Aiden.
Then Aurora.
Then the team chat — twelve notifications in about six seconds, which means somebody said something inadvisable about the Conference Final matchup and the rest of the chat is now arguing about it.
I silence all of it without looking.
Nova clocks it.
Doesn’t say anything.
I see her see me see her see it.
We both let it go.
She closes the laptop a few minutes later. Pushes it away. Picks up the decaf she said she didn’t want and drinks it.
“Hendricks and Cole picked the Reapers in five,” she says.
“They did.”
“You got a folder on it yet?”
“Started this morning.”
“That’s healthy.”
“You said that already.”
“I’m reinforcing it.”
She drinks her coffee. I drink mine. Brick rotates onto her lap because Brick has made his choice and is committing to it.
I look at her.
I am looking at her too much. I know I’m looking at her too much. I can’t fucking help it.
She catches me.
Doesn’t look away.
“What.”
“Nothing.”
“Mm.”
She goes back to her coffee.
I go back to mine.
The kitchen does the kitchen thing — the hum of the fridge, Brick’s purring, the rest of suburbia outside the window doingits Wednesday-night thing — and we sit there for a while and don’t say anything because we don’t have to.
I am dying.
I am sitting at my own kitchen counter at nine forty-five on a Wednesday night thinking about how tight she felt around me while she pets my cat and edits a piece about military families, and I have been hard on and off since she walked through the door, but this is fine. This is fine. This is fine.
She sets her empty cup down.
