The warmth that hits me isn’t just memory. It’s now. It’s her. It’s the way she stands in the light like she belongs to it.
A shout snaps my attention sideways—Torres arguing about whether a gasket is seated right. I call that I’ll check it and start to turn, but Savannah’s voice freezes me in place.
“Do you ever think about who we would’ve been?” she asks, quiet, not looking at me, looking at the peaks like they might answer.
I look at her profile, the strong line of her nose, the stubborn chin I used to touch with my thumb when I wanted her to meet my eyes.
“Every day,” I say.
She swallows. I watch the movement. It feels like touching and hurts the same.
“I keep remembering those stupid holiday pageants,” she says, lips quirking. “You hating the angel wings. Me demanding extra glitter. Your mom bribing you with hot chocolate if you didn’t rip the halo off in disgust.”
“It itched.”
“It sparkled.”
“It shed on my neck. I was a disco ball.”
“You were handsome,” she says—and then looks like she wants to bite the word in half.
Something kicks inside my chest. Slow, mean, grateful.
“You were bossy,” I manage.
“Still am.”
“Yeah,” I say, softer than I should. “Still are.”
Wind rifles the flag out front. A car passes on the road, tires whispering over packed snow. Somewhere a dog barks twice, impatient and alive. Everything feels too bright and too clear, the way winter light cuts all the shadows short.
“When my mom was sick,” she says, voice going careful, “your mom put a pie on our porch every Sunday and pretended she was experimenting with crusts, like it wasn’t pity.”
“She loved your mom,” I say. “Still does.”
“Your family kept us tethered.” Her mouth lifts. “Your sister taught me to braid. Your dad taught me to split wood. You stole my mittens to ‘keep them safe’ and then wore them until the thumbs blew out.”
“They were superior mittens.”
“They were pink with hearts.”
“War mittens,” I say with a grin.
She laughs. The sound hits me square in the sternum and slides under my ribs like heat. I want to catch it in my hands and stick it somewhere permanent.
“You shielded me from the eighth-grade terrors,” she says, and the light dims a degree. “You stood between me and whatever hurt worse.”
“You did the same,” I say, and she looks at me like she doesn’t know what I’m talking about. “After my dad lost that contract and everyone had an opinion about Ramirezes being unlucky, you told the boys on the bus you’d break their teeth if they said my name like a curse again.”
She blinks. “I… did?”
“Threatened dental work. Very convincing.”
She hides a smile in her cup. Then, quieter: “I remember bandaging your hand after you punched the locker because Brandon called your mom a—” She cuts herself off, eyes flashing. “You were so mad. I could feel it shaking in your bones.”
“And you told me to hold still,” I say, hearing the echo of her sixteen-year-old voice in the shape of my name. “And I did.”
We look at each other for a long time. A cable draws taut between us, a line we step onto every time we get this close.Memory isn’t a soft blanket here; it’s a fault line. One shift and everything breaks open.
