"She doesn't need me," I say. "She's extraordinarily talented."
"That's not what I asked."
No. It isn't.
I look at the contract. Thirty-one pages of protection against a future that hasn't happened yet. Every clause a wall built between us and disaster. And beneath the legal language, the real architecture — the attempt to create a space where two women can want each other without one of them losing everything if the wanting stops.
"After Saskia, I told myself I would never enter a relationship where someone depended on me for their stability. I confused being needed with being loved, and when Saskia needed me to be present during the collapse, I withdrew because her need felt like evidence that I was failing. I will not make that mistake again."
"And Tala?"
"Tala doesn't need me to be stable. She needs me to be honest. Those are different demands."
Phaedra holds my gaze for five seconds. She's looking for the lie. The rationalization. The dressed-up version of loneliness that I might be selling myself because the alternative — admitting that I want something badly enough to risk my professional reputation on it — is too frightening to say plainly.
She doesn't find it. Or she finds it and decides I'm aware of it, which for Phaedra is sufficient.
"There's one more clause," she says. "I added it this morning after reviewing Mora's proposal. Clause fifteen."
She turns to the page. I read it.
Both parties agree to maintain separate professional support systems, including but not limited to: independent psychological or therapeutic support, independent legal counsel, independent financial management, and independent career advisory services. Neither party shall serve as the other's sole emotional or psychological resource.
"This isn't standard in an employment agreement," I say.
"This isn't a standard employment agreement. This is a contract between two women who are going to have sex with each other while one of them carries a golf bag in front of television cameras. I want it documented that you are not her therapist and she is not your recovery project."
"That's blunt."
"I'm your attorney. Blunt is billable."
I read the clause again. It's the most important one in the document, and Phaedra knows it, and she wrote it not for the legal record but for me. For the part of me that has historically conflated being useful with being worthy of love.
"I'll sign," I say.
"Not yet. Her side needs to review and countersign. Mora is sending it to Sarmiento today. Give it the weekend."
I nod. Stand. The contract remains on Phaedra's desk. Thirty-one pages. A framework for something I haven't allowed myself to have in five years.
At the door, Phaedra speaks again. "Nerys."
"Yes."
"For what it's worth — you deserve this. Not the contract. The willingness to try."
I don't respond because the honest response would involve an emotion I am not prepared to express in a law office above a bakery at eleven in the morning.
•
I drive home through Charleston's narrow streets. July heat turns the old city into a furnace lined with pastel plaster — the buildings sweat, the tourists wilt, the horse-drawn carriages move at a pace that suggests the horses have also read the weather forecast and are protesting.
My house is on a quiet street near the marsh. Two stories. White clapboard. A porch that faces east, which means mornings are bright and evenings are cool, and the marsh sounds reach the rocking chair where I do most of my thinking.
I am thinking now. Not about the contract. About the corridor.
About my hand on her jaw and her hands on my waist and the sound she made against my mouth — a small, wrecked thing, half gasp and half surrender, that bypassed every defense I've built in the last decade and landed somewhere I haven't been touched in years.
I pull into the driveway. Turn off the engine. Sit.
