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I find Cy talking to Ember and Sage, with Kieran sitting at the kitchen table with his headphones on. The three turn to me, and their conversation abruptly comes to a halt.
“Don’t mind me,” I say.
Cy’s stare is intense, any tenderness from earlier gone, while the others are concerned.
Of course, his response is to leave the room. I hate how he acts like he wants nothing to do with me. But then I think back to this morning and how tender he was.
Ember jumps in to fill the silence. “Hey, how ya feeling? Cy said you had a rough morning.” They look like they would rather die than talk to me about this.
I groan. Of course Cy told the others. There’s absolutely no privacy in this place.
I’m grateful they took me in and gave me a place to stay. Sage spent so much time putting the pieces of me back together, but I am tired of feeling like a burden. I want to return to how things were before all of this.
I want to see Jay. I miss him. He’s my person. The one I turn to when things get hard. I didn’t realize how much I rely on him. Being separated from him is really starting to wear on me.
To my knowledge, the one brief phone call Cy abruptly ended is the last time any of us had contact with him. There are so many things I’m kept in the dark about. I’m getting sick of it.
“Yeah. I’ll be fine,” I say. Thinking a moment longer, I realized this would be the perfect time to push to see Jay. “I think…” I take a breath. “I need to see Jay.”
Ember’s response is immediate. “No.”
I can already tell this is going to be a tense conversation. More so than whatever the trio was talking about before I joined them in the kitchen.
“I’ve been here for months. Has anything even happened while I’ve been here?” My words are met with hard stares and silence. “Look, I appreciate you trying to keep me safe, but I’m going crazy cooped up in here. You haven’t even let me talk to him, and I know he’s probably going out of his mind too.”
Knowing she is my best bet, I turn to Sage.
“Please. I need this,” I plead.
She sighs and turns to look at Ember. Something sparks in my chest, and I’m hoping she’ll take my side.
“We can’t know for sure they’re not still looking for you,” Ember reasons.
“Okay, well, there has to be some way. I don’t have to go to the club. There has to be a way you can control things, right?”
Sage and Ember sit there looking at each other.
“If you can’t, I’ll sneak out myself,” I mutter.
This seems to get their attention, and the sigh Ember lets out is telling. They are going to cave, thank goddess.
“I make no promises, but I’ll talk with Cy and try to figure out something. If we can make it work, I’ll get in touch with him. But no promises,” they say.
“Thank you.” Joy flutters through me, but I contain my reaction.
Sage looks sympathetic, but soon her attention is drawn back to Kieran. Once Ember leaves the room, I go to sit with the two of them.
“Do you disagree?”
“What, with letting you see your friend? Of course not. But it doesn’t mean I’ll stop worrying.” I don’t respond, so I wait for her. “It comes with being a mom, I guess. You worry about your family,” she says.
It isn’t that I didn’t know she cared about me, but it still surprises me to hear her say it out loud.
Family?
I watch as they work on Kieran’s project. I know normal is relative. I know family isn’t only the people you’re related to by blood. Sage and Kieran have made a place for themselves in my routine and life. Even Ember and Cy have scraped out a space. And I hold out hope that I’ll see Griffin again. I know things will have changed with Jay too. But I hope things won’t change too much.
Part of me wants to put all of this behind me.
I’m being pulled in two different directions and I don’t know where either lead. Something tells me that my road won’t be paved with good intentions.
