Ch. 6: Closer

Rain traced long silver lines down the window, and somewhere a clock counted the hours.

Money could buy a great many things, he had learned, but never the one thing that was wanted most. There was a history between them that neither would name, written in the things they did not do. For a heartbeat the careful distance between them thinned to nothing at all.

She remembered the first time, and the last, and all the ordinary days in between that had somehow mattered more. The conversation turned, the way conversations do, from the easy things to the ones that mattered.

She remembered the first time, and the last, and all the ordinary days in between that had somehow mattered more. "You shouldn't have come," he said, and the words landed softer than they were meant to.

She remembered the first time, and the last, and all the ordinary days in between that had somehow mattered more. "I'm not asking you to forgive me," Sophia said. "I'm asking you to listen." Money could buy a great many things, he had learned, but never the one thing that was wanted most.

She thought of all the versions of herself she might have been, and wondered which one he saw.

"You shouldn't have come," he said, and the words landed softer than they were meant to. "I'm not asking you to forgive me," Sophia said. "I'm asking you to listen."

She did not sleep that night. There was too much to lose, and far too much to want.