THIRTEEN
SELENE
It had been onlythree weeks, but already it felt like Austin had always been here—this shadow moving through my mornings, a steady presence in the house beside mine. Winnie was humming to herself as she picked at the moss in her fairy garden, rearranging tiny ceramic mushrooms around a pale-pink bench that Austin had added one morning last week. He hadn’t said a word about it—just left it there like a secret offering. She’d discovered it on her way out to water the dandelions, and the sight of it had clutched at her chest harder than I’d expected. Now it sat beneath the hydrangea bush, a part of the ever-growing world my daughter was building.
One she believed in.
One Austin kept adding to when no one was watching.
I stood on the back step, coffee warming my palms, pretending not to stare at him as he watered the row of planters along the shared porch. The tank top he wore was threadbare and loose around the neck, but it clung to his back where sweat darkened the fabric in a familiar triangle between his shoulder blades.
He didn’t glance my way, but I saw the faint twitch of his mouth.
He knew.
Of course he did.
This was our new rhythm.
By early September, it had settled into something that felt suspiciously like routine. Winnie’s school year had begun, and Austin—whom I’d officially hired without any real end date in mind—slid into our days as if he’d always belonged here.
In the mornings he slipped in just after I finished brushing my teeth. I’d leave the door unlocked. Sometimes he brought over muffins. Sometimes he just made my coffee. But he always left something—small, quiet things I wasn’t meant to find right away.
A note on the fridge:
Decaf again? What did caffeine ever do to you?
A sticky note on the mirror, after fixing the drawer that had stuck for weeks:
Your bathroom’s nicer than mine. I’m filing a formal complaint.
They were silly. Teasing. Just ink on paper, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away. I kept them tucked in the back of my top drawer, underneath my bras, as if they were too private to be seen—even by me.
We’d also managed to keep any interactions strictly PG—no more mentions of touching ourselves, or each other. Though I couldn’t say the same about what Iactuallydid in the privacy of my own bed.
He was everywhere. In my home. In my daughter’s orbit. In my routines and rituals and quiet moments when I used to have space.
I took a long sip of coffee, letting it coat my tongue before swallowing.
“Fairy Queen,” Austin called to Winnie. “Are you good out here while I run in for breakfast cleanup?”
I straightened. “I can do it.”
Austin flashed me a smile. “Nah, it’s no big deal. Enjoy a few more minutes with her.” My heart thunked against my ribs.
Winnie gave him a thumbs-up with both hands, face scrunched in concentration as she fixed something in the fairy garden. “Next time please don’t touch the moss. It’scurated.”
He laughed, a deep, full sound that felt too large for the porch. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
As he passed me on the step, his hand ghosted the top of my shoulder for a fraction of a second.
It wasn’t long enough to be real.
Just long enough that I still felt it minutes later.
We walked.Not because we had to, but because the morning air was still laced with summer softness, and Winnie liked to skip over the sidewalk cracks in her pink sneakers. When she’d asked me to join them, I couldn’t resist.
Winnie clutched Austin’s hand, launching into a detailed retelling of how Waffles—the class frog—had escaped his tank during story time yesterday. Her ponytail swished behind her with each hop, a glittery scrunchie keeping it wrangled. Austin listened with his whole body, nodding and murmuring at all theright places, his laugh low and unhurried, like the story really was the best part of his morning.
