CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE #2
"I've been thinking about that promise a lot these last few weeks.
Not to torture myself with it, exactly, more because I needed to understand how the man who said that turned into the man at the Ellison launch.
And I think I finally understand it, and I want to tell you what I think, and you can correct me if I'm wrong.
" I turned my wine glass slowly on the bar top, an old habit of his I'd apparently picked up somewhere along the way without noticing.
"I don't think you woke up one day and decided the promise didn't matter anymore.
I think you kept believing it, the whole time, even while you were breaking it in a hundred small ways.
I think that's almost worse, honestly. A man who stops believing his own promise is at least being consistent.
You believed it completely and broke it anyway, one quiet accommodation at a time, until there was nothing left of it except the words themselves. "
Pierce absorbed that for a long moment, his jaw working slightly, and when he spoke again his voice had gone rough in a way I hadn't heard from him in years.
"That's exactly what happened. I don't think I've heard anyone describe it that clearly, including myself, and I've spent a lot of hours lately trying to describe it to myself. "
"I needed you to hear it described that clearly. Because I think it's important you understand this wasn't one bad night at a gala. This was years of a promise slowly rotting from the inside while you kept telling yourself, and probably telling me too, that it was still fully intact."
"I understand that now. I don't think I understood it with this much clarity even a month ago.
" He looked down at his hands, wrapped around a whiskey he still hadn't touched.
"I keep trying to find the moment it started, and there isn't one.
That's almost the hardest part. If there'd been one bad decision I could point to, I could at least explain it to you, and to myself.
There isn't. There's just a slow accumulation of small cowardices that somehow added up to a total stranger asking who my wife was and me not being able to say the word. "
"I'm not asking you to fix that tonight.
I don't think it's fixable tonight, or possibly ever completely.
I think it's something we'd have to actually build past, slowly, the same way you apparently built the shame in the first place, one small choice at a time.
" I looked at him directly, needing him to understand the specific weight of what I was about to say. "I'm not coming home tonight, Pierce."
Something flickered across his face, disappointment held carefully in check, and he nodded, slower than I expected, without arguing. "Okay."
"I need more time. I need to know this is actually who you're going to be, consistently, not just for a few weeks while you're trying to win something back.
I need to trust my own judgment about you again, and that's going to take longer than one conversation at a bar, no matter how honest either of us manages to be tonight. "
"I understand. I'm not going to push you.
I don't think I've earned the right to push you on anything right now.
" He picked up his whiskey, still mostly full, and set it back down without drinking, like even that small gesture felt too easy for the moment it was interrupting.
"Can I ask for one thing? Not asking you to come home. Just one thing."
"What?"
"Take whatever time you need. However long that is.
I'm not going anywhere, and I'm not going to stop doing the work just because you're not there to see it.
I just need you to know that whenever you're ready, if you're ever ready, I'll still be here, still doing it.
I'm not waiting for a reward. It's who I actually want to be now. "
I didn't answer right away, sitting with the weight of what he'd said, the whiskey between us, Deshawn discreetly polishing glasses at the far end of the bar, the same stools we'd first met on holding us both now in a conversation neither of us could have imagined having back when this was simply a bar where a stranger had refused to let him feel sorry for himself.
"Okay," I said finally. "I hear you."
"Can I ask you one more thing before you go?
" Pierce's voice had gone quieter, less certain than it had been through most of the conversation.
"Do you think we get back to where we were?
Before any of this. I'm not asking you to promise anything.
I just want to know if you think it's possible, even a little. "
I considered the question honestly, turning it over the way I'd turned over so much else that night.
"I don't think we get back to where we were.
I think that place doesn't exist anymore, and I'm not sure it should.
But I think there might be somewhere else, further along, that could end up being better than where we were, if you keep doing what you've been doing and I figure out how to trust it fully again.
I don't know how long that takes. I'm not going to pretend I do. "
"That's more hope than I expected to leave here with tonight."
"Don't mistake it for more than it is. It's not a promise, Pierce.
It's just honesty about what I actually think might be possible, which is different from certainty.
" I met his eyes, wanting him to understand the distinction fully.
"I need you to be okay with that difference, for as long as it takes. "
"I'm okay with it," he said, and something in the plain, unguarded way he said it told me he actually meant it, not the polished reassurance he might have offered months earlier, just a simple, honest answer to a simple, honest question.
We sat together a while longer after that, not quite reconciled, not quite finished, but no longer entirely at odds either, something more honest sitting between us than had existed in longer than either of us wanted to admit.
When I finally stood to leave, Pierce didn't reach for my hand, didn't ask for a hug, didn't do any of the things a less patient version of this scene might have called for.
He simply said good night, and thank you for coming, and let me walk out the door alone, into a night that felt, for the first time in weeks, like it might eventually lead somewhere worth walking toward.