Fall Shook Up

by Piper Sheldon

“I’ve known from the second I met you that you would shake my life up. But I was a chickenshit. I didn’t want my life shook up. I wanted to stay hiding and mourn, but not really. I wasn’t mourning my mother, though. I was in this awful holding pattern between self-disgust and doing nothing. When I told you how I felt about you, I felt small and insecure and a failure when you didn’t instantly return my feelings.” I looked down at our hands, but before I could speak, he went on. “But that wasn’t fair of me. If I know anything about you, it’s that you take your time to understand things. I should have been patient and waited.” He took a deep breath and prepared himself to speak. “Worse than that, though. When you brought the article to me, my pride took a deeper hit. I felt like an absolute failure. You had known the truth for weeks and saw it clearly when I couldn’t in thirty years.”