“I can’t do this,” she said again. Going down, down, down, finally shoving the door open at the bottom of the stairs, swapping the artificial stairwell light for the sunset.
“Please. Please hear me out,” he said. “There is so much I want to tell you. I created a fake email account and wrote Joel, pretending to be you.”
“I…I don’t understand. What? When? Why?!”
“I don’t have a reason. It was Thursday night. I was drunk when I started it, and it was a stupid, stupid thing to do, and I’m sorrier than I can properly express out here like this. I don’t have the words, but I’m trying. I’m literally begging you to forgive me.”
“This is scaring me. I don’t know who you are,” she said, stopping to turn around. She’d walked over to the smoking section; fortunately, they were the only ones there.
“You do, though. I opened my heart to you in ways I haven’t to anyone in a really long time. You saved my life on that bridge. I lied to you when I said I didn’t ask for a sign. I did! I asked for a sign, and the sign was you.”
Of course he’d asked for a sign when he was on the bridge: Dear God, if You’re there, if You’re real, if I shouldn’t do this right now, please have someone stop me. Exit original plan. Enter God and Tallie.
“Then the Giants won the World Series…that was another sign,” he said.
“I have no clue what you’re talking about. Give me a cigarette,” she demanded, holding out her hand.
Rye did as he was told, shaking a cigarette from the pack in his pocket and handing her his lighter, too.
（Tallie lights it, smokes, begins pacing. Back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. She’s wearing the same sweater she wore to the outlet mall on Friday; she knit it herself. It smells like her house.）
“Please look at me for a second so I can talk to you?”
“Why should I do anything you ask me to do?” she said. Her eyes searched the parking lot. Was she looking for security? Someone to help her? It crushed him, thinking she was afraid of him.
“Tallie, please. I don’t want you to be afraid. I’m going to tell you the truth,” he said gently. “The only reason I didn’t tell you earlier is because I didn’t want you feeling sorry for me…googling me and then…acting differently toward me. Once people find out, it changes everything. Everything.”
Tallie stepped away from him.
“I really don’t understand anything you’re saying! This is all so cryptic…I…once people find out what?”
“First, I want you to know I didn’t do it to hurt you. Just to even out the invasion of privacy. I regretted it immediately, but Joel wrote me back, and I thought…”
He would tell her everything, leaving out the part about Lionel finding out about Joel’s affair during their last round of IVF and the part about Lionel cheating on Zora. A lot had happened over the weekend, but Rye knew when to keep his mouth shut. He’d take that shit to the grave as a common courtesy. He considered deleting those parts from the email, showing Tallie the rest. Tallie smoked and used her thumb to wipe the tears that spilled from the corners of her eyes.
（Tallie’s nose is hot pink again. As the sun goes down, the sky is hot pink, too.）
“What? What invasion of privacy?”
“My letters.”
“Wow. I…wow!”
“They were private, they were mine, and you took them,” he said, trying his best to keep his voice from shaking.
“Okay! I shouldn’t have done that! But what the hell? You did something this huge because I took your letters?”
“It just…set everything off, that’s all.”
“And so you thought, what? I’m so desperate I need a stranger to talk to my ex-husband for me? Did you tell Joel to come here?” Tallie asked. He could feel the energy of her anger rising, pressing against him.
“No—”
“Tell me your real name. Who are you?”
“Ryland Miller Kipling.”
“Who’s Emmett Aaron Baker?”
“Nobody. I made him up. I’m from Bloom, not Clementine. They’re close to each other—”
“What shit did you go through? What’s Joel talking about?”
“That’s what I want to tell you—”
“Who’s Brenna?”
“Is this where you apologize for sneaking the letters from my pockets and reading them?”