"It does if it's the only one I actually use."
"You own turmeric."
"Camille bought that in 2024. I don't know what turmeric does."
"Nobody knows what turmeric does."
We're looking at each other. His eyes are wet and his jaw is soft and there's a dried tear track running from the corner of his left eye to his jawline, and he hasn't wiped it, and his hair is pushed sideways from where he leaned against the cabinet, and he looks —
He looks like a man who just let go of a weight and doesn't know where it landed.
And I know what I look like. Mascara on three surfaces. Hair elastic somewhere behind me on the floor. The sweater I threw on at Sophie's is wrinkled and tear-stained, and I'm pretty sure there's a wet spot on the sleeve from where I pressed my face into my own arm, and I didn't care when I drove here and I don't care now.
He's looking at me the way he looked at me on the kitchen floor. That night. The flour night.
"That night," he says.
I know which night.
"When I heard you talking to Bagel."
"You heard me."
"Not the words. Enough." He pauses. "And when you were on the kitchen floor with the pan — the smoke alarm, and the flour —" His hand moves on the floor between us, a restless half-gesture, like his body wants to reach and his brain hasn't signed off yet. "I got off that couch and I watched you fall apart and my chest just — stopped."
"You said that. Before."
"I know. But I need you to hear what I didn't say before." He's looking at me now with the look I've never seen on any version of him — not the deflection version, not the Guard version, not the I'm-fine version. "I had the words. Right there. And Iswallowed them. Every time. The chips night. The flour night. Every morning when you brought me coffee at the exact right temperature because you watched a—"
He stops.
"How do you know about the—"
"You leave your laptop open sometimes. The tabs." He isn't looking at me — he's looking at his hands, at the floor. "I wasn't — I didn't go through your stuff. But you'd leave the room and the screen was on and I'd see the tabs across the top.Pelvic fracture recovery week 3.Best foods for bone healing.One time it washow to fold a fitted sheet."
My face is burning. Not the attractive kind.
"And I sat there," he says, quieter now, "and I thought: she is learning how to take care of me from the internet at 3 AM and she thinks I don't know and—"
He swallows.
"And I couldn't even stand up to tell her."
I put my hand on his forearm. Not the careful bandage-touch. Not the calibrated distance. Just my hand on him.
"That's why I stepped back," I say. "To keep myself from touching you. Not the bandage. You."
II.
She said the wordtouchingand my body reorganized itself around it.
Physically. My pulse in my wrists. The awareness of her hand on my forearm — her fingers, her fingertips, the small callus on her middle finger from holding a stylus. The heat of her palm. She's touching six square inches of my arm and I can feel every single one of them independently, like they each have their own opinion about what's happening.
From touching you. Not the bandage. You.
"Nora."
"Yeah." She hasn't moved her hand.
