Turn 10 of 12

Keep deflecting and ask about her week instead

"How was your week? I feel like we haven't actually talked since — since the thing at Devi's." You pour coffee into both mugs, carrying them to the table, and the mug you set in front of Meera clips the edge of a placemat and wobbles. You sit down across from her and wrap both hands around your own mug like it's a life preserver. The heat of it presses into your palms. You are aware of how transparent this is — the pivot, the question, the way you're holding the mug like you need an anchor — and you do it anyway, because the alternative is the closet and the laptop and the sixth confession and the word PENDING next to her name.

Meera looks at you. She picks up the mug but doesn't drink. Her thumb traces the rim once, slow, the way she does when she's deciding whether to let you get away with something.

"My week was fine," she says. "Work was work. Devi's was good. You left early, remember? You said you had a headache."

"Right. Yeah. I did."

"And then you went home and stayed up all night and sent me a cryptic text at five a.m. and now you're asking about my week." She sets the mug down.

"Rowan. I didn't come here to talk about my week."

The kitchen feels too bright. The morning light has shifted while you weren't paying attention, the gold deepening, pressing warm against the cabinets, and it catches the edges of things — the rim of the sugar bowl, Meera's keys on the counter, a hairline crack in the table's surface you've never noticed before. Everything looks sharper than it should. You blink and it doesn't soften. The burn on your knuckle throbs in time with your pulse.

"I know," you say. "I know you didn't."

"Then talk to me." Her voice is quieter now, but it's the quiet that comes before she stops asking and starts telling. You've known her six years. You know the gradient. First she asks, then she waits, then she decides you won't get there on your own and she carries you there herself.

"You don't have to tell me everything. Just tell me why you're shaking."

You look at her. She is sitting across the table from you in a coat she didn't take off, her hair still flat on one side from leaning against the car window, and she drove twenty minutes because of a text you sent at five a.m. and she is here. She chose to be here. You didn't ask the site for that. She just came. And in the closet behind you, seven confessions wait in a ledger, and one of them would take this — this exact thing, her showing up, her choosing you — and make it permanent and involuntary and unfree. The thought sits in your chest like a stone.

Your phone buzzes on the counter. You both look at it. The screen lights up with a notification — an email, the preview truncated, but the sender name is visible: *Cecilia Aldenhof.* Meera glances at the phone, then back at you, and her eyes are sharp and searching and they don't miss anything, and the air in the kitchen feels like it's tightening, like something is about to give.