DECLAN
He is sitting on my couch and his eyes are wide and his hands are on his knees and I can see the exact moment the three words land because his body changes. The shoulders drop. The jaw loosens. The careful, managed, checkpoint-protected posture that Jamie Kowalski wears in every public space dissolves, and what replaces it is something I have only seen once before: in the coffee shop, for three hours, when the glasses were off and the recorder was gone and we were just two people.
"I left the beat," I say again, because the words need to be repeated, because the repetition is not for clarity but for reality. "I went to my editor on Monday. I told her that I could no longer cover the Reapers with the objectivity the beat requires. She reassigned me. I'm covering college football now."
"College football."
"Yes."
"You hate college football."
"With a passion that borders on theological."
"You gave up the Reapers. The best story in sports. The beat you worked three years for."
"Yes."
"Why?"
He asks "why" the way he asked "how did you know" in the weight room with Cole. The word carries more weight than its single syllable should be able to support. The "why" is not requesting information. The "why" is requesting confirmation. He knows why. He has known since the coffee. He has known since the hallway where I said his name. He has known since the recorder went off and I answered the thing underneath the question. He is asking "why" because he needs to hear me say it.
"Because I can't cover you and feel what I feel about you," I say. "Those two things can't coexist. The journalist requires distance. The feeling requires closeness. I tried to maintain both and the both was a lie, and I owe the journalism honesty and I owe you honesty and the only honest thing to do was choose."
The words are the most truthful words I have spoken to another person. More truthful than any sentence I've published. More truthful than the feature on Cole and Mik, which was true in the way that good journalism is true: accurately, fairly, from a vantage point. These words are true in a different way. These words are true from inside. These words are the vantage point removed, the glasses off, the journalist gone, the person remaining.
"You chose me," Jamie says. His voice is quiet. Not his podium quiet. A different quiet. The quiet of a person who is hearing something they did not believe they were allowed to hear.
"I chose the possibility of us. Which might be nothing. You might not feel the same way. I'm prepared for that. If this conversation ends with you saying 'I appreciate the honesty but I don't feel that way,' I will survive it. I will go cover college football and I will eat my mother's jollof rice and I will be fine. But I couldn't keep standing in the press box watchingyou through glass and pretending I was objective. I was never objective. I haven't been objective since the hallway."
He is very still. The stillness is not his wall stillness. It is the stillness of a body that is processing something too large for movement, too important for the distraction of physical adjustment. He is sitting on my couch in the amber light of my apartment with my books on the walls and my life around him and he is hearing, possibly for the first time, that someone has chosen him. Not his skating. Not his draft position. Not the version of Jamie Kowalski that performs at podiums and plays hockey and manages the checkpoint. Him. The person behind the number.
"You gave up your career," he says. "For a possibility."
"I gave up a beat assignment. The career continues. It just continues in a different direction. A worse direction, admittedly. Have you ever watched SEC football? It's a fever dream with tailgating."
He laughs. The laugh is small and wet and it cracks something open in the room, the tension that has been building since I said "I left the beat," and the cracking is not destruction. The cracking is relief. The same relief that Cole described. The same relief that I felt when I filed my last game recap. The bag is down. The truth is out. The glass between us (press box glass, hallway glass, the invisible glass that separates journalist from source and wanting from having) is gone.
"Declan," he says. My name. Two syllables. The same two syllables from the doorway, the same two syllables that I have been carrying since he said them, but this time the syllables are closer. This time the syllables are in my apartment, on my couch, in the amber light.
"Jamie."
"I've never done this."
"I know."
"I mean. I've never..." He pauses. The pause is the edge of a cliff, and I can see him standing on it, looking down, deciding whether to jump. "I've never kissed anyone I wanted to kiss. I've never told anyone. Becca knows. My sister. She's known since before I knew. And Cole. And Mik, kind of. And Gerald, probably, because Gerald knows everything. But I've never..." The pause again. "I've never been in a room with someone who feels this way about me and who I feel this way about and who is sitting six feet away and who just told me he gave up his career for the possibility of me."
"The possibility of us," I correct, because the distinction matters. The sacrifice was not for him. The sacrifice was for the chance that the two of us, together, might be something worth more than a press credential.
"The possibility of us," he repeats. The word "us" in his mouth is new. I can hear the newness. The word has never been applied to him and another person in this context, and the applying of it is visible in his face: wonder, terror, the specific vertigo of a first.
I stand. I walk to the couch. I sit down next to him. The six feet become six inches, and the six inches are the same six inches from the parking lot in Decatur, and the six inches have been the distance for weeks, and the six inches are about to change.
"Can I be honest about something?" I say.
"You've been honest about everything so far."
"I want to kiss you. I've wanted to since the hallway. Since the press conference where you talked about the saucer pass and your hands moved and your face was the face of a person who loves something. I've wanted to kiss that person since the moment I saw him. And I will wait. If you need time, I will wait. We go at your pace. Always."