I didn’t expect to meet her so late in life, after my routines had hardened and my ambitions had narrowed to keeping peace rather than chasing want. I’m known among friends and family as dependable, the one who shows up early and leaves last, carrying years of quiet compromises no one ever notices. She entered my world gradually—first as someone adjacent to the people I loved, then as a presence I couldn’t ignore—and the connection unsettled me because it arrived after I believed that part of myself was finished.

Now I measure myself by what I refuse to take. Seeing her so often makes restraint feel like a daily choice rather than a virtue, and some days that choice is heavier than others. I don’t tell anyone how carefully I keep my distance, how much of myself I leave unsaid, because the cost of honesty would be too high. Loving her, even silently, has become less about desire and more about responsibility, a reminder that some feelings are meant to be carried, not acted upon.