The day I walked across the rehabilitation room without assistance, Noah waited at the other end.
My therapist stood beside me.
“Slow steps,” she said. “Do not rush.”
The distance was only 20 feet.
It felt like 20 miles.
I placed one foot forward, then the other.
My left leg trembled.
Sweat ran down my back.
Halfway across, I nearly stopped.
Noah held up both hands, urging me on.
When I reached him, he was crying.
He tried to hide it by adjusting his glasses.
“You are terrible at pretending,” I said.
“So are you.”
He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a folded piece of paper.
The edges were soft with age.
Purple crayon covered the center.
I stared at it.
“No.”
He unfolded our kindergarten marriage pact.
“You kept that?”
“For 23 years.”
I laughed until tears ran down my face.
At the bottom of the paper, our childish signatures still sat beside two badly drawn rings.
Noah looked at me with an expression I had never seen before.
“I need to say something.”
My heart began beating harder.
“I do not want you to choose me because Evan left,” he said.
I nodded.
“I do not want gratitude mistaken for love. And I definitely do not want a promise made by two six-year-olds turned into a debt.”
“Noah.”
“Let me finish.”
I nodded.
“I love you,” he said.
I looked at the paper in his hands.
“I have loved you for years. But I only want you if you know the difference between needing someone and choosing them.”
Then I looked at him.
For months, I had told myself my feelings came from gratitude.
He had shown up when Evan had not.
He had rebuilt my apartment and rearranged his life.
But gratitude did not explain why I knew the sound of his footsteps in the hallway.
It did not explain why his laugh could pull me out of the worst days.
It did not explain why the thought of him loving someone else made my chest ache.
“I know the difference,” I whispered.
He looked frightened.
“I love you too.”
He closed his eyes.
“Are you sure?”
“No.”
His face fell.
I smiled.
“I am sure I love you. I am not sure how to do this without ruining 23 years of friendship.”
“That is a separate problem.”
“So we go slowly.”
“Very slowly.”
Our first real date was at a restaurant we had visited a hundred times as friends.
Everything felt different.
I changed outfits four times.
