Chapter 6
So. All right.
Honestly, the afternoon had been very productive. Now home, Anne parked her car with the conviction that she’d settled on a tangible goal.
“I want commitment,” she said out loud as she got out, and her own voice sounded strange in her ears.
She had a good working definition. Commitment meant being each others’ primary person for the rest of their lives, never dating anyone else, and spending most of their free time together.
Sure, it was a rough sketch of a life, but that was plenty to figure out in one day. They had time to fill in the details.
She fumbled her keys in the lock of her front door, then realized it was already unlocked.
Shit.
Sure enough, Sadie was sitting on the couch, clearly waiting for Anne.
Sadie never arrived anywhere first, let alone Anne’s unoccupied house.
The sight of her made Anne want to sprint into the guest bathroom off the hallway and slam the door.
A theoretical ask was one thing; actually making herself vulnerable on short notice without any warning was completely another. Her pulse quickened.
“Hello there,” Sadie said gently. She leaned forward, bracing her arms against her legs. “Welcome home. Come over here and sit down with me, all right? We need to have a chat.”
Shit, again. They hadn’t talked at all since she’d sent Sadie home yesterday afternoon. Not even a text, which was unusual. Apparently, Sadie had been storing up her conversation for an ambush.
Stomach churning—the wine she’d had wasn’t sitting well—Anne put her purse down on the table by the front door and obeyed.
“I decided,” Sadie said as Anne sat down next to her, “that this time, I wasn’t going to wait for you to come talk to me. Processing’s one thing. Sobbing’s another.”
“So I got a little emotional yesterday,” Anne said sharply, defenses rising with her increasing discomfort. She’d come up with a short speech to explain her reaction to Sadie, but the entire script was currently on strike from her memory. “Sue me.”
Sadie brushed a long synthetic lock of golden hair away from her face. “You had a panic attack, sunshine. Immediately after I told you that I didn’t want to live anywhere without you. That’s not something we can gloss over.”
Didn’t want to live anywhere without you, not can’t. Anne, facing forward and rigid, couldn’t let herself look directly at Sadie. Peripheral vision was more than enough at the moment.
“I’ve never seen you that upset. To be blunt about it, you fully lost your shit, and I don’t mind telling you it scared the hell out of me.”
Anne flushed with embarrassment. “I’m sorry I scared you. Don’t worry, it won’t happen again.”
“That must’ve been a very hard thing to go through all by yourself,” Sadie murmured. “I wish you would’ve let me take care of you.”
For some idiotic reason Anne felt new tears sting at the corners of her eyes. She wasn’t going to cry again and prove Sadie’s point. She wasn’t. “It’s over and done with anyway.”
“Like fun it is. I know you. You’re the queen of packing up any feeling stronger than a mild breeze and shoving it inside some inner closet. And if you couldn’t do that yesterday, it means you’re dealing with something truly colossal.”
Anne had no response to give.
“I thought about it all evening. All morning, too. And I keep wondering—Anne, why did you react like that to what I said? Was it”—Sadie hesitated—“too much? I know I can be a little dramatic sometimes, but in retrospect, that might not have been the right moment to lean into theatrics.”
Her voice was light. So light, in fact, that it lifted high enough for Anne to feel the fear that lay beneath.
“It’s really fine, you know,” Sadie continued, squeezing her hands in her lap, “if you don’t share my, my intensity about our friendship. If you don’t see our friendship in the same way I do. Honestly, I can see that what I said put a lot of pressure on you. Which was unfair.”
Startled, Anne turned toward Sadie. Her face was tight and pale, her shoulders hunched. She looked like she was bracing for impact.
“You think I reacted like that because I don’t feel what you feel?” The possibility of this interpretation had never occurred to Anne. “That isn’t true. Not at all.”
Sadie, who’d been staring down into her lap, raised her head. “It’s not?”
Anne took a deep breath and said, trying not to listen to herself, “Sadie, I don’t think I can live without you either.”
Silence followed.
Then Sadie said very quietly, “Oh.”
She twisted her hands together again. They were beautiful hands, strong and well-formed, featuring long, tapered fingers stacked with numerous rings.
Pianist’s hands, despite Sadie’s total lack of musical skill.
Anne had admired those hands for years, loved the sure and confident way they moved through the air.
“So.” Was it shyness? Was that what was crawling through Anne? “There we are.”
“There we are,” Sadie repeated.
Another long pause.
“We feel the same way,” Anne said ridiculously. “About our friendship.”
