“Are you pure of heart?” she asks.
“No,” I say. It’s instant, the word bypassing my brain and going directly to my mouth, a truth spoken straight from the heart.
It’s not the answer she was expecting.
“Of course I’m not,” I say, going on even though I know I’m giving the wrong answer to this question. “I slept with you while you were a student. I wanted what I shouldn’t have. I took what wasn’t mine to take. I lusted after you before I even knew your name and if you gave me half a chance I’d do it all again. No, I’m not pure of heart.”
Now she’s got her eyes closed, one hand to her forehead, and I think she might be smiling.
“I’m not pure of anything,” I say.
“That was a really weird question, wasn’t it?” she says.
“A little,” I admit.
“Can I try again?”
“Always.”
“Why’d you write the letter?”
I wonder, for a moment, if this question also has a right answer that I don’t know, if I’ve wandered into a labyrinth with a sphinx at the center, and to get past it to Thalia I’ve got to outsmart it.
But then, I open my mouth and the truth pours out.
“It’ll be easier for me to start over than for you,” I say, simply. “Because I already have a post-graduate degree and I can find some other job. Because I didn’t want to throw your life off track.”
I hold out one hand, palm up. Slowly, she takes it, and I fold her small hand into mine, hold on tight.
“And because it was my responsibility and I fucked up,” I go on, just as she looks up at me.
“Caleb —" she starts, exasperated.
“It was literally my job not to sleep with students,” I remind her. “I’m older, I’m allegedly wiser, I was in charge. It was my job to be in control and do what was right and I didn’t. You can say what you want, but it was my job and I fucked it up, and that means I should be the one to take the fall.”
Her hand is a fist inside mine and I squeeze it, fit my fingers to her knuckles.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
“Don’t be.”
“It doesn’t feel right,” she admits, her eyes on our hands, and she swallows hard, takes a deep breath. “This wasn’t something that you did to me. We did this together. I knew what I was doing when I kissed you in the hospital, and when I gave you that bottle of wine, and when I saw you at the organ concert and went over to flirt with you —”
“And I understood the consequences,” I tell her. “I knew precisely what I was risking when I invited you over for dinner, and I was in full possession of my faculties when I did it anyway.”
“Still,” she whispers.
“I wanted to be with you more than I wanted to be a professor,” I say. “That’s all. In the end, it was that simple. There are other jobs but there’s no one else like you.”
Thalia just sighs quietly, looking down at our hands and I look at her and finally, finally, the words I’ve been searching for this past week start pouring out.
“I thought I had what I wanted,” I tell her, slowly, blindly. I speak like I’m cutting myself open and words are coming out instead of blood. “But then, there you were, hiding in the men’s bathroom.”
“God,” she mutters, but I think she’s laughing.
“Until then I thought I wanted to teach and publish papers and go on coffee dates with women who wore flannel, but I was done before you were out the window,” I tell her. “Because it turns out that none of that can hold a candle to you telling me that you like believing in magic for the space of a second, or that sea monsters were really just oarfish, or that you suspect werewolves want to howl at the moon even when they’re human. I want to live my life next to you. That’s all.”
“I was really sure you thought I was a lunatic,” she says.
“I should have told you about the letter,” I say, and I close my eyes, lean my head down to hers, her hair warm and smooth against my forehead. “I’m sorry. I was afraid you’d try to do something and wouldn’t let me.”
“I probably would have,” she admits.
She breathes. She offers me her other hand as well.
“I’m sorry I got so angry,” she says. “But I really want — I mean, you’re — “
Thalia takes a deep breath, pulls away, looks up at me.
“I want to be next to you too,” she says, simply. “That’s all. This is once-in-a-lifetime, and I know it, and you know it, and I don’t want it to be me and you. I want it to be us. Always.”