"Don't follow me."
"You can't withdraw every time something happens that you didn't control."
"Watch me."
I walk. He does not follow. The tunnel stretches long ahead of me. My footsteps echo on concrete. His do not. Six years of walking in parallel, and this is the first time I have walked away from Cole Maddox. The phantom weight of a shoulder that should be three inches from my own stays with me all the way out.
Monday night. The house is quiet. Maya is in the den. After the tunnel, Cole went somewhere. I do not track him. I have always tracked him, the location, the schedule, the variables.
I stop.
I make dinner. One plate. At the counter, I eat, clean the plate, and put it in the rack.
Maya appears in the kitchen doorway holding a printout, the financial trail, the metadata. She stops when she sees the single plate in the rack. The single mug from this morning.
"Did you eat?" she asks.
"Yes."
"Cole?"
"I lost track of Cole."
Her gaze moves from the plate to the mug. One plate. One mug. No Cole.
"What happened between you two?" she asks.
"Ask Cole."
"Cole texted me twenty minutes ago. He said give him space. Those are Cole's words when something's wrong with you."
"Cole's words are Cole's business."
"And your silence is mine to figure out?"
"Go back to the den, Maya."
"Don't manage me."
"I'm asking you to go back to the den."
"You're issuing a command with a softer verb. I've been watching you do it all semester. I know the difference."
She stands in the doorway, bare feet on the hardwood, the printout in her hand. I meet her eyes. This time, she does not look away.
"I know about Thursday," I say.
Her chin lifts. She does not flinch.
"I saw it on Saturday morning. The proximity. The eye contact. How your body angled toward him."
"Then you've known for two days and you've been punishing both of us with silence instead of saying it out loud."
"I needed time."
"You needed control. Time is what you call it when you're deciding how to use the information."
"It happened," she says. "Yes. On the couch. While you were at film. I sat on the counter and I told Cole to stop pretending. Those were my words. My decision."
