Chapter 23 Declan
DECLAN
He is sitting on my couch and his eyes are wide and his hands are on his knees and I can see the exact moment the three words land because his body changes.
The shoulders drop. The jaw loosens. The careful, managed, checkpoint-protected posture that Jamie Kowalski wears in every public space dissolves, and what replaces it is something I have only seen once before: in the coffee shop, for three hours, when the glasses were off and the recorder was gone and we were just two people.
"I left the beat," I say again, because the words need to be repeated, because the repetition is not for clarity but for reality.
"I went to my editor on Monday. I told her that I could no longer cover the Reapers with the objectivity the beat requires.
She reassigned me. I'm covering college football now. "
"College football."
"Yes."
"You hate college football."
"With a passion that borders on theological."
"You gave up the Reapers. The best story in sports. The beat you worked three years for."
"Yes."
"Why?"
He asks "why" the way he asked "how did you know" in the weight room with Cole.
The word carries more weight than its single syllable should be able to support.
The "why" is not requesting information.
The "why" is requesting confirmation. He knows why.
He has known since the coffee. He has known since the hallway where I said his name.
He has known since the recorder went off and I answered the thing underneath the question.
He is asking "why" because he needs to hear me say it.
"Because I can't cover you and feel what I feel about you," I say.
"Those two things can't coexist. The journalist requires distance.
The feeling requires closeness. I tried to maintain both and the both was a lie, and I owe the journalism honesty and I owe you honesty and the only honest thing to do was choose. "
The words are the most truthful words I have spoken to another person.
More truthful than any sentence I've published.
More truthful than the feature on Cole and Mik, which was true in the way that good journalism is true: accurately, fairly, from a vantage point.
These words are true in a different way.
These words are true from inside. These words are the vantage point removed, the glasses off, the journalist gone, the person remaining.
"You chose me," Jamie says. His voice is quiet. Not his podium quiet. A different quiet. The quiet of a person who is hearing something they did not believe they were allowed to hear.
"I chose the possibility of us. Which might be nothing.
You might not feel the same way. I'm prepared for that.
If this conversation ends with you saying 'I appreciate the honesty but I don't feel that way,' I will survive it.
I will go cover college football and I will eat my mother's jollof rice and I will be fine.
But I couldn't keep standing in the press box watching you through glass and pretending I was objective.
I was never objective. I haven't been objective since the hallway. "
He is very still. The stillness is not his wall stillness.
It is the stillness of a body that is processing something too large for movement, too important for the distraction of physical adjustment.
He is sitting on my couch in the amber light of my apartment with my books on the walls and my life around him and he is hearing, possibly for the first time, that someone has chosen him.
Not his skating. Not his draft position.
Not the version of Jamie Kowalski that performs at podiums and plays hockey and manages the checkpoint. Him. The person behind the number.
"You gave up your career," he says. "For a possibility."
"I gave up a beat assignment. The career continues. It just continues in a different direction. A worse direction, admittedly. Have you ever watched SEC football? It's a fever dream with tailgating."
He laughs. The laugh is small and wet and it cracks something open in the room, the tension that has been building since I said "I left the beat," and the cracking is not destruction.
The cracking is relief. The same relief that Cole described.
The same relief that I felt when I filed my last game recap.
The bag is down. The truth is out. The glass between us (press box glass, hallway glass, the invisible glass that separates journalist from source and wanting from having) is gone.
"Declan," he says. My name. Two syllables. The same two syllables from the doorway, the same two syllables that I have been carrying since he said them, but this time the syllables are closer. This time the syllables are in my apartment, on my couch, in the amber light.
"Jamie."
"I've never done this."
"I know."
"I mean. I've never..." He pauses. The pause is the edge of a cliff, and I can see him standing on it, looking down, deciding whether to jump.
"I've never kissed anyone I wanted to kiss.
I've never told anyone. Becca knows. My sister.
She's known since before I knew. And Cole.
And Mik, kind of. And Gerald, probably, because Gerald knows everything.
But I've never..." The pause again. "I've never been in a room with someone who feels this way about me and who I feel this way about and who is sitting six feet away and who just told me he gave up his career for the possibility of me. "
"The possibility of us," I correct, because the distinction matters. The sacrifice was not for him. The sacrifice was for the chance that the two of us, together, might be something worth more than a press credential.
"The possibility of us," he repeats. The word "us" in his mouth is new. I can hear the newness. The word has never been applied to him and another person in this context, and the applying of it is visible in his face: wonder, terror, the specific vertigo of a first.
I stand. I walk to the couch. I sit down next to him. The six feet become six inches, and the six inches are the same six inches from the parking lot in Decatur, and the six inches have been the distance for weeks, and the six inches are about to change.
"Can I be honest about something?" I say.
"You've been honest about everything so far."
"I want to kiss you. I've wanted to since the hallway.
Since the press conference where you talked about the saucer pass and your hands moved and your face was the face of a person who loves something.
