Gerald didn't answer immediately. The pause had the quality of someone who has said a true thing and is now surprised to find themselves in the truth of it.
"I don't know," he said finally. "I just know that when I'm at the machine, I feel it..."
"That feeling... And then the machine doesn't land, and the feeling's gone, and I keep going because I want it back."
"And when you come home?"
"When I come home, it's gone," he said. "And everything is exactly what it was."
Petricia was quiet.
"I'm not saying this to hurt you," Gerald said. "I know that it does."
"I know you're not," she said.
The exhaustion in her voice was not the anger-exhaustion typical of someone in an argument, but rather the other kind, the structural kind.
"That's the part I can't—" She stopped.
"The part you can't what?"
"The part I can't keep waiting for to get easier," she said. "Gerald... I've been waiting five years for something between us to get easier."
"What do you mean, between us?"
