That gets her attention. She turns to look at me, her face lit by starlight and nothing else, and her expression is careful in the way it gets when she's not sure whether to smile or brace.
"That is genuinely alarming," she says.
"I know." I look at her directly. "I don't know how to keep this casual. That's not how I'm built. Whatever this is, whatever's been building since you moved in — I'm not keeping it at arm's length anymore. That's the first thing."
She doesn't say anything.
"I know that's inconvenient," I continue. "Given that everywhere you've lived, you've left before the boxes were fully unpacked. And I know Ivy complicates this, because she asks about you when you're not here. That's not a small thing."
"Beck—"
"Let me finish."
She closes her mouth. Overhead, three meteors cross in the space of a second.
"I'm asking you clearly whether you want to try this. For real. Not the thing where we sit on the porch and I make coffee and we pretend the tension isn't a third person in every room." A pause. "That's the whole ask."
The silence is long enough that I hear the wind move through the grass at the edge of the clearing.
"I don't know how to stay," she says finally.
There's no brightness in them and no deflection.
"I know that," I say.
"I've left everywhere I've lived. I left Denver. I'll probably—" She stops. Tries again. "I don't know if that's who I am or if it's just what I've done. I can't promise you I know the difference."
"I've been careful and controlled since my marriage ended and before that, probably. I'm very good at holding things at distance." I reach across and find her hand in the dark, wrapmy fingers around hers, and hold on. Another meteor crosses overhead. "So we're both terrible at this."
"Maybe we figure it out together."
The silence after that one is different from all the previous silences. She turns her face up to the sky again, but her hand tightens around mine.
"That's an objectively bad plan," she says.
"I know."
"I'm on board," she says. "I'm terrified, but I'm on board."
A meteor drags across the sky overhead, longer and brighter than any of the others, and it burns out slow, trailing light for a full second before it goes dark. Gemma makes the sound again, low and unguarded, and this time I feel it somewhere behind my sternum.
We stay until the cold works through the jackets and the thermos is empty and the meteors are coming slow but steady, and then she stands and says, simply, "Let's go home," and I fold the chairs back into the truck without overthinking what she means by it.
The drive back is quiet, warm from the heater, her knee angled toward mine in the dark cab.
When I pull into the driveway and cut the engine, Clarence is sitting on the porch step. Not on Gemma's side — on mine. He looks at the truck, then at her, then back at me with the expression of a creature who has been waiting on this particular outcome for some time and finds our pace unreasonable.
Gemma looks at him. "He's judging you."
"He judges everyone."
"No," she says. "That's specifically a you look."
She gets out of the truck. Clarence watches her come up the walk, stands, stretches with complete indifference to the scene he's orchestrating, and falls into step beside her toward the door.She looks back at me over her shoulder and says, simply, "Let's go home," and I watch her go inside.
Standing on my own porch, watching her disappear through the door, I make a decision.
Careful and controlled for years. Measured. Managed. The perimeter intact, the damage contained.
