“College emailed me. They want me back on Monday.” The words sounded strange out loud. Too final, too definite.
Stefan nodded once. “I see.”
That was all.
Nowhat happened?, noare you okay?, no immediate attempt to fill the space that opened up between us.
I gripped the edge of the table. “There are a few flights to choose from.”
“That’s good.”
This time I heard it. Acceptance, as though this had always been the outcome.
I watched him for a moment, trying to read his expression, looking for even the minutest crack in that composure I’d come to know so well.
“I’m glad,” he said at last.
I swallowed. “Why?”
“You’ve been in limbo since you arrived here. Waiting. Reacting. This…” He gestured slightly, not just to the room, but to the city beyond it. “This was never meant to be permanent.” There was a pause. “You have your life waiting for you in England.”
And there it was, no softening, no attempt to wrap it in something kinder, nothing but the plain, unvarnished truth laid out between us.
“And what about this?” The question slipped out before I could stop it.
Before I could make it safer.
For the first time since I’d started speaking, Stefan didn’t answer immediately. I saw the way his focus shifted, not away from me, but inward, weighing his words.
Then he took my hand, and before I could let out a sigh of relief, he killed it.
“Thiswas something you needed.” His voice was quieter, more deliberate.
Past tense. Defined.
Final.
I felt it settle, something being placed exactly where it belonged, whether I liked it or not.
“But?” I asked. There was always a but.
Stefan’s expression didn’t change, but his eyes sharpened.
“Berlin was an escape for you. That doesn’t make it your future.”
His words weren’t cruel—there was no cruelty in Stefan—but they were measured, considered, and uncomfortably close to the truth.
I looked away, my jaw tightening as I tried to find something to push back with, to show him he was wrong. Something that proved this—whateverthiswas—was more than mere circumstance, or timing, or?—
I stopped myself, because I had nothing that came close to his certainty, and that scared me more than anything he’d said.
“When do you leave?” he asked.
“I think I’ll take the late afternoon flight.” Saying it made it real in a way nothing else had.
It was a deadline. A countdown.
“Then we still have time.”