I don’t respond. Not at first. I move slowly, hang up the coat. The silence stretches.
He doesn’t let it break.
“Alien Quarter’s an interesting choice. Bit of a risk, politically speaking.”
“Didn’t realize I was running for office,” I mutter, crossing the room to grab a glass of water I suddenly don’t want.
Dennis watches me. Always watching.
“I understand curiosity,” he says. “I do. It’s natural. But there’s a difference between curiosity and... sympathizing.”
My spine goes cold.
“That what this is now?” I snap. “I have dinner and suddenly I’m a sympathizer?”
“I’m saying,” he says carefully, “that people are watching. And you represent more than yourself.”
“No,” I say. “I don’t.”
He sips. “You represent me.”
That stings more than I expect.
“You’re not my father.”
“No,” he agrees. “But I’m the reason you have a job. A home. Security. All the things you’d lose if the wrong people thought you were cozying up to the enemy.”
Enemy.
The word hangs heavy.
I clench my jaw. “They’re not the enemy. Not all of them.”
Dennis tilts his head. “That’s not what you used to say.”
I flinch.
People change.
I’ve changed.
I don’t say that out loud. I don’t trust him with it.
He sets the glass down with a clink. Stands.
“I’m telling you this for your own good. Stay away from that place. From him.”
And then he’s gone.
Door hissing shut behind him like a final breath.
I stand in my quiet living room, heart slamming like fists on glass, and I realize I’ve been holding my breath for ten minutes.
That night, I lie in bed with my hands fisted in the blankets.
Everything inside me feels off-kilter, sliding.
And I can’t tell if it’s fear or freedom.
