There’s a pause. I can tell she’s winding up to say something kind, something I probably don’t deserve.
Instead, she just leans across the table and grabs my hand. Her palm is cold and dry, but the grip is familiar, grounding.
“Do what you have to do,” she says. “Just don’t disappear, okay?”
I squeeze her hand. “Never.”
We sit like that, two idiots in a coffee shop, holding hands over the ruins of three years of history and one honest conversation.
When we let go, neither of us looks away.
———
She takes a long sip of her coffee, sets it down, and says, "So. When did you know?"
I could lie, say it snuck up on me, but there’s nothing left to protect.
“I think I always knew,” I say. “But I didn’t want to look at it too closely. I figured it was just… admiration, or whatever.”
She huffs. “Is that what you call it when you want to lick the sweat off someone’s neck?”
I choke on my coffee, and it breaks the tension, just for a second. “Probably not, no.”
She softens, the humor shifting into something like real curiosity. “Was it just Ash?”
I shake my head. “No. There were others. Not like this, though. Not… Not like I want them to be the first thing I see in the morning.”
She bites her lip, and her voice drops to a near-whisper. “So, you’re… what? Gay?”
I wince. “No. Not exactly. I still—I mean, I still like—” I stop, look at her, really look, and say, “I don’t know what I am. I just know this is the first time I’ve ever felt like I wasn’t playing a part.”
She blinks, and a single tear wells up, just enough to glint before she wipes it away with the heel of her hand. “Okay. I can work with that.”
I laugh, because it’s either that or fall apart. “I’m sorry, Nia. I should have told you sooner.”
She shakes her head. “I think I knew before you did. The last couple months, you’d check out every time you got a text. And when you talked about the team, it was always about Ash. What he said, what he did. How he looked in practice.” She gives me a look, half fond, half exasperated. “I just didn’t want to lose you, so I ignored it.”
“I’m still here,” I say. I mean it.
“I know.” She reaches across, grabs my hand again, squeezes. “But I want you to be happy, D. Really happy. Not just… surviving.”
The rain thickens, turning the world outside into a watercolor. I watch the drops race each other down the pane, and for a second, the hurt in my chest is matched by a weird kind of hope.
“We don’t have to tell anyone,” I say, but she shakes her head, gentle but firm.
“No. If we’re doing this, we’re doing it honest. We’ll tell people we grew apart. No drama.”
I nod, grateful. “You’re the best.”
She smirks. “I know.”
The barista calls her name for a refill, and she grabs it, comes back, this time crowding a little closer on the barstool.
For a while we just sit, sharing space, letting the noise of the city replace anything we’d otherwise have to say.
Eventually, she taps my wrist, the universal sign for, “I’m out of time.”
We walk to the bus stop, umbrella or not.
