27. Vera #2
The tears come before I can stop them.
“Say it again,” I whisper.
“I’m in love with you, Vera Beckett.”
“Again.”
“I love you.”
I press my free hand to his chest, his heart hammering under my palm. “I love you too.”
He kisses me. Desperate and clinging.
When we break apart his forehead drops to mine.
“It doesn’t fix anything,” I whisper.
“No.”
“She’s still gone.”
“Yeah.” His arms tighten. “But I’m not.”
We sit with that. With the love that arrived on time and the friendship that might not survive it and the impossible calculus of both things being true simultaneously.
“I wish we’d said it in clean air,” I admit.
“Me too,” he says. And that’s all. There’s nothing else to say.
Around three in the afternoon Kane’s phone buzzes.
He goes still.
“What?”
He shows me.
An Instagram notification. Sloane’s profile.
I open my own phone. Find the photo before I can stop myself.
It’s the beach picture. Her and me, two summers ago, her birthday weekend. Three days of swimming and bad food and talking about everything. We’re both laughing, genuinely, the kind you can’t manufacture, arms around each other, sun in our hair.
The caption is the photo. No words. No hashtags. Nothing.
Sloane, who never wastes language, with nothing left to say.
I set the phone face-down on my knee.
The hours pass. We don’t eat. Don’t talk much. The TV plays something neither of us watches. The light in the apartment shifts from afternoon to evening, the city carrying on outside the glass, indifferent.
The intercom buzzes at seven.
Kane answers. “Marcel.”
A minute later the elevator opens.
Marcel steps out in jeans and a jacket.
“Kitchen,” he says. Not a request.
We follow him. Sit at the table. He leans against the counter with his arms crossed and for a moment nobody says anything.
“Sloane called me,” he says. “She was crying so hard she couldn’t get the words out. It took me twenty minutes to understand what she was saying.” He pauses. “Twenty minutes of her trying to explain what her brother and her best friend had done to her.”
“Marcel—” Kane starts.
“No.” Just the one word. Kane closes his mouth.
“Do you remember what I said to you?” Marcel looks directly at Kane. “At Hannigan’s.”
A muscle works in Kane’s jaw. “You said to tell her.”
“I said the longer you waited, the worse it would get. I said there was no right moment, just truth and cowardice.” Marcel’s eyes don’t move from his face. “You chose cowardice. For six weeks. Every single day.”
Kane doesn’t flinch. But he doesn’t argue either.
“Do you know what she said when she finally calmed down?” Marcel doesn’t wait for an answer.
“She said she feels stupid. She said everyone knew except her. She said she must have looked ridiculous — going on about Lisa to Vera, planning Kane’s future, being so happy about it.
” His voice tightens. “She said the worst part wasn’t even that.
The worst part was that she asked. She looked Vera in the eyes and asked and was told no.
She gave you the chance to end it cleanly and you didn’t take it. ”
Kane stands. His chair scrapes back. “I need to go over there—”
“Sit down.”
“Marcel—”
“Sit down, Kane.” Marcel moves between him and the elevator.
“She told you not to contact her. If you go over there right now, you’re not going for her.
You’re going for yourself. To feel less guilty.
To manage your own pain by trying to resolve hers before she’s ready.
” He holds Kane’s gaze. “That’s a different kind of making it about you. ”
Kane stands there for a long moment. His hands open and close at his sides.
Then he sits back down.
“When she’s ready, and she will be, here’s what you do.
You don’t explain. You don’t give context.
You lead with acknowledgment.” He looks between us.
“I’m sorry I made you feel like a fool. I’m sorry I lied to your face.
I’m sorry that when you asked me directly, I looked at you and said no.
That’s it. No excuses attached. No but at the end.
Just genuine remorse for what you actually did to her. ”
“And then?” I ask.
“You wait. And if she wants to hear more, she’ll ask. And if she doesn’t, you wait longer.”
He moves toward the elevator.
“Tonight you sit with what you’ve done. Really sit with it. Feel it. Don’t fix it. Don’t manage it. You owe her that.”
The elevator opens.
“She still loves you,” he says. “Both of you. That’s the hell of it.”
The doors close.
The silence he leaves behind is different. Fuller.
We sit at the kitchen table for a long time. Not talking. The tea Kane made earlier gone cold in its mugs.
Eventually he stands. Holds out his hand.
I take it.
We end up on the couch. The TV on. Neither of us watching. His arm around me. My head on his shoulder. The city carrying on outside.
The hours move.
Around midnight I look toward the kitchen.
The rolls are still on the floor.
Scattered where they fell this morning. Nobody picked them up. Nobody addressed them. They’re there, some against the cabinet, one near the island, the bag crumpled where it landed. The evidence of a morning that started one way and ended another.
“Kane.”
“Yeah.”
“The rolls.”
He follows my gaze. Looks at them for a long moment. Doesn’t move.
Not tonight. They stay where they are — the way we owe her.
I close my eyes. Feel the steady weight of his arm around me. The city lights blurred through the glass. The quiet that isn’t comfortable but is at least shared.
Somewhere across the city, Sloane is in her apartment with her colored pens and her photo of two girls on a beach and her hurt that we put there.
We can’t fix that tonight.
The rolls stay on the floor.
We fall asleep like that.