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Me: Your replacement.

Ken: Get that little asshole off my spot.

Me: He says possession is 9/10 of the law.

Ken: He can’t talk.

Me: Rude. He talks about you constantly.

Three dots.

Ken: Miss me?

My thumb stops over the screen.

A second message arrives before I decide what to do with that.

Ken: The cat. Obviously.

I roll my eyes so hard it almost hurts.

Me: He said absolutely not.

Ken: Smart cat.

The smile stays anyway. Days start collecting that way.

A message between meetings.

A picture from an airport.

A complaint about the coffee in Atlanta.

A photo of the pink-and-orange sunset over Chicago from my walk to the train.

Bishop sends back one from his hotel window.

Different skyline.

Same sky.

We never mention O’Shea’s again. We don’t need to; the boundary is there even when neither of us says it out loud. When he’s home, we keep things easy too. We have developed a very convenient way of orbiting around each other.

He comes in late. I leave early. He replaces the hazelnut creamer before I realize I’m almost out. I add the protein bars he likes to my grocery order and pretend I don’t know which ones they are.

He finds Darcy asleep on his hoodie one night and complains for five full minutes before carefully sliding the sweatshirt out from beneath him so he doesn’t wake him.

“You like him,” I say from the couch.

Bishop drops into the opposite corner, smelling like cold air, clean soap, and the cedar that somehow survives both.

“I tolerate him.”

Darcy immediately walks across the cushion and climbs onto Bishop’s thigh. Bishop stares down at him. I watch as Darcy turns twice and settles.

“Are we not going to talk about this?”

“No.”