A huge confession of love from me, and that’s his talking point?

He went on. “The business was great. It was working out—growing, even. It was one of those impossible moments in life when everybody got to win. I was happy, my employees were happy, our clients were happy. Kayla was happy. We had moved in together. We were talking about getting married.” He took a shaky breath. “Then, one night—it was actually the night the Oscars were on—Kayla stopped by the store on her way home to pick up a box of microwave popcorn, because she had this rule that you couldn’t watch the Oscars without popcorn.” Ian paused. “And a boy—a teenage boy—walked into the grocery store with an assault rifle and opened fire. For no reason. Nobody ever figured out why—why that store, why that day, why that moment. He shot a security guard, two checkers, and two people standing in line. And the last person he shot, before he shot himself, was Kayla.”

I knew the rest without his even saying it.

I remembered that shooting. It had dominated the local news for days. I knew that nobody in that store had survived.

But even if I hadn’t remembered, I’d have known from the look on lan’s face—so indelible and so undeniable. The woman he loved—wanted to marry—had gone to the store for popcorn, and she had never come home.

There are facial expressions you can fake. You can fake a smile, for instance, or a frown. You can even fake tears. But certain expressions are so true and so directly connected to the heart that they are beyond description. That’s what I saw in Ian then. The most desperate, unspeakable, agonizing, indescribable despair.

I held still and quiet. What could I say? How on earth could I respond? It was beyond anything I had words for. At last, grasping for something—some acknowledgment of what he was telling me—I whispered, “I am so sorry.”

He nodded, staring at the floor like he was seeing something else.

After a while, quiet as I could, I said, “I remember it. Something like three years ago, right?”

He didn’t look up, but he said, “Three years, almost exactly.”

I suddenly understood lots of things. “That’s why you lost interest in the business,” I said.

He nodded, lost in the memory. “She died at the scene. She never had a chance. He got her twice—one bullet through her right breast and lung, and one through her ear and out the back of her head. Only one person survived. The store was closed during the investigation, but then they reopened. Mopped away all the blood and opened the doors within two weeks. I’ve never gone back. I can’t even drive down that street. It’s so strange to me that people shop there now. They don’t even know. They buy their Doritos and their beer and stand in line on the very spot where she took her last breath. She died alone on a cold industrial floor. It all ended right there. Everything she’d ever worked toward, or hoped for, or loved.”

I watched his chest rise and fall. At last, I understood his silences. How words must truly fail him in the face of it all. My mind skipped backward to all the times he stood at the gym, holding so still, seeming like it took every ounce of his will to tolerate the world and everyone in it. I guess it really had.

I didn’t push against the quiet, or try to fix it, or try to fill it with noise. I just let it surround us, and I stayed right there.

After a while, he looked up, seeming to remember I was there.

“I want to thank you,” he said then, meeting my eyes. “You are the only good thing that’s happened to me since that day.”

Context changes everything. My green card idea seemed so foolish now, knowing everything. I had the idea to grab on to that foolishness and make a little joke. “My offer of a sham wedding is still open,” I said.

I’d hoped for a smile, and I got one, just for a second. “I can’t marry you for a green card.”

I watched his profile at the window, and I felt the most acute longing. Knowing what he’d been through made my problems seem small in comparison. It forced me to step back and see my own situation in a broader context. It forced me to notice that I was, if nothing else, still alive. Witnessing even a glimpse of what he’d lost made me feel both embarrassed by my declaration of love for him—and a thousand times more committed to it.

He must have sensed what I was feeling. “And you’re not actually in love with me, by the way.”

With that shift in topic, the light in the room seemed to change—just barely—as if somewhere not too far away the sun had come out from the clouds.

“Um,” I said, “I think I would know.”

“We talked about this already,” he said. “It’s not real.”

I tilted my head. “Feels pretty real.”

“Listen,” he said, “you know how kidnapping victims can fall in love with their captors? That’s what this is.”

“You’re saying I have Stockholm syndrome?”

“I’m saying you have a version of something like it.”

“Are you saying you kidnapped me?”

He turned back. “I didn’t kidnap you, but I have been one of your captors. You have been held hostage—robbed of your old life, isolated from your old friends, and at the mercy of others. You have faced adversity that most people never see. In response, you’ve created an imaginary bond with one of your captors—to feel safe, and to create hope, and to feel less alone. It’s a classic form of self-preservation.”

“Sounds like you’ve thought about this.”

“Am I wrong?”

Actually, I didn’t know. I guess that was one way of reading the situation. “Is the bond imaginary?” I asked.

Ian didn’t answer.

“Do you feel it, too?” I pressed. “Or did I just make it up?” My brain could list a hundred reasons why a guy like him would not even remotely be interested in someone like me. Of course! It defied all logic to think that he might. And yet—I didn’t think it. I felt it. I felt it over and over.

“I am fond of you,” Ian said then.

“How fond?”

Ian didn’t answer again.

“Because, honestly,” I finally said, cracking the silence, “if you don’t also feel what I’m feeling, then it doesn’t matter if what I feel is real or imaginary, does it? If you have no interest in me—and I have no idea: sometimes I feel like you really do, and sometimes I feel like you absolutely don’t—then this conversation is pointless. We don’t have to talk about kidnapping, or theories of psychology. You just say you’re not interested, and we’re done here.”

Ian didn’t speak.

“Just say you’re not interested, and you go home to Scotland, and I stay here with my mother and eat spaghetti for dinner, and we’ll never see each other again. Easy.”

Ian stared at the floor.

“Just say you’re not interested,” I whispered then, hoping with every cell in my body that he would say the opposite.

Finally, he turned to me, and something had shifted in his eyes. There was no softness there anymore. “I’m not interested,” he said.

I sat back. I don’t know what I was expecting him to say, but it wasn’t that. Not in that way, at least. Not like it was true. “You’re not?”

His voice was flat. “I am fond of you. You have been a pleasant patient to work with. Your situation is tough, and I’ve been impressed with your drive and your strength. But I do not have romantic feelings for you.”

I took a few breaths in slow motion. Did I believe him? “And so that very passionate, Olympic-level kiss at the lake?”

He shrugged. “I guess I’m just a good kisser.”

“How about that other kiss—when you publicly, in front of a whole room of onlookers, ended your own career?”

He looked up very carefully, straight into my eyes. “I must have let myself get too lonely.”

“So,” I said, putting it together, “it wasn’t passion—it was desperation?”

He almost looked a little bored. “That’s one way to put it.”

“So,” I tried again, hoping to make him deny it, “what you’re saying is, you knew I’d developed a slightly overwhelming crush on you, but you didn’t dissuade me because you were lonesome and horny?”

“That’s another way to put it.”

“Okay,” I said, and then I felt a wash of shame.

Of course he wasn’t in love with me. Why would he be? What had I been thinking? He could do and be and choose anything he wanted. He had the whole world ahead of him. All I had was a tiny little half-life. What was exciting or attractive or lovable about that? I’d forgotten what I’d become. If Chip, who had known me at my best, didn’t even want me, how could I hope for anyone else? I was no longer lovable. Note to self.

“Okay,” I said again. My chest started to ache as it all hit me.

There was no point in being honest anymore. There was no way to save face at this point, either. I just had to get him out of here. Fast, before the universe collapsed.

We were done. I turned away. “Hey—have a great trip back to Scotland.”

But he lingered.

“I have something for you,” he said, holding up a small box wrapped in kraft paper. “Your birthday present, actually. I brought it to the lake—but … I’d still like you to have it.”