“You’re so good at that,” she whispers.
I raise an eyebrow. “Surprised?”
“A little.”
“Should I be offended?”
“No.” She touches my face, her fingers light on my jaw. “You know… I wasn’t expecting…”
“Expecting what?”
“Someone who pays attention,” she says finally.
I don’t know what to do with that. The implication that she’s been with people who didn’t bother, who took what they wanted and left her to clean up after. Something hot and protective moves through me and I kiss her again, deeper this time, trying to say things I don’t have words for.
ELIDA
Afterward, we lie in the dark and he pulls me in without making anything of it, arranging us, his arm around me, my head on his chest, like it’s something we’ve done before.
For a while we stay like that, his hand moving slowly up anddown my arm in an absent, easy way that makes my eyes heavy.
“Tell me something,” he says, into the dark.
“What kind of something?”
“Anything. Something I don’t know.”
I think about it.
“I used to listen to ABBA before competitions. Specifically Dancing Queen. Every single time.”
He laughs. “That’s not what I expected.”
“What did you expect?”
“Something more - I don’t know - classical. Serious.”
“Oh, the program wasveryserious. That’s exactly why I needed ABBA.”
He laughs again and pulls me closer and I let him.
“Your turn.”
A pause.
“I’ve never told anyone how scared I am about not getting scouted,” he says. “Not Chen. Not Zane. Not anyone.”
I lift my head and look at him in the dark.
“Thank you again. For the stairwell.”
I put my head back down on his chest.
“ABBA,” I say. “Next time you’re spiraling.”
He laughs, and I feel it through his chest.
We lie there a while longer, easy and content, and I’m almost asleep when his hand stills on my arm and he says, very casually.
