***
A few minutes later Becca appeared back at the table, sliding into the seat next to Ellie, her thigh pressing against Ellie's.
"I’m back," Becca said, leaning over to kiss Ellie on the cheek, casual and affectionate.
"Who was that?" Ellie asked, keeping her voice deliberately light, like it didn't matter.
"Oh… she's a friend of one of my colleagues from the practice. We'd been introduced before apparently but I didn't remember." Becca picked up her drink and took a sip, her eyes smiling over the rim of the glass. "She was definitely hitting on me though. Like, not even subtle about it."
Ellie felt a wash of relief so strong it almost made her dizzy. A colleague's friend. Just someone being friendly who happened to be flirting. Becca hadn't sought it out, hadn't encouraged it, it hadn’t been a stranger… it was just Becca being Becca, warm, open, and this woman had read it as something more.
"You ok?" Becca asked, and Ellie realised she'd been quiet a few moments too long.
"Yeah, fine." Ellie smiled. It was a little forced, but only a little. "Bathroom's disgusting by the way. The hand dryer's broken."
Becca wrinkled her nose. "Charming." She settled back into Ellie, her body familiar and reassuring, and turned to join the wider conversation.
And that should have been it. Relief, and then forgotten. Just another Friday night out, a minor moment, a colleague's friend being a bit too forward, the kind of thing that happens and gets laughed about over brunch the next day.
Except the relief wasn't sitting right. It was there, on the surface, but underneath it something else was still there, quiet and persistent, the echoes of whatever that had been. Ellie had her explanation now, had the reassurance, had Becca warm against her side… and it should have been enough to close the book on whatever that feeling had been.
But it wasn't, and she didn't understand why.
Ellie took another drink and stared at the table, trying very hard and failing spectacularly not to think about the way Becca had pushed her hair back behind her ear.
Chapter 1
They left around midnight, earlier than usual but neither of them fought it when their friends started to thin out. Becca hugged everyone goodbye with her characteristic warmth, Ellie waved from behind her, and then they were outside in the warm Austin night, the noise of the bar falling away behind them as they started the ten-minute walk back to their apartment.
The air was humid for late winter, carrying the faint smell of food trucks along with whatever someone was smoking down a side alley they walked past. The streets around Rainey were still busy, clusters of people moving between bars, rideshares pulling up and pulling away, the distant thump of bass from somewhere further down the block. Above all of it the downtown skyline glowed, those newer towers that seemed to multiply every time Ellie looked, the Austin that was rapidly becoming something different from the Austin they'd moved to a year ago.
Normally they talked on the walk home. They talked about everything, always had. They were the sort of couple who could turn a ten-minute walk into a forty-minute conversation without noticing. But tonight Ellie was quiet and she knew that Becca could tell.
Ellie was trying to think and failing. Her body was still doing the thing it had been doing since the bar, the low hum of something new running through her, and every time she tried to put a thought together it scattered. She kept replaying the same fragments: the woman's hand on Becca's arm, Becca's hair pushed back behind her ear, that laugh, and each time she replayed them her stomach went tight, and her skin felt warm, and she was no closer to understanding any of it.
"You're being very quiet," Becca said after a couple of blocks. Her voice was gentle, careful. The voice she used when she suspected something was wrong but didn't want to push.
"Just tired," Ellie replied, and knew immediately that it was the wrong answer because Becca could always tell when she was lying.
Becca was silent for a few more steps. Then: "Is this about the woman at the bar?"
Ellie felt her jaw tighten. "No." Said with much more tension that she’d meant.
"Because if it is, I want you to know that she came up to me. I didn't seek her out. She was friendly and we talked, and yes she was flirting, and I probably should have shut it down sooner, but I didn't think it was a big deal. I'm sorry if…”
"You don't need to apologise."
"I feel like I do." Becca reached for Ellie's hand as they walked. Ellie let her take it but didn't squeeze back, not out of coldness but simply because she was concentrating on not saying something she hadn't figured out yet. "Ellie, I would never... you know I would never."
"I know."
"Then what's going on? Talk to me."
They walked in silence for another half a block. They were on a quieter stretch now, residential, the bars behind them, the sound of their footsteps on the sidewalk and the distant hum of Congress Avenue the only noise. A cyclist passed them going the other way. Somewhere a dog barked once and stopped.
Ellie tried to form her thoughts into something coherent. She tried three different opening sentences in her head and gave up on all of them because they all came across as too confrontational, and that really wasn’t it. The analytical part of her brain, the part that spent all day solving problems in clean logical sequences at work, was completely useless here. This wasn't a problem with a solution. This was a feeling she didn't have a clue how to name.
"I wasn't jealous," she said eventually, and it still came out wrong, too flat, like a statement read from a card rather than something she felt.
