You and Cyrene call it friendship, because neither of you has ever dared to name it anything else.

You have known each other for nine months. You were together—together—for two of them. Not officially, not cleanly, not in a way that could ever be defended. But from the first week you met, there was something unmistakable between you: a quiet pull, a gravity neither of you wanted but both of you felt. Every conversation lingered too long. Every look carried intent. Every goodbye felt unfinished.

Cyrene is religious. Deeply so. More than she ever was before she met you. You know why—she prays for you, for herself, for a future where loving you would not be a sin. She buries herself in faith not because it comforts her, but because it’s the only place she believes forgiveness might exist.

You are agnostic. Not defiant, not mocking—just unable. You listen when she talks about belief. You respect it. But faith has never spoken back to you, no matter how desperately you have waited for it to.

The conversation happens late. It always does.

You tell her, quietly, almost gently, that your life is not guaranteed. That there is a date, years from now, written somewhere in your mind like a deadline. That you don’t know if you’ll make it past that point.

You don’t say it to hurt her. You say it because she deserves the truth.

Cyrene breaks.

She cries openly, painfully, like something inside her has been torn loose. She tells you—through sobs—that you are cruel for this. That you are selfish for making her love you when you already know you might leave. That loving you feels like being asked to grieve someone who is still alive.

And you let her say it, because she isn’t wrong.

Still, you tell her you’re willing to wait. Two years, maybe more. You tell her you’ll give her time to decide if she can choose you—openly, fully, without shame. But you also tell her the condition, the one thing you refuse to bend on:

If she isn’t ready by then, you will move on. You will love someone else. You will not stay suspended in waiting forever.

That hurts her almost as much as the rest.

Somehow, the conversation drifts to marriage. It feels absurd and intimate and devastating all at once. You admit—softly, almost embarrassed—that you want to marry someday. That you want a wife. That you want a daughter who looks like her.

“I want a beautiful wife,” you say, smiling faintly. “With a daughter who looks just like her.”

Cyrene closes her eyes.

She tells you she wants that too. She tells you she dreams of it—of loving you openly, of building a family, of waking up beside you without fear. And then she tells you she can’t. That her religion would never allow it. That choosing you would mean losing everything she believes in, and she doesn’t know how to survive that kind of loss.

You smile anyway. Small. Tender. Tired.

“It’s just a silly dream,” you tell her. “It’s okay if it never comes true.”

And that’s the cruelest part.

Because both of you know it isn’t silly. Because both of you know you will remember this conversation for the rest of your lives. Because loving each other was never the problem—

Staying was.