I LET DANIEL LEAD ME, since he knows where we’re going and I don’t. We head down the hall, around a corner, through a passageway and at the end, there’s a staircase. This building was built at least a hundred years ago so the staircases are beautiful, made of stone and brick, wrought iron balustrades, big windows on every landing.
I wobble, wearing the only pair of heels I own. I’m out of practice, and that makes me slow, uncertain, and I’m hanging onto Daniel for dear life.
At the first landing, we stop. We’re next to a window that looks out over a green field and the Burnley County detention center, and he turns, faces me.
“I’m sorry,” I say instantly.
“Charlie, that’s not—”
“I fucked up and I’m so, so sorry, and I wasn’t even sure if you wanted me to still come today so if you didn’t, I’m sorry for that, but I think it worked out ommph.”
He covers my mouth with one hand, still slightly sweaty. I look up into the alpine lakes of his eyes, and they’re smiling.
“You didn’t get my voicemails?” he says.
I clear my throat, and he takes his hand off my mouth.
“No,” I say, offering no further explanation.
“I left at least five,” he says. “And I texted?”
“Uh, I guess they didn’t come through,” I say, and he raises one eyebrow.
“You didn’t come because I apologized?” he says.
“For what?”
“For being an asshole to you,” he says, like it’s obvious. “For acting like you’re the only person who’s ever made a mistake with a child.”
I swallow hard and look away, out the window, because I still don’t feel like he was wrong. Everything he said was true. I fucked up. I keep fucking up.
“For forgetting that we’re all human, and we all fuck up, but it’s the wanting to be better that matters,” he goes on.
“Is it?” I ask, still looking away.
He pulls me close, his fingers on my chin, makes me look at him.
“You’re the sun and I’m the moon,” he says slowly, carefully. “You shine and I reflect, and that’s how we always were. Without you I’m a dark, cold, dusty rock hurtling through space.”
“You’re not dusty,” I whisper, eyes already leaking.
“I love that you’re the sun,” he goes on. “I’ve been in love with you for years and I didn’t know it because you were always there, always letting me bask in your light and your warmth even if sometimes I didn’t deserve it.”
“What?” I say, my voice barely above a whisper. “You always deserved it. You were always, I don’t know, my anchor in a storm. My safe harbor. I always had you.”
“You still have me.”
“I don’t ever want to not have you,” I say, the words spilling out of me. “But I’m gonna fuck more things up, Daniel.”
Now he smiles, leans in, kisses me on the forehead. I’m still doing my best not to cry in the staircase of a courthouse, but it’s a losing battle.
“You’re gonna fuck things up and I’m gonna fuck things up and all I want is to be together when we do,” he says. “We’re people. We’re human. We’re imperfect, and giving in to love is the best we’ve got, so say you forgive me and let me fall with you.”
I take a deep breath. I still feel awful, like my insides are circling a drain. I still feel guilty about Rusty, about all the damage I’ve done or almost did, about the things I know I’ll fuck up in the future.
“Of course I do, Daniel,” I say. “Yes. You knew I’d say yes.”
“I hoped,” he teases, resting his forehead against mine. “I thought I was done for when you didn’t text me back or answer your phone. Not just because of the hearing. Because of me. I thought I was going to have to live out my life as a dried husk of a man, Charlie, if I couldn’t have you back.”
“Stop it,” I whisper, eyes closed, smiling.
“Stop what?”
“You’re not a husk,” I say.
“Well, not now.”
“Not ever.”
“You promise?” he asks, his voice low, quiet. He slides one hand down my arm, intertwines our fingers.
“I promise,” I say. “When we fuck up, we fuck up together.”
He leans in and kisses me, his lips hot against mine. I’m three inches taller than usual and the angle is different, more direct, and I grab his tie and pull him in, his other hand going around my back, under the suit jacket. His fingers press into my spine, and I arch against him.
It’s the heels. I swear. If I weren’t wearing heels I’d never be wondering where the nearest janitor closet was and whether I could talk Daniel into pulling out again, after the first time was a close call.
We pull back. I flatten my hand against his chest, feel his heartbeat, his warmth.
“I love you,” he says, quietly, seriously. He pushes a curl out of my face, and it sproings right back. “Even when I didn’t know I loved you, I loved you.”
“I love you back,” I say.
“I have a proposition for you,” he murmurs.
“I like it when you proposition me,” I say.
“Come to dinner,” he says. “And if traffic isn’t too bad on the way back, maybe we’ll get there in enough time for a quickie before my mom gets home.”
I just laugh. I push my fingers into my eyes, wiping away the last tears, and I laugh.
“A quickie before your mom gets home,” I say. “How’d we go from you are the sun to that?”
“Maybe a quickie,” he corrects me, his smile lighting up his eyes. “Depending on traffic.”
“How could I forget the most erotic part?”
“Beats me,” he says, shrugging. “But we should hurry up if we want to make it.”
He kisses me again: brief, thorough, hungry. He takes my hand and we descend the rest of the stairs.
“What happened to your phone?” he asks as we walk slowly through the courthouse, since I’m a little iffy in these heels.
“Why do you ask it like that?” I say, my voice totally neutral.
“Did you lose it?” he asks. “Or drop it in the toilet? Or did you saw it in half or something?”
I give him a quick sideways glance. He’s laughing.
“It got stolen,” I say.
“From where?” he asks.
“You’re supposed to say that’s terrible, what a pain in the ass, I’m so sorry,” I correct him.
“Charlie, where’d your phone get stolen from?” he asks again.
There are times I wish he didn’t know me so well.
“The cereal aisle at the grocery store because I left it on the shelf for six hours,” I admit.
Daniel just starts laughing.
WE GET BACK to his house with twenty minutes to spare.
They’re twenty minutes well-spent.
