“Most people just aren’t ready yet,” he said quietly, eyes piercing.

I held his gaze for a few seconds, then dropped it to the spoon resting on the saucer. Its stem curled into an intricate spiral, like a fiddlehead.

I propped my chin on my hand and leaned slightly to the left, looking out the window.

“Maybe I’m not either… I don't even know what I’m looking for anymore. It’s like the vision gets cloudy, you know? Is familiarity the reason we long for a past that we remember to have been better than it actually was?”

He didn’t say anything for some time, his chest rising and falling with deep, deliberate breaths. Twirling his black ballpoint pen in his long fingers, he looked at me and said slowly, “You’re allowed to take as much time as you need.”