Kev exhales something that is almost a laugh. “If you burn it, I’m reporting you.”
“You report me every shift.”
“And yet standards continue to fall.”
Mish reaches for the mugs. “Toast and biscuits. Elite recovery nutrition.”
People slowly leave the room and head towards the kitchen.
I watch Pippa watch that happen.
She lets the small ordinary noises come back in. The scrape of a chair. The clink of a spoon. Dan arguing mildly with the toaster before he has even put bread in it. Someone pouring milk into tea. Kev saying he wants three slices because nights like this do that to him.
She lets them find the shape of normal without pushing them towards it.
Then she picks up her untouched mug and turns towards the office.
I stand before I have decided to.
Her gaze meets mine.
For a second, the room drops away.
Not completely. Nothing that dramatic. There is still toast, and rain, and a bunch of other people trying to keep themselves functional at one in the morning.
But there is also Pippa, pale and steady and still carrying more than anyone else in the room can see.
“You should drink that,” I say.
It is ridiculous.
Of everything in me, all the useless, aching things, that is what gets out.
Pippa looks at the mug in her hand as if she has forgotten she is holding it.
Then her mouth moves.
Not a smile exactly.
Something smaller.
Something I feel anyway.
“I will.”
She does not.
She turns and walks towards the office.
I should sit down.
I should let her go.
I should remember every rule, every complication, every reason my hands are staying exactly where they are.
Instead, I watch her walk away and think, with a force that almost knocks the breath out of me, that I would give anything to take that mug from her, close the office door and hold her until she stopped being the person everyone else needed for five bloody minutes.
I do none of those things.
