Erin wiped her palms on her jeans and opened the door.
Jamie stood in the hallway with the city still clinging to her. Hair loose, cheeks a little pink from the cool air, sweater tucked into dark jeans that looked both effortless and carefully chosen. Her smile reached her eyes right away, a quick spark that settled under Erin’s ribs.
“Hey,” Jamie said. “Hope I’m not too early.”
“You’re right on time,” Erin said, and stepped back to let her in.
Leo pressed himself to Jamie’s legs without hesitation. Jamie made a soft, delighted sound and dropped to her knees.
“Hi there, handsome,” she said, scrubbing behind his ears.
Leo leaned into her like he had been waiting weeks for this exact greeting. Erin watched them with a small, foolish warmth that she didn’t bother to hide. It felt like some test she hadn’t known she would give, and Jamie had passed it with both hands outstretched.
“Do you want to take him around the block before dinner?” Erin asked. “He will be calmer if he gets a quick lap.”
“Absolutely,” Jamie said. She stood and slid the leash through her palm like a person who knew dogs. “Lead the way.”
The air on the sidewalk was cool and carried a faint scent of damp leaves from the small park down the street. Erin clipped the leash to Leo’s collar and let him pull them into his preferred route. It wasn’t fully dark yet, but the sky had that early evening depth where lights woke up inside the windows and the neighborhood took on a softer glow.
They walked in an easy line, Jamie close enough that their sleeves brushed now and then. Their first words stayed light, like stones skimmed across water. Work. The early morning show that had eaten Jamie’s Tuesday. The call that had dragged her away the other night and the way she had cursedthe universe in the car even as she drove responsibly back to the station. Erin listened and let herself smile. She liked the way Jamie told on herself when she was excited. The truth came out of her like a light turned on, not a confession dragged into the open.
When they reached the park, Leo lowered his nose to the grass with an intensity that always made Erin laugh. Jamie slowed beside her, and Erin felt rather than saw the shift, the way the gravity of the conversation changed.
“Can I ask you something?” Jamie said.
Erin felt it land in her chest. “Of course.”
“It’s about Tilly.”
Erin stopped. Leo tugged softly and then sat when the leash tightened. A cool breeze moved across the grass, and she thought she could name the exact moment her heart braced. She met Jamie’s face and found no accusation there, only steady care.
“I like you,” Jamie said, voice quiet. “I like where this is going. I think you know that. But Tilly is my friend. They matter to me and I cannot pretend they don’t. I need to understand what happened. I want to hear it from you.”
You deserve the truth, Erin thought, and felt the old weight settle on her shoulders, the one she had carried in silence for years. She knew she could offer a version with clean edges. She could say that it had been complicated and that it was long ago and that it would never happen again. All of it would be true and none of it would be honest.
“You deserve the truth,” she said aloud. “I don’t think it will make me look good, though”
“Then start there,” Jamie said, giving Erin room and attention in the same breath.
Erin looked down at Leo first, as if the dog might lend her a steadier voice. She fixed her gaze on his broad head, on the way his tail made small sweeps in the grass, and began.
“Years ago, in DC, Tilly and I started something that neither of us named. Maybe that was the first mistake. It was after briefings and long days, and at first it felt like a safe place to set things down. A drink. A walk to a tiny late-night diner where the coffee tasted like the pot had beenon since the afternoon. We would sit at the far end of the counter, on the squeaky stools, and talk about nothing until the clock slid toward midnight. They made me laugh. They had this way of seeing the angle no one else noticed. I liked that about them. I liked a lot of things.”
She paused and could feel the diner in her mouth as she spoke. The Formica counter with a thin crack near the sugar caddies. The sound of the bell on the door when a regular walked in. The way Tilly’s eyes softened when they talked about their grandmother’s okra that never turned out right and how it still tasted like home.
“It didn’t stay casual,” Erin said. “Not for me, and I think not for them. I told myself I could keep my lines clean. I thought I could manage both things, the job and the person, and never let one bleed into the other. That was a lie I told myself because it made me feel capable. The truth was, I was already in deeper than I could admit.”
Memory unspooled whether she wanted it to or not. A night when rain had kept them beneath the awning of Tilly’s building while they laughed at nothing and pretended they weren’t waiting for courage. The first kiss there, under the hum of a flickering light, sweet and quick, followed by the one that counted. The way Tilly had reached up, hands gentle at Erin’s jaw, and saidI’m not going to break you. The way Erin had believed them, and how terrifying belief had felt.
Jamie listened without interruption. When her gaze flicked away, it only drifted to Leo, who had decided to flop in the grass like a rug.
“I started waking up in their apartment sometimes,” Erin said, and now the images came sharp and bright. A chipped blue mug in the sink. A plant on the sill that was always just on the edge of thriving. A framed photo of a small group at a Pride event, sunlight blowing out the sky behind them. “They would make coffee if there was time. The radio in the kitchen was always on too loud for that hour, some classic rock station that made the coffee taste stronger. We weren’t domestic. It wasn’t that. It was two people who understood that the world felt less heavy together. I should have said that out loud. Instead I pretended we were still circling the same little sun, and we weren’t.”
She remembered the morning she had stared at her own reflection in Tilly’s tiny bathroom. Damp hair. A toothbrush in her mouth. A voice in her head that hadn’t belonged to her for years.don’t mix the thing that saves you with the thing that needs saving. Keep them separate. Keep them protected.She had ignored it until she couldn’t.
“What changed?” Jamie asked, very gently.
Erin’s jaw tightened. “I got scared. That’s the most honest version. I heard myself introduce Tilly to a colleague as a friend and I felt like I had used the wrong word. I saw a deputy chief look twice at us in a hallway and I decided we were visible in a way I couldn’t control. I had a bad week with work and a worse week with sleep and I started to believe that if I pulled one thread, my life would unravel. So I did the thing I hate that I do when I’m cornered. I shut down. I didn’t explain. I told myself we were both adults and that clarity would be kinder if it was clean. I thought making a hard cut was decisive. I convinced myself that it was professional.”
