I let out a shaky breath as the rain continues to batter me. Then I make my biggest confession of all: “Those six months weren’t just a fling. That was me starting to have real feelings for you…starting to fall in love with you. And I’m sorry. Not just for all the other stuff. But for being too much of a coward to tell you how much I really, really liked you.”
He looks at me.
He looks at me for such a long time.
Then he closes the door. Right in my face.
My heart crumples, just as crushed as I’d feared it might be when I considered telling him how I really felt before. For several moments all I can do is stand there, with cold rain and hot tears running down my face.
But then the door suddenly opens again and to my shock, Rhys is holding something I never thought I’d see again.
The other glittery purple Dansko.
“You were a problem for me from the start,” he says. His tone is quiet but somehow I can hear him easily over the rain. “I never felt that way about another woman. Never met someone who made me want to upend my life just for the chance to be with her. You didn’t leave the shoe at my place, Cynda. I hid it.”
My mouth falls open with shock. “You…you hid it?”
He nods. “After you first informed me of your trip to your hometown, you went into the loo. And I snuck out of bed and placed it under my pillow so that you wouldn’t be able to find it. I knew those were your favorite pair of work clogs, and I…”
He turns his face away and his jaw sets in one hard line. “I had a bad feeling and wanted to give you a reason to come back. But obviously that plan didn’t work.”
He glances back down at the shoe. Then he says, “You most likely are only here to save your father’s practice from becoming an DBCare clinic.”
“I’m not—” I begin to say.
“And it doesn’t matter,” he says before I can finish my protest. “I don’t want to have any regrets either. And I held back my real feelings when we were together because I knew it would take time for you to come round to what I already knew. I love you, Cynda. Obviously, I’m madly—some, including Ingrid, would say insanely in love with you. And I meant what I said on your steps. You. You’re all I want. You’re the reason I moved here. You’re the only future I desire. Here or in Chicago or even back in Europe if you want. I don’t care, just tell me you love me again, and I’ll do whatever you want. Go wherever you want.”
I stare up at him in the pouring rain. Okay, did I say I was falling in love with him? I’m gone. So, so gone.
And this time when my heart gives out, it doesn’t feel like sudden heart failure, but like I’m finally submitting to a truth too long denied.
I tell him what I should have told him back in St. Louis when he showed up on my steps. “You’re all I want, too.”
Then I double down. “And you know what, I love you, too.”
His eyes widen like he doesn’t believe me. Like he’s afraid to believe me. “You love me too?”
“Obviously, I’m madly—some, including myself, would say insanely in love with you,” I reply, remixing his words. “I mean, this is probably no big deal in Drosselholz. But standing in the pouring rain is not really a thing us American Black girls do.”
A shocked moment. Then a smile breaks across his entire face. Like the sun coming up at dawn.
And that’s it.
No more hating.
No more games.
He pulls me into his arms and kisses me.
Then he says, “Christ, you’re wet. Get in here before you catch a cold.”
A few minutes later, I’m right back where I’ve secretly wanted to be since leaving the back house. Snug as a bug in Rhys’s bed and wearing his warm, dry Death Buddha shirt, while I wait for the man I love to finish making us tea at the stove.
Normally I’m not a tea drinker, but I swear nothing has ever tasted as good as what’s in the mug he hands me, teeming with smoke. Like flowers and second chances.
“What kind of tea is this?”
“Chamomile,” he answers, climbing into bed with his own mug. “Best tea for getting back to sleep.”
“Oh,” I say, raising both eyebrows. “Is that what we’re trying to do? Get back to sleep?”
Rhys looks at me, for a long wicked beat, then sets his untouched tea aside. “No, I don’t believe we’ll be getting much sleep tonight. We’ve a lot of making up to do. And the only thing worse than the cicadas is all this rain.”