Through most of it, I’m watching Sophia rather than the stage. It’s easier and more honest. Her face is in the dark, completely open, leaning forward slightly, one hand pressed flat against her collarbone without realizing she’d put it there. The careful composure she carries everywhere is simply gone, replaced by something that has no pretense in it at all.
At some point in the second half, the air conditioning drops, and her arms draw in around herself, that quiet stoicism of someone getting cold and deciding not to make anything of it. I remembered she had placed her jacket in my saddlebag, completely forgetting it. So, I take mine off and place it around her shoulders. She turns and looks, something moving in her expression that she doesn’t finish, then pulls the jacket around herself and turns back to the show.
Her shoulder is warm against mine for the rest of the evening.
We are riding home through the Vegas night. The Strip falls away in the mirrors, the desert road opening ahead, darkand straight, leading back toward the house and whatever the evening becomes when we get there.
Her arms are around me, and her cheek is against my back.
The jacket is still around her shoulders. Riding, I feel her weight behind me and think about the canyon and how she asked for everything in my power to come back to her, her arms pulling me in at the edge of all that emptiness, my eyes dropping to her mouth, and the thought that came after.
The desert swallows the city behind us while the house appears in the distance, warm lights against the dark, the way it always looks from this road.
Something about it lands differently tonight.
Home.
When did that happen?
Parking the bike in the garage, Sophia gets off and hands me her helmet. Her face is open and easy in a way not seen in a while, and something settles quietly at the sight of it.
Memphis meets us at the door.
Sophia crouches down and lets him push his big head into her hands, scratching behind his ears, and he leans his full considerable weight into her, sighing with complete contentment. She laughs quietly, that small, unguarded sound, and presses her face briefly on the top of his head.
Standing in the garage doorway, I watch them. Sophia is on her knees with Memphis leaning into her, his tail moving in slow, satisfied arcs. Something about the ease of it holds me there a beat longer than intended before picking up the helmets and going through.
When I come back, she is standing in the kitchen with a glass of water, the jacket still around her shoulders, her hair neat from the ride, and her face quiet in the way it gets late at night when the day has been full and she’s used most of what she had.
She looks at me over the glass. “Thank you,” she says. “For today. The show was amazing, and the canyon…” she pauses, her voice going softer. “It was exactly what I needed.”
“It was my pleasure.”
She sets down the glass, slips the jacket off her shoulders, and holds it out.
Taking it from her, my eyes move over her, the neat line of her hair, the white shirt, the bare feet on the kitchen floor, and something that has absolutely no right to happen happens anyway.
Magnificent, I think.Entirely and completely magnificent. And completely off-limits.
Our fingers don’t touch.
“Goodnight, Tate,” she says.
“Goodnight, Soph.”
She goes down the hallway, and her door closes.
Standing in the kitchen with my jacket in hand, the house is quiet around me. Memphis settles on my foot and looks up with those amber eyes, the ones that see everything and have the good sense not to say a word about any of it.
“Don’t.”
He blinks.
I put the jacket over the back of the stool and stand at the kitchen window for a long time. I gaze out at the pool, shimmering quietly below the deck, the desert beyond, and the dark of a Nevada night that has no interest in what is happening inside this house. Eventually, the window runs out of answers, and my hands tighten briefly around the back of the stool, then I let go.
Going to bed is the only reasonable next move, and I do, but sleep is the last thing I can do right now.
Lying in the dark with the house quiet around me, and Memphis a warm weight at the foot of the bed, my brain does the opposite of what I need it to do.
