Rule #6: Knock like you mean it.
Rule #7: No hostile workplace signage.
Rule #8: The one who cooks doesn’t do the dishes.
My mouth twitched when I hit Rule #9.
Rule #9: No making out in the snow.
She’d drawn a thick, blackXthrough theNo, the word obliterated under the ink.Making out in the snowstared back at me like a confession.
Lower down, fresh additions:
Rule #10: Lessons stay behind closed doors.
Rule #11: Either one of us can call a halt. No guilt. No apologies.
My throat went tight.
We’d joked, that first night, about the big one. The catchall.No falling in love.She’d tossed it out like a joke, and I’d laughed like it was obvious. Like it was something you could just stick on a fridge and brute-force into existence with sheer will and permanent marker.
It wasn’t there.
Not crossed out. Not squeezed in at the bottom. Just ... nonexistent.
The bottle of water sweated under my hand. The fridge hummed quietly, stubbornly doing its job while my stomach dropped for a reason that had nothing to do with hunger.
I told myself she’d forgotten to write it this time. That she’d been in a hurry, that she’d run out of room, that it was still understood even if it wasn’t spelled out in black ink.
I let my forehead rest against the cool metal, eyes closed, the chill seeping into my skin. The list blurred in my mind, a mess of lines and promises we kept pretending would keep us safe.
We had rules for everything except the one thing I seemed completely incapable of stopping.
The truth slipped in anyway, slow and inevitable.
That rule didn’t belong on the fridge because, for me, it was already broken.
