Always final.
I argued at first. Tried to insist. Tried to earn my place here in the only way I understood how.
It didn’t work. So I stopped.
And somewhere along the way, I learned something I’m still adjusting to—that here, I don’t have to earn anything.
Myra drops into the chair across from me, already grinning, energy spilling out of her.
“Okay,” she says, leaning in. “Would you rather.”
I feel my mouth lift before I think about it. It’s become routine between us. Easy. Light.
“Go on,” I say.
“Would you rather travel somewhere new every year,” she begins, “or stay in the same place forever?”
I don’t answer right away.
The old answer rises first. The safe one. The one that keeps everything contained and known and manageable.
But that answer doesn’t feel right anymore.
“Travel,” I reply.
I want to make the choice for myself. I want to travel, to step into it and see how it feels, to decide from experience instead of fear. And if it doesn’t fit me, if it doesn’t feel right, I want to be the one who walks away from it.
Her brows lift. “Really?”
I nod, more sure of it now that it’s out there.
She scrolls on her phone, already moving to the next. “Okay. Would you rather have a job you love but barely get paid, or a boring job that pays a lot?”
I think about the pieces of my life that are finally mine. The quiet hours. The sense that I’m building something that belongs to me, even if it’s still fragile.
“A job I love.” I don’t hesitate this time. “I’ll figure the rest out.”
Maeve meets my gaze. A flicker of curiosity passes through her, approval in it. I answer with a slight lift of my shoulder.
Myra leans back, thinking. Her eyes glint with mischief. “Okay.” She draws the word out, stretching it thin. Her signature move right before she drops the big one. “Last one.”
I stop mid-reach for my cup.
“Would you rather,” she starts, her voice dropping to a playful murmur, “go on a date with Kieran… or keep pretending you don’t think about him like that?”
Everything inside me stalls.
My mind reaches for something—anything—to fill the space the question opened, and finds nothing there. No hidden thought. No buried realization waiting to surface. Just a blank stretch where an answer should be.
I’ve never thought about Kieran that way.
Not once. Not in passing. Not in the quiet moments when I’m alone. He’s never lived in that part of my mind.
He exists somewhere else. In a place that feels separate from all of that. A place that isn’t complicated.
He’s safe.
He’s safe in a way that never asks anything from me.
