"Is that a complaint?"
"It's a fact."
"Facts don't come with that tone."
His eyes are on me, and the anger is still there, but it has thinned. Then his gaze drops once to my mouth and back, fast enough to pretend it didn't happen.
My phone buzzes again on the cushion.
My shoulders jump before I can stop them. My hands fly to my lap.
Chronicle notification. I exhale.
His eyes track the flinch, the recovery, the way my hands press together.
"The calls," he says.
"I said it was spam."
"And I said that's not nobody. You flinch every time that phone moves. You answered a silent call at eleven at night and your hand shook."
He leans forward in the armchair.
"Who is calling you, Maya?"
"That's not your business."
"Someone is scaring you and you're sitting in my house. That makes it my business."
"I'm sitting in Cole's house."
"You're sitting in mine."
The sentence hits low, behind my ribs, and my pulse shifts before my mind catches up. I feel it in my wrists, in my throat,in the soft, stupid place between my thighs before I can shut the reaction down.
Mine.
One word and my body turns traitor. Heat climbs under my sweatshirt. My fingers dig into my palms. I hate him for saying it like ownership, and I hate myself more for the way the word fits somewhere it has no right fitting.
I don't answer because there are too many answers, and every one of them would put my throat in his hand.
"You should go," he says.
My stomach drops.
"I can't figure out what you want from me," I say. "You buy my tea. You use my name. You stand in your kitchen and almost touch my face, and then you tell me to go. You called this your house and you're throwing me out of it."
"I'm not throwing you out."
"You said I should go."
"I said it because if you stay, I'm going to keep asking about the phone. You're going to keep lying, and I'd rather you leave than watch you sit there shaking and pretending you're fine."
The refrigerator hums.
"It's seven degrees outside," I say.
"I know."
