Karl: That’s reassuring. But about what?
Me: Berlin wasn’t just a convenient trip.
A second later, my phone rang, and I clickedanswer.
“Kieran.”
“Hi.” I pushed myself upright on the couch, more alert than I’d been a second ago.
“You sound as though you’re thinking too much—again.”
I let out a short laugh. “Would I be me if I wasn’t?” I dragged my hand through my hair. “I’ve had a bit of time to think.” All the way home, in fact.
“I gathered,” he said dryly. “So… you finally see Berlin wasn’t just a trip?”
I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, staring at nothing in particular. “It was… more than that. With him.” I paused. “With Stefan.”
Karl didn’t interrupt.
I exhaled slowly. “I think I know now what it was. What it meant.”
“That sounds promising,” Karl murmured.
“Stefan is—” I stopped, searching for the right word. “He’s very clear about who he is. What he does. How he lives his life.”
“Yes. That much I gleaned from our dinner together.”
“He doesn’t drift into things,” I went on. “He doesn’t get swept up. Everything is deliberate. Chosen.”
Karl made a quiet sound of agreement.
“And when I arrived in Berlin, I was all over the place, trying to figure things out.” I huffed a breath. “He gave me space to do that. He let me explore things I hadn’t even admitted to myself before. Without pushing. Without—” I searched for it. “Without taking advantage of it.”
Karl was quiet.
“That mattered,” I said. “More than I think I realised at the time.”
“Yes,” he said softly.
I swallowed. “But that doesn’t mean what we had was…” I trailed off, then forced the word out. “Sustainable.”
There was the word I’d been building towards.
“Go on,” Karl said, his voice low.
The fact that he was listening, not judging me, spurred me on to bare my soul. Because Karl was probably the one person who could understand.
“He knows what he wants,” I said. “And more importantly, he knows what hedoesn’twant. He… he doesn’t do complications. Or at least, not emotional ones, not in a way that changes his life.” I stood, pacing once across the room before turning back. “And I can’t be something that just fits into the edges of that. I don’t think I could do that. Not now.”
Not with how I feel.
I didn’t need to say that part.
“I have my own life here,” I went on quickly. “My career, everything that’s been on hold. I can’t just walk away from that. And he wouldn’t ask me to.”
“No,” Karl said. “He wouldn’t.”
“Exactly.” I seized on that. “So there’s no version of this where it actually works, not properly, not in a way that?—”