“God,” I say. “Okay.” I set my cup carefully because my hands aren’t the steadiest.
“Why didn’t you stop it?”
I thought she’d ease me in. She doesn’t. It’s very Bailey to rip the bandage when I’ve brought extra gauze.
“Because I was a coward,” I say, and it’s almost a relief—the word finding air. “Because the room was louder than I was brave. Because I thought if a crowd loved me, the one person I wanted to love me would feel obligated to catch up.”
Her eyes don’t flinch. She takes it like she takes rope—measured, strong. “You hurt me.”
“I know.”
“Do you still have it?” she asks, and the question lands gently and surgically.
“Yes,” I say, because there’s freedom in not lying to yourself or to the woman who might still own you. “It goes with me everywhere.”
Something in her breath stutters and then smooths. “I hated you.”
“I earned it.”
“Good,” she says, and there’s the ghost of a smile that doesn’t make it past her mouth. “Now we can stop pretending to be polite.”
We talk. About then. About now. About how silence is also an answer, and how we both gave too much of it. She tells me about winter break and how leaving for two weeks felt like two years because the town kept asking her questions like quizzes, and she failed all of them. I tell her about the hit that ripped my shoulder and a part of my certainty, and how the silence after the crowd gasped felt like the first time the world told memaybe not you.
“Are you afraid?” she asks.
“Every minute,” I say. “Of doing it wrong again. Of loving theideaof you more than the person in front of me.” I run a hand over my jaw because it feels like the only true gesture left. “I don’t want to put you on a shelf. I want to stand next to you and be useful.”
She watches me like she’s grading a paper, and I might pass if I show my work. “What are you afraid I’ll do?” she asks.
“Fold,” I say, and she blinks. “That you’ll fold yourself small to make me fit. That you’ll give me the lighthouse and leave yourself in the dark corners.”
“Crew.” She says my name like it’s heavy and she’s strong. “Rule one: I don’t fold. I reorganize with extreme measures.”
“Hot,” I say, because the alternative is crawling across the rug and learning the taste of her shoulder, and we’re not doing that yet.
She rolls her eyes, fondness smudging the edge. “Rule two: if you want to touch me, you ask. Out loud.”
My spine goes electric. “Out loud.”
“So I can say yes,” she says, more serious now, “and you’ll know it’s yes.”
“Rule three?”
“No assumptions,” she says. “About the past or the future. I decide what forgiveness looks like. You decide what you can carry. We both decide if we’re building something or playing house.”
“Building,” I say, instantly. She looks relieved and annoyed that I didn’t agonize. I grin. “What? I’m decisive about two things: breakfast and you.”
“That’s unfortunate,” she says, smiling despite herself. “I’m complicated.”
“I like complicated,” I say. “It keeps things interesting after the awkwardness.”
She laughs and presses her palm to her mouth like she can keep it in. Her eyes are warm and dangerous. Somewhere out over the water, a buoy clangs. The windows hum in their frames like a satisfied cat. We drink more tea. We read a page each from a book about people who almost ruin it and don’t—because they choose to be grown instead of dramatic. We don’t kiss. Every cell in my body yearns for it, though.
When we finally stand, it’s slow. Gravity changes when you leave a room that holds a version of you you like. Down the spiral, her sleeve brushes my arm, and restraint becomes an Olympic sport. At the counter, she slides two cookies into a paper bag and writes RULES on the front, underlining it with a flourish like an executioner with manners.
“Same time tomorrow?” I ask, light so she can say no without bruising anything.
“Maybe,” she says, which is woman foryes, if you don’t screw up between now and then.“If you’re good.”
