Cleo tilts her head so her mouth is near my collarbone.“I already told Eddie I don’t know how to do this,” she says.“Not just ...this.Any of it.The bath.The house.You two.”
“You don’t have to know,” I say.“We can fuck it up and try again.As long as we talk about it.”
We sit.Water laps.The bubbles soften and break.Eddie adds a trickle of warmth and asks permission with his eyes first, and when she nods, with his hand on the handle.I can feel the temperature climb along my shins; she sighs, and that sound rolls through me like a promise I’m not allowed to make.
“Bear?”she whispers.
“Yes, baby?”
“Thank you for the music.”
My throat goes tight.“Anytime.”
Eddie stands, joints cracking in protest, he pretends not to feel.He leans a shoulder against the doorframe, not crossing it, sentinel and man all at once.His voice, when it comes, is quiet enough to be trusted.“We’re not trying to make you choose,” he says.“Not between us.Not between before and now.We’re just here as long as you need us—as you want us.”
And I hear the rest without him saying it out loud.As long as you let us love you.
Cleo nods.“I don’t know if I can be ...anything,” she says.
“You don’t have to be,” I tell her.“You can just ...float.”
She huffs a breath that almost turns into a laugh.“In a tub?”
“In a life,” I say, surprising myself.“We’ll hold the sides.”
For a long time, we do nothing else.My arms stay where she asked me to keep them.Her back learns the shape of my chest and decides it can stand it for five minutes more.Eddie watches the steam thin and the salts dissolve to nothing.No one reaches for more.No one names this.
Her head grows heavier against me.(No—heavier is banned in my head.I choose fuller.) Her head settles.I don’t move.
“Five more,” she murmurs.
“Five,” I echo.
“Then I want tea,” she adds.“And the window open.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Eddie says, so soft it’s almost a prayer.
I close my eyes and try not to think about the bodies we were when we met, or the versions we ruined trying to fit a mold that never belonged to us.Right now, there is only warmth, a bathroom that smells like hope disguised as soap, and three people learning how to stay.
When the five minutes end—it’s her call, not mine—I help her stand by offering an elbow and not guiding it.She steps out with Eddie’s towel already waiting.
It’s almost domestic, almost ordinary, and that’s the miracle.Right now, this is just a girl in a bathroom asking for tea, and two men who are trying very hard to earn tomorrow.
Trying very hard not to fall apart after they saw her running and didn’t know if this time she’d be gone forever.
“Swimsuit off,” she says to me without looking back, and for a second, my brain misfires.Then the corner of her mouth lifts.“It’s soaked.You’ll drip all over the hall.”
“Right,” I say, voice wrecked.“I’ll change.”
She presses her cheek into the towel.“Don’t disappear,” she adds, casual and not casual at all.
“I won’t,” I tell her, and mean it so much it scares me.
Eddie meets my eyes over her head.No glare.No dare.Just a nod like two men on the same side of a very fragile line.
We will fuck this up.We will fix it.Not today.Today, we make tea, open a window, and pretend warmth is enough to build on.And if pretending is all we can do, we’ll do it until pretending becomes practice and practice becomes living.
ChapterTen
