"That's the problem, Cole. That's always been the problem."
She sets the mug down, slides off the counter, and crosses the kitchen to stand in front of me. Bare feet, my sweatshirt, the woman I've been taking care of since she was a girl with agarbage bag in the back seat of my father's car. When she puts her hand on my arm, my forearm tightens beneath her palm.
"Talk to me," she says.
"About what?"
"About whatever is making you scrub the finish off a pan at seven in the morning."
"It's not one thing. It's—"
I stop with the rest of it jammed behind my teeth.
The front door opens, followed by keys hitting the counter and Dante's footsteps cutting through the house. Cold comes off him when he rounds the corner into the kitchen, sweat darkening the black long-sleeve across his chest, his breathing still rough from the run. His gaze moves from Maya to me, then to the counter, the doorway, and finally to Maya's hand on my arm.
His jaw shifts.
"Morning," he says to the coffeemaker.
"Morning," Maya says.
I don't say anything.
The coffeemaker runs. Dante pours coffee. One mug. His. The rest stay in the cabinet.
Maya is still in front of me, her hand still on my arm, but her attention starts moving between us. The mug in Dante's hand. The cabinet doors. His closed bedroom door down the hall.
"Something is wrong," she says to both of us. "Something has been wrong for days, and neither of you will tell me what it is. I'm standing in a kitchen where the silence is louder than any sound I've ever heard in this house."
"Ask him," Dante says from the counter, coffee in hand.
Maya turns. "Ask him what?"
"Ask Cole what happened on Thursday."
The spatula handle digs into my palm. Dante leans against the counter with his coffee, still in his running clothes, his face the blank wall, the composure that means the pressure underneathhas found its line of attack. He puts the question in her hands and keeps his own out of it.
"Thursday," Maya says. She turns back to me. "What happened Thursday?"
"Dante—"
"Tell her."
"This isn't how—"
"Tell her, Cole. Or I will. And my version won't have the context yours does."
The kitchen holds us in three positions. Dante is at the counter with his back to the cabinets. Maya stands between us with her hand on my arm. I'm at the sink with damp hands, a scrubbed pan behind me, and the truth pressed hard against my teeth because Dante knows exactly what the fuck he's doing.
"Thursday," I say. "When Dante was at film. You came downstairs. Without your phone. Without the laptop."
Maya's hand goes still on my arm.
"We were on the couch," I say. "I went down on you. Dante's blanket was on the arm."
Her face holds steady, but her focus cuts to Dante's mug, then the cabinet, then the place where her hand rests on my arm. She hasn't heard it spoken aloud in this kitchen, with all three of us present.
"Okay," she says, steady enough to hurt. "And that's what this is about. The silence. The one mug."
