I Should Have Told You

“It’s a professional habit.”

She looked at me. “You should take a photograph of me now.”

“Why?”

“Because you keep looking at the old version.”

She sat beside the window while I photographed her. The light was soft, and she looked older than the girl in the first print—not older in years, but more certain of the person she had become.

“You changed me,” she said.

“I didn’t ask you to change.”

“You made me want things I had stopped wanting.”

“Such as?”

“A home. A family. A person who knows where I am.”

The words made me reckless.

“Marry me.”

She stared at me. “What?”

“Not tomorrow. Not because we’re frightened of losing each other. But someday. Let me be the person who knows where you are.”

Her face closed. “You can’t say things like that and expect me to treat them as harmless.”

“I’m not being harmless.”

“You’re being impulsive.”

“I’m being honest.”

“You want everything from me, Nolan. My time, my body, my future. But when I ask what happens when you leave, you tell me to be independent.”

I felt the conversation slipping away. “I’m leaving for work, not abandoning you.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know I love you.”

“Love doesn’t make distance disappear.”

“Neither does graduate school.”

She flinched. I regretted it immediately, but anger was faster than remorse.

“Maybe you should join Professor Hale’s tour,” I said. “Then we can both go wherever we want.”

Her eyes hardened. “Maybe I will.”

The room became silent.

“I should have told you about the tour,” she said. “I should have told you that he asked me again. I didn’t because I knew you would make it about us.”

“You kept it from me.”

“I was trying to decide for myself.”

“You don’t trust me enough to tell me the truth.”

“I don’t trust you not to turn every decision into a test of love.”

The accusation found its mark. I stood and reached for my coat.

“Where are you going?”

“Home.”

“This is your home.”

“Not if you’re already planning the life you’ll have without me.”

She looked stricken. I wanted to cross the room and apologize. Instead, I said the cruelest thing available.

“Don’t worry. You won’t have to deal with me ever again.”

I left and shut the door too hard.

The next day, I waited for her to come to me. She did not.

On the second day, I wrote an apology and tore it up. On the third, I found the annulment paperwork we had once signed as a joke and slipped a copy beneath her door. I told myself it was an invitation to talk.

That night, I heard her crying through the wall. Then she played Bach for three hours. The music moved from anger to grief and back again.

I sat on the floor with my ear against the plaster.

I should have told her that marriage was not a demand. I should have told her that I wanted a future with her but not at the cost of her music. I should have told her I was terrified of leaving because she was the first person who had made anywhere feel like home.

Instead, I stayed silent.

Days became a week. We passed each other in the hallway without speaking. The absence of her voice was worse than any argument.

Finally, I wrote a real letter.

“Elise, I was wrong to make my fear sound like a promise. You do not owe me marriage, travel, or a future you have not chosen. I want you to go to graduate school if that is what you need. I want to leave for South America without making you feel abandoned. I should have told you that I am afraid because I love you, not because I doubt you.”

I left the letter beneath her door and returned to my room.

No answer came that night.

The next morning, a single sentence waited beneath mine.

“I should have told you I was afraid, too.”

It was not forgiveness. It was not a promise.

But it was the first door she had opened in a week.

I read the sentence until the words lost their shape. Then I wrote back.

“I don’t want to win an argument. I want to understand you. Tell me what you need from me when I leave.”

Her answer arrived that evening.

“I need you to leave without turning it into a test. I need to go to school without turning it into a rejection. I need us to say what we mean before anger says it for us.”

I carried the note to her door. She opened it before I knocked twice.

For a moment, we simply looked at each other. The week of silence stood between us, crowded with every sentence we had avoided.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Me too.”

“I don’t want to marry you because I’m afraid you’ll leave.”

“Good.”

“I want to marry you because I love you. But I don’t know whether that is a question we have to answer now.”

She stepped aside. “Come in.”

We sat on her bed and spoke until midnight. She told me the tour frightened her because it offered a life she had always wanted. I told her South America frightened me because it was the first time I would leave something worth returning to.

“I should have told you I was afraid,” I said.

“You did. You just told me by proposing.”

I laughed despite myself. “That was not my best work.”

“You’re a photographer. You should understand composition.”

“The composition was strong. The timing was terrible.”

She leaned against my shoulder. “We can’t keep using forever to avoid talking about tomorrow.”

“Then tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow.”

We did not kiss until the conversation was over. When we finally did, the relief was gentle rather than desperate.

The next morning, we made a list of practical things: call schedules, letters, travel dates, and the names of people to contact if communication failed. It was not romantic, but it made the distance feel like a problem with possible solutions.

At the bottom of the page, Elise wrote, “No disappearing.”

I added, “No guessing.”

She underlined both.

The annulment paperwork remained beneath her door, unsigned. I tore it in half and threw it away.

Elise watched me do it and finally smiled.