“Can I tell you something?” she says after a moment.
“Depends.”
She shifts on the bench, angling toward me. “Alex got me thinking. That story question.”
“Alex gets a lot of people thinking. Usually about how to make him stop talking.”
She laughs, and it drips over me like honey. “Stop it. He’s charming.”
“Don’t tell him that. He’ll use it as ammunition on Felicity.”
“You heard him ask me what kind of story my life would be,” she says. “The truth is, all my stories are about people letting me down. My mom, my dad, my career. Every time I thought I had something solid, it got pulled out from under me.” She stares into her cup. “And I still keep going, because what else is there to do?”
Relatable.
“But sometimes I wonder what it’d be like to have one thing that actually stays.”
My mind builds it for her before I can stop it.
Saturday mornings with coffee and bare feet on the kitchen tile. A hand on her lower back, stealing bits of her food before she’s finished cooking. A dog at her feet, his tongue wagging because even he can’t resist her pull. Cider in October every year.
Normal, ordinary things that don’t disappear.
I can see it so clearly it hurts. And in every single frame, it’s me where someone else should be.
“You will.”
She looks at me, surprised. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“What about you?” she asks. “If your life was a story.”
I take a long sip. “Horror.”
She frowns. “Horror?”
“The kind where the monster isn’t some creature in the shadows. It’s the people you trust. The ones who are supposed to protect you.” I pause. “And sometimes it’s you. Sometimes you look in the mirror and realize the monster’s been there all along, wearing your face.”
She’s quiet for long enough that I think I’ve said too much. Maybe I’ve reminded her who she’s sitting next to—not just her boyfriend’s best friend, but a man who’s done things that don’t wash off. Things that stain my soul forever.
“You’re not a monster, Lance.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know enough.” She grips my arm. “I know you’re training a scared kid so he has a chance at surviving something thatshouldn’t exist. I know you’ve been protecting me when you had every reason not to. I know you let your guard dog carry around a pink duck because it’s his favorite toy.”
“Virgil.”
She blinks. “What?”
“The duck. His name is Virgil.” I don’t know why I’m telling her this. “It was the only toy he didn’t destroy when he was a puppy. Pax gave it to him when he was eight weeks old. Carries it everywhere.”
“Virgil,” she repeats. “You named your dog’s pink duck Virgil.”
“Cavall named him. I just made it official.”
She presses her lips together, but her eyes are bright. “Monsters don’t name their dog’s toys, Lance.”
