“I am,” he said. “You’re saying how quickly the winds can change. I’d better watch my step.”

“No,” she said. “I’m saying, I’d like to love you.”

“But?” he said.

“But you’re making it hard,” she said.

Miles felt his skin sloughing off. His bones had quit too. He’d be nothing but a mess of hair and organs and blood after this, and she would like to love him.

“I think it’s fair,” he said, “to want to be able to live my life without feeling that I’m about to lose you to a grocery trip.”

“A hike,” she said.

“And you wanted me to know all this for what?” he said. “You wanted to leave, and now you’re not, and you’d like to love me, and you wanted me to carry all this around with me for the rest of my life, for what?”

“This is what you asked for,” she said.

“This is not what I asked for,” he said.

“It’s what you ask for all the time,” she said.

“What do I ask for?” he said.

“How I feel,” she said. “You ask me to tell you. So, this is how I felt.”

“Well, shit,” he said. “It’s a little late.”