CHAPTER FOURTEEN #2
"The company wants me to win you back on television.
" He said it plainly. "There's a whole plan.
A magazine cover, the porch, the three of us in nice light, America's favorite reconciliation.
It would fix the stock. It would fix the story.
And I said no, and I turned it down, and I need you to know I turned it down before I came here, because I don't want you to ever wonder, not for one second, whether I'm standing on this porch for you or for the stock.
I killed the strategy first. On purpose.
So that coming here couldn't be that. So it could only be this. "
Sharon's arms stayed crossed, but something behind her ribs shifted.
"This being what?"
"A man who's got nothing to offer you but the thing he should have offered you six years ago and didn't." He didn't kneel.
She noticed he didn't kneel, that he'd learned that too, that kneeling was a gesture and he'd sworn off gestures.
He just stood there on the cold porch and looked at her.
"I'm not here to win you back. I want to be really clear, because I've spent six years being unclear and I'm done.
I'm not asking you for anything today. You don't owe me a yes, you don't owe me a maybe, you don't owe me hope.
You did the math and you left and the math was right, I've seen it, I've had months to see it.
So I'm not here to argue with the math."
"Then why are you here, Jack." Her voice wasn't steady. She hated that it wasn't steady.
"Because I finally became the man who would have chosen you, and I owed it to you to become him whether or not it got me anything, and now that I'm him, the first thing he wanted to do was drive out here and tell you the truth with nothing attached to it.
" He put his empty hands in his pockets.
"I love you. I have loved you for seven years and I hid you for six of them because I was a coward, and I'm not a coward anymore, and it's too late, and I know it's too late, and I came anyway, because you deserve to hear the words said right, once, by a man who isn't asking for anything back.
That's it. That's the whole thing. I love you.
I chose you. I'm about six years late and I'm not asking you to pretend I'm not.
" He took a breath. "I'll go now. Ethan's got the train thing Saturday, I'll see you Sunday, I won't make it weird, I won't bring it up again unless you do.
I just needed you to have it. The clean version.
No camera, no stock, no plan. Just true. "
And he turned to go.
And Sharon stood on her mother's porch with her arms crossed and watched the man she'd loved for seven years walk back toward his car having finally, finally said the exact right thing in the exact right way with nothing attached, no audience, no gesture, no ask, and she felt the whole architecture of her certainty groan under the weight of it, because this was the thing, this was the only thing, that could have reached her, and he'd found it, too late, exactly as he said, and the too-late and the exactly-right were both true and both enormous and she could not, standing there, hold them both and stay upright.
"Jack."
He stopped. He didn't turn around right away. When he did, he didn't look hopeful, which was the thing that undid her, he looked braced, like a man who'd learned that turning around was dangerous.
"I'm not saying yes," Sharon said. Her voice cracked all the way through now. "I want to be so clear. I'm not saying yes, I'm not, don't you dare hear a yes in this."
"I don't. I promise I don't."
"But you don't get to say all that and just leave, either.
That's a gesture too, the noble exit, the walk to the car, don't think I didn't clock it.
" And there it was, watery and furious and real, the ghost of a smile, the diner in her, the thing that had made him drive three and a half hours for pie seven years ago.
"So you're going to come inside. Not for that.
Not for a yes. You're going to come inside and sit at my mother's table and we're going to talk, actually talk, about whether there's a real thing left here or just the ghost of one, and it's going to take a long time, Jack, it's going to take a stupid long time, and you're going to have to prove it for a year like your mother said, more than a year, and I'm going to be difficult about all of it, and some days I'm going to still be so angry I can't look at you. "
"Okay," Jackson said, and his voice was gone too now. "Okay. All of that. Yes to all of that."
"That's not a yes to us. That's a yes to talking."
"I know the difference. I finally know the difference." He came back toward the porch, slow, like a man afraid to spook a thing. "A yes to talking. I'll take a yes to talking. I'll take a yes to talking over any yes I ever got in a boardroom."