Page 68 of Knights Like These
“I hear that. But I’m asking about the pattern. What did you do—or not do—in your marriage that you’re afraid of repeating?”
The room is quiet. The clock on her desk ticks. I lean forward to consider this.
“I chose her because she was safe. Bree was kind and good, and she loved me, and I loved her back—I did—but I chose her because being with her didn’t scare me. Being with Sydney scared me. Sydney, uh—” I stop. “Sydney is my best friend from way back, and she made me feel things I didn’t know how to handle. Big things. Overwhelming things. And instead of sitting with that, I went the other direction. I found someone calm and steady and told myself that calm and steady was what I wanted.”
“Was it?”
“It was what I could manage. That’s not the same thing.”
Dr. Melendez looks at me for a long time, her pen resting on her notepad. “Archer, I want you to sit with something for asecond. You said being with Sydney scared you. Can you tell me what specifically felt scary about it?”
“Losing her. If we tried and it didn’t work, I’d lose the most important person in my life.”
“And what happened instead? When you chose not to try?”
The question hits me like a puck to the chest. I sit with it, turning it over, and the answer is so obvious that I can’t believe I missed it for this long.
“I lost her anyway,” I say. “Not entirely, but I lost the version of us that could have existed. I watched her date other men while I married someone else. We stayed friends, but there was always this—this distance beneath it. It was as if we both knew we were holding something back.”
“So you chose not to risk losing her, and in doing so, you lost the thing you were trying to protect.”
“Yeah.” My throat tightens. “Yeah, that’s exactly what happened.”
“And now she’s here. You have a second chance. So what’s actually stopping you?”
I think about Bree’s face in the hallway at the birthday party. I picture the drawing on the fridge, and the guest room door clicking shut.
“I don’t trust myself,” I say, my voice rough. “I had something real with Bree—not the same as with Sydney, but real—and I couldn’t keep it alive. I let it die through neglect. I showed up every day, did the minimum, and told myself that was enough, but it wasn’t. How do I know I won’t do that again?”
“You don’t,” Dr. Melendez replies. “Nobody gets that guarantee. But I want to point out something you just said. You described your marriage as showing up and doing the minimum. Does that sound like how you are with Sydney?”
“No.” The answer comes immediately. “With Sydney, I’m—I’m different. I want to be better. I think about what she needs,and I actually care about getting it right. When I mess up, it keeps me awake.”
“You’re describing two completely different relationships, Archer. In one, you showed up out of obligation. In this one, you’re showing up because you can’t imagine not being there. That’s not a pattern repeating; that’s a pattern ending.”
I sit in Dr. Melendez’s comfortable chair on the fourteenth floor of an office building in Midtown, and something shifts. Not dramatically—there’s no lightning bolt, no movie moment. Just a quiet click.
I don’t need to fix myself first, prove I’m ready, or make up for the years I wasted being afraid. I just need to show up differently than I did for Bree, and I’m already doing that. I’ve always done that. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for Syd.
“I think you’re going to be just fine, Archer. But I’m always here if you need me,” Dr. Melendez says as she closes her notebook.
“Yeah,” I reply. “Thanks. I think I am too.”
I drive home through Midtown traffic, the city loud and bright around me, and I feel lighter than I have in months. Not fixed—Zayden was right about that; nobody waves a wand—but clearer. It’s as if someone wiped a windshield I didn’t know was dirty.
I park in the garage and come inside to find Sydney at the kitchen island with her laptop, working on a class schedule for the senior center. She looks up when I walk in.
“Hey. How was your, uh—” She gestures vaguely, knowing where I went. I told her this morning, and her expression was half-surprised and half-something I couldn’t read. She said, “I think that’s really great, Arch,” and meant it.
“Good,” I reply. “It was good.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I set my keys on the counter, lean across the island, and kiss her. She makes a soft sound of surprise against my mouth, and her hand comes up to my jaw.
I pull back and look at her. “I want to take you on a date this weekend.”
She’s smiling—not the careful smile she’s been wearing since the speech, but the real one. The one I’ve been in love with since I was too young to understand what that meant.
