20. Indra #2
"I know." Carla's voice stayed level and paid for it.
"I'm not asking you to skip the second part.
I couldn't respect you if you did." A breath.
"I'm asking one question, and then whatever you say, I'll take it whole.
Is there still anything here worth doing the work for?
Not worth resuming. I know we don't resume.
Worth building the different one, slow, from footings, with the second part standing there the whole time.
Because I'll do that work for years, gladly, if the answer's yes, and if the answer's no I'll accept it and I won't make you say it twice. "
Indra didn't answer.
Not as tactics. The question deserved the full pass through every room of her, and she gave it that, and the silence ran long, thirty seconds, forty-five, the kettle ticking as it cooled in the kitchen, and she watched Carla endure it, watched the hands leave the knees at last and curl at her sides, knuckles whitening, the tell Indra had seen exactly twice ever, and watched her not fill the silence, not lobby, not produce one syllable of pressure.
Just stand in it. Unarmed. As instructed.
"Here's what I know," Indra said at last, slowly, building it as she went.
"At the mixer, when she told me I'd never be the exception, my whole body answered before I did, and the answer was on your side.
I drove home furious for you. Not at you, for you, and it unsettled me for days, because the wall was supposed to be load-bearing and there was this whole insurgency behind it flying your flag.
" She saw Carla's breath change and kept going.
"And I've spent the week since asking myself what I actually need.
Not want, though. I've never had a want problem where you're concerned; the wanting survived the bar and it's in this room right now.
Need. And it kept coming back to one word, and I'm going to say it, and I need you to actually hear it, because it's the only term sheet I've got. "
She stood. Crossed to the window, bars of light, the street below, and turned around.
"That first night, the real one, in your office, when you set the terms. You said choosing you would mean knowing exactly who you were.
And I said I did, and I wanted you anyway, and God, it was true.
But there's a version of that sentence I didn't say, because I didn't have the nerve yet, and I've had six weeks to find it.
" Her voice stayed quiet. It didn't need volume; it never had.
"Being wanted has never been my problem.
Renata wanted me. Wanted me desperately, the whole two years, that was never in question, and it was worth nothing.
What I need is to be chosen. Cold morning, no adrenaline, other options live on the table, and you pick me anyway, on purpose, out loud, and then pick me again the next day when it's boring.
Chosen, not just wanted. That's the whole ask.
That's what I didn't get for two years, and it's what the bar told me I wasn't getting again, and it is the one thing I will not build without. "
The room held still. Carla had gone very quiet, and her eyes were bright in a manner she wasn't managing, and when she spoke she didn't move from the couch, didn't advance a centimeter uninvited.
"Then here's my answer," she said, "to the question you haven't ruled on yet.
There's something here worth the work. On my side, that's not in doubt and hasn't been since about September.
But it has to be different this time. I don't get to have you back because I'm sorry.
Sorry is marketing." Indra's mouth moved despite everything; Maria's line, arrived independently, or overheard from the universe.
"So: slower. Honest. Out loud when I'm afraid, the same day, not ten days and a bar later.
And no more running, and I know exactly what that promise costs, coming from me, and I'm prepared to pay it for as long as you're willing to watch me pay it. "
"There's something here," Indra said. She heard her own voice go rough and let it.
"I never stopped wanting there to be. That's the part that made me angriest, if you want the disclosure schedule complete.
Six weeks of a perfect wall and behind it, this.
Intact. It never even had the decency to crack. "
"Indra."
Her name, in the hinge register, the one Carla saved. Indra looked at her.
"I love you," Carla said.
She said it sitting still on a couch in a small apartment over a dry cleaner, empty-handed, nothing prepared, no city lights below her, no scotch, no architecture, and her voice shook on the middle word and she didn't stop to fix it.
"I think I have been for a while. Since the car outside the farmers market, maybe earlier, maybe the morning you handed a hostile press call to legal and brought me coffee like it was nothing.
I was too afraid to let myself know it, because knowing it made it takeable, and everything I've ever loved got taken or invoiced.
So I'm saying it now, with nothing attached.
Not a request. Not a down payment. Just the fact, finally, out loud, in the right room: I love you. "
Indra stood at her own window with the light coming through in bars, and six weeks of engineering, every brick of it correct and every brick of it heavy, finished its service and came down. Not collapsed. Decommissioned. Her eyes were streaming before she'd authorized anything of the sort.
"I love you too," she said. "That was never the problem."
Carla let out a breath that had clearly been held since a bar in Highland Park, six weeks of it going out of her in one long unsteady exhale, and her head dropped, and her shoulders came down off their scaffolding at last, and Indra crossed her own small living room and sat down beside her on the couch, close, not touching yet, footings first.
"Slower," Indra said. "And honest. No running."
"Signed," Carla said, unsteady. "Witnessed by both counterparts."
"Then we're in business." Indra reached over and took her hand, the first touch in six weeks, palm to palm, fingers folding through fingers, and both of them looked down at it like a small astonishing merger, and neither moved past it.
That was the pace now, and the pace was the point.
Carla's thumb traveled once across her knuckles and stopped there, holding, and Indra felt the contact travel up her arm and through her chest and land where it had always landed, and let it, out loud in her own head this time, on purpose.
They sat like that while the light through the blinds went from white to gold.
"Stay for dinner," Indra said, eventually. "Before you construct a graceful exit in your head. I can hear the drafting from here."
Carla laughed, wet and real, caught. "I was on version three."
"Delete them all." Indra stood, their hands separating slow, and went to the kitchen, and took down the eggplant she'd bought Friday without letting herself examine why, and the good tomatoes, and set the pan on the stove.
"There's a dinner I owe you. Pasta alla Norma.
My aunt's recipe, dictated over the phone with a lot of editorializing.
" She looked over her shoulder at the woman on her couch, disarmed and staying.
"It was on the menu for a Thursday in September.
The kitchen never got the cancellation notice. It's been on backorder since."
Carla came and stood in the doorway of the little kitchen, at a respectful distance, sleeves pushed up, reporting for duty. "Put me to work. I'm told I follow instruction badly, but I'm in a period of growth."
"Wash the basil. That's a starter role."
And so the afternoon closed the distance the talking couldn't: two women in a kitchen the size of Carla's coat closet, elbows bumping, oil going fragrant, the radio on low, an aunt's recipe editorializing through Indra's hands, and no part of it staged, and no part of it anonymous, and when they finally ate at the small table by the window, second chair earning its keep, Indra looked across at Carla Denver eating pasta in the gold light of Atwater and thought: slower this time, and honest, and chosen. Day one.