They had sounded polished and safe in my head. Now I let them go.
“I want to date you,” I said. “Not finish the list. Not spend one unusually romantic birthday together and quietly call it something else tomorrow. I want to find out what this is when we’re choosing it.”
She watched me without smiling.
“I know what we could lose,” I added. “I’m not pretending the friendship will stay untouched. But I don’t want to keep protecting it by making both of us pretend.”
For a long moment,
