She nods slowly. “Good.”
“Wasn’t asking for approval.”
“Didn’t give any.”
We both laugh, just a little. It feels weird. Good. Like cracking open a rib cage and finding the heart still beating.
She leans back on her elbows, eyes on the first stars peeking through smog. “You ever think about what comes next?”
“Every day.”
“And?”
“I don’t know.” I scratch at a scab on my wrist. “You?”
She shrugs. “Sometimes I think about a bar. Tiny one. Not in the middle of any damn war zone. Just bottles and stools and people who talk too loud.”
“You’d hate that.”
“Maybe. But I wouldn’t be scared of it.”
I whisper, “I think I could be good at quiet.”
She turns her head toward me. “You are.”
The words settle over me slow and heavy. I close my eyes and let the wind roll over my face. It smells like metal and burnt neon, but there’s a softness under it. Maybe rain. Maybe something better.
We stay there until the lights shut down one by one across the district. No curfew. Just old tech and power saves and nobody caring enough to fix it.
When she yawns and pushes to her feet, I follow.
Back inside, we don’t say much. She changes into one of my old shirts. I pretend not to notice how it fits her better than it ever did me. I clean the worst of the grime from my hands in the kitchen sink. The water’s cold. Always is.
Then she’s on the couch, blanket pulled up to her chin, staring at nothing. I kill the lights and sit on the floor beside her.
Neither of us says goodnight.
Because it’s not goodbye anymore.
Just rest.
Kelsea moves in with a duffel bag full of mismatched clothes and a plastic crate of salvaged tech that rattles like bones in a box every time she shifts it. It’s got wires poking out the sides like they’re reaching for second chances. She says some of it still works. I don’t ask which parts.
First night, she takes the couch. Claims it like a street fighter claims their corner—tight, guarded, half-daring me to push back. I offer her the bed. She laughs like that’s the most ridiculous thing she’s heard in years.
“Don’t get fancy, Roja,” she says, folding a threadbare blanket around her shoulders like armor. “You know what happens when you get used to nice things.”
By the third night, she’s beside me, her back a line of warmth against mine, her breathing slow and shallow, like she’s still listening for the world to fall apart. I match my breaths to hers. And somehow, we both sleep.
She stops dancing like she’s breaking a bad habit. No grand speech. No ceremony. Just one day, the shoes are gone, and the screen where she used to replay old routines goes dark. When I ask, her eyes flick to me, sharp and unreadable.
“Don’t miss it?”
“No one should have to perform to be seen,” she says, voice low. “I’m done letting strangers choreograph my survival.”
After that, she starts cooking. If that’s what you can call it. The first attempt is some kind of rice-and-bean monstrosity that bubbles like lava and smells vaguely like burned rubber. She curses in three languages—Coalition Standard, Trivethian, and something I think might be back-alley merchant slang. She slams the pan down so hard the counter shudders.
I eat every bite.
