"I was scared," she says. "That's why I looked."
I wait.
She pulls the laptop toward her without opening it. Just rests her hand on the cover like she's choosing her words carefully. "I woke up this week and things were good. Really good. And I don't — I don't have a great track record with good. Everywhere I've been, every time it started to feel like I was settling in, something shifted and I wasn't there anymore. Denver. Before that." Her jaw tightens once. "So I pulled up listings. Not because I wanted to go. Because looking at exits makes me feel like I have some control over something I'm terrified of losing."
Neither of us fills the silence.
"I'm not going anywhere," she says. "I wasn't planning to. I was just?—"
"You were scared," I say.
She looks at the table. "Pretty much."
I look at her for a long moment. At the paint stain on her cuff. At the way she's sitting with her hand flat on the closed laptop and her chin up and her eyes steady on mine, waiting to see what I do with what she's just handed me.
"I have a whole drawer of cat supplies, Beck."
That is not the sentence I was expecting. "What?"
"In the suite." She tips her head toward the shared wall. "A whole drawer. Treats, the good kind, not the ones Clarence pretends to hate but definitely doesn't. A backup brush. Two different kinds of toys that he ignores equally. The little crinkle ball he bats under the couch and then yells about." She holds my gaze. "I don't buy cat supplies for places I'm planning to leave."
I don't have anything to say to that. There's nothing adequate. So I don't try.
I cross the kitchen and pull out the chair next to her and sit down. My shoulder presses against hers, and she doesn't move away. Neither do I.
We're not fixed. That's not what this is. I'm still carrying every way I know I can get it wrong, and she's still got one hand somewhere near an exit she didn't actually want to take.
But we're in the same room.
And from the couch, in a small sleepy voice without opening her eyes, Ivy says: "Clarence is guarding Dino now."
Gemma and I both look over. Clarence has, in fact, repositioned himself directly in front of the brachiosaurus. Back still turned. Expression deeply aggrieved. But there.
She tilts her head against my shoulder. Neither of us moves. Outside, the mountains do what they've always done — sit enormous and indifferent and permanent against a cold blue sky.
She said she's not going anywhere, and I believe her. But there's a version of staying that's just not leaving yet, and a version that's choosing this on purpose — choosing me on purpose — and at some point I'm going to have to ask which one she means, and actually let her answer. But she's here, her shoulder warm against mine, and Clarence is standing watch over a stuffed dinosaur like it's a legitimate assignment, and Ivy is breathing slow and even on the couch.
Right now, I'll take it.
Chapter 17
Gemma
The problem with Tommy is that he notices everything and has absolutely no filter between his observations and his mouth.
I've known this since my first week at Station 7. He noticed that I reorganized the supply cabinet alphabetically, which he announced to the entire crew as evidence that I was "either a genius or a menace, and honestly those aren't mutually exclusive." He noticed when I was sad about Denver — not the whole story, just the edges of it — and didn't say anything for three full shifts, just started putting an extra cup of coffee on the dash on the hard mornings, no comment, no acknowledgment, no expectation of gratitude. He noticed the exact shift in the air between Beck and me before I had the vocabulary for what was happening, and had the restraint, miraculously, to say nothing until he had somewhere really good to go with it.
That was then.
"Good morning, Captain Grumpy Sunshine," he says, the moment our rig pulls out of the bay.
"His name is Beck." I check the side mirror. The road is clear.
"I'm aware of his name." Tommy adjusts his seatbelt with the composure of a man who has clearly already decided heis in the right. "Captain Grumpy Sunshine is a descriptor. An honorific. A title earned through consistent and well-documented grumpiness that has, against all available evidence and basic probability, resulted in?—"
"Tommy."
"—someone relentlessly optimistic and objectively delightful taking up?—"
