Real Tobias had hands.
Real Tobias had a voice.
Real Tobias could leave me speechless.
One afternoon, Tobias stood beside me in front of the cuttlefish’s aquarium.
“That,” I said softly, “is exactly why she needed the new enrichment.”
My ankle no longer hurt; it had moved on to just feeling weird sometimes. I had started using the cuff less as a thing to fight and more as a thing to ignore, which was probably bad, but there were only so many indignities a person could actively resent at once before the brain started outsourcing.
“She’s more responsive to layered stimuli than simple novelty,” I continued. “The color-change triggers aren’t just about surprise. They’re about complexity. She likes having something to solve.”
“Like you,” Tobias said, looking into the tank with a soft expression.
My head snapped toward him. “What?”
Tobias didn’t flinch.
“You like complexity,” he said. “You dislike newness for its own sake, but when a situation evolves in an interesting way, you become more animated. As though you require challenge to remain engaged.”
I wanted to spit something back at him—some clever insult, some barb about how he was only interested in people he could keep in a tank. Except the way he said it was so… not judgmental. Not even cold. Just factual. Like telling me the water temperature was exactly right, or that my pulse had spiked. I looked away, tracking the cuttlefish as she undulated in the open water, her skin rolling with color as she approached the new enrichment.
“Maybe,” I muttered.
Tobias’s mouth twitched, the barest suggestion of a smile. “Have you named her yet?” he asked softly.
My chest did something tight and irrational at the question.
“No,” I said, watching the cuttlefish flash a warning pattern and then go suddenly so pale she practically disappeared against the sand. “I haven’t figured out what fits.”
Tobias’s gaze tracked from me to the tank so transparently I wondered if he was trying to show me his process as it happened, like a tutorial on how to get inside my head.
“You struggle with naming things,” he observed.
I snorted. “I didn’t struggle with Puff Daddy.”
He gave a slow blink, which I’d learned was his version of an amused sigh.
* * *
I lost track of the days in the concrete room. I tried to keep count at first, carving faint lines with a plastic spoon on the undersideof the cot, but after a couple weeks the marks blurred together. At some point, I stopped bothering to count.
My ankle healed, mostly. I could walk laps around the room without limping, though the joint occasionally hummed with a low, spongy ache if I rolled it too far. I did those laps every time the panic set in. I’d shuffle from the bed to the door, fist the handle, test the hinges, then circle back. It didn’t matter that I’d already mapped every inch of the cell, the repetition made it possible to breathe.
It was a Wednesday. I know because I’d counted three cycles of the laundry routine, and Ben always brought fresh towels and linens in on Wednesdays. I was lying on the cot, just blankly staring up at the ceiling, when the lock clicked and the door swung open.
Tobias stepped inside, carrying a tray with a steak dinner on real china and a glass of wine. He set the tray down on the folding table, then didn’t say anything for a long time, just looked at me silently.
I sat up, squinting in the overhead light. “Wow, why so fancy?” I ribbed.
Tobias’s mouth twitched. “I thought you might enjoy a nice meal, after the last few weeks.”
I eyed the steak. It was pink in the middle, juices soaking the mashed potatoes, a sprig of rosemary for decoration. My stomach cramped at the smell. Tobias had been in no way starving me, and I was pretty sure that he’d even cooked most of my meals, but he was right. This was nice. Nice nice.
“What do you want?” I asked.
He sat across from me. “You should eat first.”
