One

“It shouldn’t matter when I fell in love with you. Or how. All that matters is that I did.” Even as Maura spoke, she knew her words wouldn’t matter. She could see it in the cut of Ian’s gaze from hers, the way he covered his mouth with his palm, the fingers curving over his cheek toward his ear. She knew nothing she said would make a difference, but she said it all anyway. “I am crazy in love with you, Ian. I didn’t look for it, but there it is. And I don’t regret it. Not a single second.”

Maura paused, leaning forward across the table, smiling and hoping to urge him to return it. “Well. This part’s not so great. But all the rest…”

He didn’t smile, but he did look at her.  At least he gave her that. “Maybe you shouldn’t set yourself up to get disappointed.”

Maura flinched, helpless against that blunt sting. Frowning, she warmed her hands on the mug of coffee that Ian had pushed toward her earlier. Sweet and black, exactly how she liked it. Because he knew just how much sugar she wanted, Maura thought. Because he knew everything about her.

There were plenty of words to give him, but if Ian knew her so well, Maura also understood him inside and out. He wasn’t going to listen to her, no matter how pretty she made the words, how compelling her argument. She let her silence speak for her instead, and it stretched on and on until finally, Ian met her gaze.

“I can’t seem to give you what you want,” Ian said.

At that typical male bullshit excuse, that final slice that severed the already fragile thread of her patience with him, Maura stood. “Have you ever even asked me what I want?”

He had no answer for that.

She watched him struggle to find one for a few seconds before she leaned toward him again, both hands flat on the table. “No. Of course you haven’t. You just assume you know. It’s not that you can’t give me what I want, Ian. It’s that you don’t want to give me anything.”

“I’m sorry.”

She shook her head. “No. You’re not. You’re scared. There’s a difference.”

That made him angry. “You’re the one who always told me it wasn’t going to last. This is not an exit, remember that?”

She remembered, all right. “I was wrong. I was scared, too.”

“And now you’re not?”

“I’m terrified,” she told him in a low voice. “But at least I’m willing to try. Can’t you even give me that, Ian? Can’t you even try?”

She’d always been able to read his expressions, but now whatever went on behind his eyes was masked with a blankness no less impenetrable because she knew he was forcing it. Ian turned his mug in his hands, around and around and around. This was not the man who’d once made her come in the backseat of his car without ever taking off her clothes. This was someone else. A stranger, and though her heart cracked, it didn’t quite break.

“I think we shouldn’t see each other again,” he said.

No. That was not what she’d come here for today. Not the reason she’d lined her eyes and mouth and scented her skin and curled her hair. She’d known the conversation was going to be uncomfortable and probably fraught with emotion. She hadn’t been certain of the outcome, not exactly, but not seeing him again could not be it. Never that.

“How can you say that?” She asked him. “After everything, that’s your answer?”

He looked at her. “You need time, Maura.”

“Time. I took my time. It’s been months, Ian. I waited until everything was official before I called you. I did that so there wouldn’t be any reason to hold us back.” She shook her head, trying to keep her voice from shaking.

“All of this is going to take time before you’re ready for a relationship again. You need time to figure out what you really want.”

“I know what I really want. How long do you think it would take me?”

“At least eighteen months,” Ian told her, and Maura’s jaw dropped.

“You think I need a year and a half to figure out that I’m in love with you and have been for the past three years, and that I can’t imagine the rest of my life without you in it? Ian,” Maura said, “have you ever known me to be a woman who wasn’t sure about what she wanted?”

He gave her a stubborn frown. “You’re asking if I can make a go of this with you now, and the answer has to be no.”

 After all this time, the years, the grief, and now he was deciding he had to tell her no?

Maura straightened. Shoulders square. Chin high. Not accusing, not demanding. Not begging. “You’re going to let me walk away.”

“Yes.”

She swallowed her anger. Made herself calm. “When we are together, everything shines.”

“You’ll find someone else.”

“Of course I will. You think I can’t walk out that door right now and find someone? A dozen someones?” It should’ve sounded arrogant, but it was the truth. “I don’t want someone else. None of them will be you.”

He tried to laugh, to make a joke. “C’mon. You’ll have your pick.”

Maura wasn’t laughing. She moved around the table while he still sat. It gave her a little power, at least, standing over him this way. She made her face and voice cold because she wanted to be warm. “You don’t get to pick who makes you shine.”

And then she left him in his spotless kitchen, alone.