She sighed as we stopped at the red light, so I asked, half-seriously, “Is it just your worry about my being late that’s making you anxious? Doesn’t seem to be.”

She rested her head on her hand as she crooked an arm over her windowsill, and clicked the music off. “You know what?” she asked quietly, turning to look at me. “You’re right. There’s something else.”

I waited. She continued to look at me, apparently debating with herself what to say. Finally she said, “I ‘m worried about how our talk will go, maybe later, when I talk about my dating past. And even if you accept, honestly accept, this aspect of myself, I’m not sure I’ll be able to silence any doubts you could have as a result of listening to everything that had gone on with me. Don’t know whether my past will haunt us, in the future, or whether what I’ve done while with other women will constitute “red flags” for you for some time.”

I didn’t say anything.

As we started to move again, I said, “You’re right, neither one of us will be sure if, deep down inside, an insidious seed of doubt about how each of us will be able to truly get past our respective pasts, without having a kind of reserve up, and block from view the jewel that, for me at least, I can see in you even now.”

“Or the diamond I can see in you,” she responded quickly.

“My point is that we’ll never know if we’re ready to be part of something special, until it actually happens. The way this special thing has happened for us,” I continued softly. “So here we are. Despite our respective past histories …”

She gripped my hand, keeping an eye on the road as she did, and then cut in firmly, “I’ll tell you everything, Harley. But I’d like to promise you right now that I’m never going back to be that person.”

“Even if you do,” I said softly.

“I won’t,” she answered quickly.

“Even if you do,” I tried again. “I’m not giving you up without a fight, Aerin.”

She looked at me with tears in her eyes. She said nothing. She didn’t need to say anything about what that had meant to her.