All Chapters of THE PRICE OF LETTING GO: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

We did not talk about it when we left.We walked out through the rooms and through the glass doors and onto the street and the cold hit after the gallery warmth and I buttoned my coat the rest of the way and neither of us said anything about what had just happened and neither of us needed to.There was a coffee place half a block down. Small, not crowded, the kind with mismatched chairs and a counter you ordered at and collected from yourself. Dominic held the door and I went in and I ordered and he ordered and we took the two chairs by the window and sat down.I wrapped both hands around the cup.He did the same, and I noticed that, and I looked out the window.Outside the street moved at its Saturday afternoon pace, unhurried, people with bags and nowhere pressing to be. I watched it and drank my coffee and the coffee was good, the real kind, properly made, and the chair was worn in the way chairs get when they have been sat in by enough people over enough years, and Dominic said so

He was at the elevator at six with his jacket already on and his bag over one shoulder and the look of someone who had made a decision and was not revisiting it.They rode down in silence.Out onto the SoHo street. The cold hit. He turned left. She turned left. Two blocks of walking without talking and he pushed open the door of a wine bar and held it and she went in without hesitating.Corner table. Furthest from the bar and the door and everything. He ordered two glasses of red without looking at the list and the server left them alone. The bar was half empty. The music was low. The candle on their table was already burning low, the wax pooled around the base.He put both hands flat on the table.Looked at her.“I have feelings for you.” Even. Unhurried. “I’ve had them for a while. I’m not saying it to complicate things or ask for something you didn’t offer.” Short pause. “I just needed to say it to your face.”He did not add anything after the last word. Just left the space empty.

The three dots were still moving when the phone rang.She was on the kitchen floor, back against the wall, phone face-up in her lap, watching the three dots move. They disappeared. One second of dark screen. Then the screen lit up again and the ringing started.Dominic.Not D.H. Not two letters. His full name, the name she had changed it to earlier that evening, and now it was ringing in her hands and she was on the floor with her back against the wall and the Tuesday sculpture on the sill above her and the kitchen light on above that and the city outside doing what it always does and the phone ringing in her lap.She watched it ring.One second.Two.Three.Four.Five.She answered.Silence on the line. Not empty. The specific weighted kind that belongs to someone choosing words carefully.Then his voice, even and unhurried: “Tell me what you need me to understand.”Not the boardroom register. Not the conference room register. The Tuesday evening one, the one from the call when she h

Prove it.She was still turning it over on the subway home, her coat still on, her bag in her lap, the car swaying through the stops. Two words she had said from a kitchen floor last night and hung up on before he could respond. She had gone to work and looked at Nicolas’s closed office door six times and eaten dinner at the kitchen counter without tasting it and now she was at the window with both hands around a glass of water and the Tuesday sculpture on the sill.The cup mid-fall. The liquid mid-arc.Her thumbnail pressed into the glass.She had said prove it and she had not told him what the proof looked like.That was the problem. Not the asking. She had given him the demand without the map, the direction without the destination, the question without any answer attached to it and he was on the other end of that phone call right now with nothing to use and no way to know what arriving looked like.She had meant something specific. She could feel the shape of it from the inside eve

She was still in her coat when the phone buzzed.She had just gotten through the door. Bag on the floor. Key still in her hand. The apartment dark around her. The phone buzzed in her coat pocket and she took it out without thinking and looked at the screen.One message. From Dominic. Sent nine minutes ago while she was on the train underground.She opened it.Can I see you.No question mark. She stood in her dark hallway with her coat on and her key in one hand and her phone in the other and she looked at four words on a white screen.She stood very still.Can I see you.Not when are you free. Not would you like to have dinner. Not the careful calibrated language they had been using since the gallery, the language with room built in for her to say no without it costing either of them too much. Just four words. No question mark. Nothing softening it and nothing attached to it and nowhere to hide in it.She stood in the hallway.Her coat was still on. The apartment was dark. The city ou