I've wanted to kiss that person since the moment I saw him.
And I will wait. If you need time, I will wait. We go at your pace. Always."
Jamie looks at me. His eyes are blue and bright and carrying something enormous, the weight of a first that is about to happen, and the weight is visible because he is not hiding it.
The walls are down. The checkpoint is off.
The boy from Duluth is sitting on my couch with his whole self showing, unprotected, unperformed, and the vulnerability of it is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
"I don't want to wait," he says.
He leans forward. The six inches close. His mouth finds mine.
The kiss is gentle and unpracticed and slightly off-center and it is the best kiss of my life.
His lips are warm. His hand comes up and touches my face, tentative, the touch of a person who has never touched another person's face in this context and who is discovering that faces are soft and warm and responsive, and the discovery is happening in real time, on my couch, in my apartment, and I am the person he's discovering it with.
I kiss him back. Carefully. Without urgency.
The urgency is mine to manage because I have done this before and he has not, and the disparity requires patience, and the patience is not a sacrifice.
The patience is a privilege. Being the person who gets to be here for this, for his first real kiss, for the moment when the unnamed thing becomes named and the name becomes physical, that is not a sacrifice.
That is the most important thing I have ever been trusted with.
His other hand comes to my shoulder. The grip is firm. The grip says: don't go anywhere. I'm not going anywhere. I'm here. The glasses are off and the notebook is closed and the journalist is gone and the person is here, on this couch, with this boy, in this light.
He makes a sound. Small. Involuntary. The sound of a body that is experiencing something for the first time and that does not have the vocabulary to process it through any channel other than sound.
The sound is a vowel, open and unformed, and it travels from his mouth to mine and I feel it vibrate against my lips and the vibration is the most honest communication that has ever passed between us, more honest than any word in any hallway or any press conference or any notebook.
I pull back. Not far. An inch. Enough to see his face.
His eyes are closed. His hand is still on my face. His expression is the expression of a person who has just landed a jump they didn't know they could land, and the landing was clean, and the sound was right, and the body knew what to do even when the mind was terrified.
He opens his eyes.
"That was..." he starts.
"Yeah."
"That was nothing like prom."
I laugh. The laugh is the laugh of a man who is falling in love with a nineteen-year-old who just compared their first kiss to prom and found prom lacking, and the comparison is the funniest and most devastating thing anyone has ever said to me.
"Good," I say. "Prom is a low bar."
"The bar was underground. That was..." He touches his own mouth. The gesture is unconscious. The gesture of a person who is cataloguing a new sensation, the way he catalogues skating mechanics: with precision and wonder. "That was the first time my body and my brain agreed about something."
The sentence lands in my chest and stays there. The first time my body and my brain agreed. The first time the wanting and the being and the naming and the acting all pointed in the same direction. The first alignment.
"We go at your pace," I say again. "Whatever you want. Whatever you need. There's no timeline. There's no expectation. We go at your pace."
"My pace right now is: can we do that again?"
I kiss him again. This time his hand goes to the back of my neck, which is a gesture he learned from no one and which is instinctive and confident and sends a signal through my body that I manage by keeping my hands very deliberately on the safe territory of his shoulders.
Because the pace is his. The pace is always his.
And the pace right now is kissing on a couch in East Atlanta with the books and the amber light and the residual smell of jollof rice, and the pace is perfect.
We kiss until the kissing becomes its own kind of conversation, a language we're building together, his mouth learning the geography of mine, my hands learning the boundaries of what he's ready for (shoulders: yes; back: yes; the hem of his shirt: not yet, and the not-yet is communicated through a slight tensing that I register and respect immediately).
Eventually we stop. Not because the stopping is wanted but because the stopping is necessary. Because this is his first and the first should not be rushed, should not be consumed in a single evening, should be parceled and savored and returned to, because the returning is its own kind of joy.
He rests his forehead against mine. We breathe.
"Declan."
"Yeah."
"Thank you for leaving the beat."
"Thank you for making it worth leaving."
He smiles. Against my mouth. The smile is the real one, the one I saw in the hallway, the one that made me sit in my car for two minutes with the engine off. The smile that started everything.
"We go at my pace," he says. "But my pace is faster than you think."
"Then we go at your pace."
"My pace is: I want to see you tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after that."
"Then I'll be here. Tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after that."
He leaves at midnight. He stands in my doorway and looks back at me and the look is the look of a man who has walked through a door and discovered that the room on the other side is not empty.
The room is full. The room is warm. The room has books and jollof rice and a man without glasses who is standing in the amber light and who chose him.
"Good night, Declan."
"Good night, Jamie."
He walks to his car. I watch him go. I close the door. I lean against it.
The glasses are on the counter. The notebook is in a drawer. The press credential is returned. The line is crossed. The possibility is no longer a possibility.
The possibility is a boy in a doorway, smiling, saying good night, walking to his car in the Atlanta dark.
The possibility is real.