“Do we?”
There was an uneasy note in Sadie’s voice. Anne didn’t like it. “I just said that I can’t live without you either. I don’t know how much plainer I can be.”
“I’d like you to say more.” Sadie rubbed her right hand over her left, a nervous gesture Anne recognized. “What does that mean to you? Tell me what you want.”
She’d never have a better opening. So Anne turned, finally, to fully face Sadie, and possibly herself, too.
“I want,” she began slowly, “for us to spend the rest of our lives together. Just us. Just you and me, like this, living next door to each other. Or in adjacent apartments in Manhattan, if you want to take that job. Or even living in the same place. I don’t care, as long I’m with you.
I want you to keep writing poems on my stationery.
I want to keep helping you track down the most niche vintage designer items anyone’s ever pulled out of an overstuffed rack.
No dating, no men. Nothing to get in the way of our commitment.
I want to promise you, and I want you to promise me.
For us to promise each other. I’ll even sign something legal, whatever you want, Sadie, just please—” She stopped.
Started again. “There’s a lot less sand in the hourglass than there used to be.
I don’t know how much I’ve got in there.
But I do know—I know for an absolute fact—that no matter how much sand is left, I want to share it with you. ”
Limp with her confession, Anne sat back against the couch and pressed her hands into the seat cushion to stop them from shaking.
Sadie let out a loud, hard exhale. “Well,” she said shakily. “Well, then.”
“And?” Anne waited a beat. Nothing. “Sadie, I walked myself out on the plank here. I think I deserve a little more than ‘well, then.’”
“You just proposed to me.” Sadie stood up, a look on her face Anne couldn’t decipher. “I think I’m entitled to a moment of shock.”
“What? I absolutely did not—”
“Spend the rest of our lives together.” Sadie started to pace, ticking off each sentence on a finger.
“No matter how many years we’ve got left, you want them to be with me and no one else.
And you want us to make a never-ending promise to each other.
By signing a piece of paper. What isn’t conjugal about that? ”
“No! I’m not asking you to marry me, I’m asking you for a lifetime…commitment. All right, I’ll admit that when you say it that way, it sounds a lot like marriage, but there’s a big difference.”
“What difference, exactly, are you seeing? Is it that we’re not registering for dinnerware at Geary’s? Are we skipping the wedding Pinterest board?”
“Please don’t joke. I’m being serious.”
“So am I!” Sadie stopped pacing. “Twenty-four hours ago, you were furious with me because you thought I was skipping town, and now you’re proposing a marriage you’re also saying isn’t marriage?
You’ll forgive me if I’m using a bit of flippancy to pry open whatever part of you thinks this is a logical development. ”
Anne stood up too and shoved her hands into the pockets of her Celine jeans. This wasn’t going well at all. “Are you trying to tell me we don’t want the same thing?” she asked, barely getting it out.
“You want me to commit to you for the rest of my life, Anne. That’s as monumental as it gets.
When I decide to give my life to someone, I give every bit of it.
” Sadie swallowed. “I’m not exactly eager to catapult myself into that kind of promise, especially when there are implications you clearly haven’t thought through. ”
“Right.” God, how could Anne have been so foolish? Why had she asked—no, begged—for so much? “Yes, of course you’re right.”
Sadie reached over suddenly and grabbed her wrist, pulling Anne’s unenthusiastic hand out of her pocket. She clasped it between both of her own and squeezed hard. “That was brave,” she said softly. “Thank you for telling me what you want. I’m glad you did it.”
Anne’s laugh was sharp and trembling. “Fantastic. That makes one of us.”
“Anne—”
She blinked back tears. Again. “If you’re rethinking what you said yesterday, if you don’t—”
“Oh, you absolute knucklehead,” Sadie said fiercely, not releasing Anne’s hand. “Listen to me, all right? I love you.”
Her face was flushed, and her eyes bright, and Anne swallowed a gasp. Sadie had said those words before, but not for a while. And not like that. Not with so much force and intensity and—and heat.
“You’re the best friend I’ve ever had,” Sadie continued.
“Your friendship matters so much to me that when I think about moving three thousand miles away from you, my throat closes up and I can’t breathe.
I can’t leave you. I can’t leave oxygen.
Is this getting through to you, or do I need to rent a billboard? ”
Why did everything inside Anne suddenly feel like it was pushing against her skin and trying to get out? Her hand felt cold and clammy in Sadie’s warm grip.