"I wanted to say it," he said. "Not because the clause required it. Not because the moment called for it. Just—" He paused. "Just to have said it."
"Yes," she said.
She reached across the island.
Her hand on his — not the other way around, which was how it had been in the kitchen when the double confirmation had arrived and he'd been the one to reach. Now her. The reversal. Not correcting anything. Just both being true.
"I love you," she said.
Also quiet. Also plain. Also without any container.
They sat at the kitchen island in the grey morning, with tea going cold and the city beginning its Friday outside the windows, and the particular quality of two people who have been building toward the same place from opposite ends and have arrived in the same moment.
The baby moved again.
R
