• • •
Cassian and Abby are already there when we arrive, tucked into a booth by the window.
She’s smaller than I imagined. Red hair pulled up, laughing at something on her phone before we even sit down.
Cassian looks — relaxed.
The easy kind. The kind he only gets when he’s somewhere he wants to be.
Something tightens in my chest.
I slide in across from them. Taylor beside me.
• • •
And then — it’s actually fine.
Not fine like I’m surviving it. Fine like I forget to monitor myself.
Abby is funny. Not in a trying-to-be-funny way — in a way where things just come out of her mouth and land. She does an impression of their history teacher that makes Taylor choke on his drink, and even I’m laughing before I can stop myself.
Taylor tells the story about his brother and the guitar. The dog leaving the room.
Cassian loses it.
I watch him laugh — really laugh — and for a second it doesn’t hurt the way I expect it to.
I tell the one about my dad’s birdhouse. My mom keeping it in the garden because she says it builds character.
Everyone laughs. Even Abby, who doesn’t know my parents at all, laughs like she does.
We order too much food.
Eat most of it anyway.
At some point I stop tracking how I’m doing and just — am.
It’s nice.
• • •
At some point Taylor leans over to look at my phone when I’m showing him something, and his shoulder bumps mine and he just — leaves it there. Doesn’t move away. Doesn’t make it a thing. Just stays close the way people do when they want to be closer and aren’t sure yet if they’re allowed.
I don’t move away either.
It’s close.
That’s the honest word for it.
Just close.
And easy.
Not someone that pushes me every way at every chance.
I don’t have room for anyone else in my heart, though.
But this — this feels like something I didn’t know I was allowed to have.
