"You made a joke about minimalism. Everyone laughed. And then you excused yourself to the powder room."
April sucked in a breath through her teeth. "There was a mirror in there. The light-up kind that showed you exactly how close you were to falling apart." She swallowed. "I used to check my face in it. Make sure nothing showed."
She didn’t look at him when she said it.
Liam's fingers flexed once on his knee. She'd come back out every time looking like nothing had happened. And he'd let her. Even though he knew.
"You remember things. Small things. The kind no one bothers to retain because they aren't useful."
"I mentioned chess once and a week later you handed me a beautiful hardcover copy of a book of endgames. You gave it to me like you were passing me a pen,”No announcement. No performance.“Like it was normal to care.”
He looked at her.
"You left the four-dollar sticker on."
April made a soft sound that might have been trying to be a laugh.
"I was afraid if I peeled it off I'd be admitting I was trying," she said. "Like I was reaching."
He could have just let it go. Let her think she was the only one who'd been afraid of what a sticker meant.
"I left it too."
He considered stopping there. Letting it be just that. A detail, not the whole shape of what it meant.
"It's on my coffee table. Where I can see it every day. So I don't forget there are still things I want"
The car moved through another block.
"And I wanted you."
The restraint he'd been wearing flickered and failed and he looked at her like he'd been trying not to for three years.
"And I did nothing."
April didn't look at him. Her thumb found the ring and twisted it once. Then again, harder the second time. The metal caught and pinched and she flinched before smoothing her hand flat in her lap. The ring stayed crooked on her finger.
The car rolled over a seam in the road. A tiny bump. A reminder that they were still moving, still inside physics and traffic lights and other people's Tuesday afternoons.
His reflection flickered over storefronts in the glass. He wondered, distantly, how many times April had seen herself this way—lit up, unguarded—and gone back out anyway.
Her hand closed around his.
He held still, didn’t squeeze too hard, didn’t turn it into more than she was offering. Just let her hand rest in his and tried to figure out what to do with the fact that it was there at all.
The light turned green. The car moved forward.
April's voice came out lighter than he expected.
"So you've been pining for three years and your move was… buying your brother anniversary watches?"
"It wasn't the right move. But it was the only one I had."
The car pulled up to a building with no sign on the door.
April's hand flexed in his. He let go—he'd had it for less than five minutes and already his hand felt wrong without hers.
He stepped out first. Then he turned back, standing in the open doorway, afternoon light catching the expensive lines of his suit.
