowly, his eyes fixed on hers. "Best address I've ever had."

Below them, a cruise ship eased slowly out of the harbor, small as a toy from this height. Sofia watched it go for a moment, thinking about how many people down there were living their own ordinary Tuesday, entirely unaware they were sharing a view with two people at the exact center of the best year of their lives.

They spent the rest of the afternoon wandering the mountain's flat summit, finding a quiet outcrop away from the main crowds where they sat with their legs dangling over a low ledge, the whole bowl of the city and the ocean beyond it spread out below like something neither of them had any right to be looking at from this close.

"Tell me about the room again," Tyler said, apropos of nothing, watching a hawk ride the thermals below them. "Not the color. What you actually picture in it."Sofia considered the question seriously, surprised by how easily the answer came now, compared to how carefully she'd guarded it even a month ago. "A crib in the corner, I think. Under the window, so the morning light hits it first. A rocking chair, because I want somewhere to sit at three in the morning that isn't the hard kitchen chair I used with Emma. Kieran's crayon installation, maybe, if I can convince him to lend it out instead of keeping it on my windowsill forever."

"You've thought about this a lot."

"I've thought about very little else, if I'm honest." She smiled, unembarrassed by the admission for the first time in longer than she could remember. "I used to be afraid of wanting things this specifically. Now it just feels like the most natural thing in the world, picturing a whole life before it's even started." Tyler pulled her closer, tucking her under his arm against the cooling afternoon wind. "We'll get there. However long it takes."

"I know." She rested her head against his shoulder, watching the light shift slowly across the water far below, gold sliding toward evening. "I'm not scared of the waiting anymore. That's what I keep noticing lately. How much of what used to terrify me has just quietly turned into something I can hold without flinching."

"Growth looks good on you."

"It looks good on both of us." She turned her face up to his, and he kissed her there on the mountain's edge, unhurried, the whole city and the ocean and the enormous open sky bearing witness to something that had taken three years, one wedding, and one entire championship season to finally, fully arrive.

Below them, small as toys, the cable cars kept making their slow, steady circuits up and down the mountainside, ferrying strangers up to stand exactly where she and Tyler were standing now. Sofia thought there was something almost funny about that, how a view this enormous could still somehow feel entirely private, entirely theirs, simply because of who she happened to be sharing it with.