I looked at Douglas, at the lines around his eyes and the familiar shape of his mouth. He was not the boy beneath the bleachers. I was not the girl who had waited for a letter that never came.
We had both become people our younger selves could not have imagined.
“What do you want from me?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“That’s not true.”
He considered it.
“I want to know you again, if you’re willing.”
The request was so modest that it was more frightening than a declaration.
“Again?”
“Properly this time.”
I looked toward the window.
Rain blurred the world outside, softening the hospital parking lot into gray light.
“I don’t know how to be nineteen with you anymore.”
“I don’t want you to be.”
“Then what do you want?”
“To be sixty with you. Whatever that means.”
I looked back at him.
“Sixty is not a very long time.”
