By seven, the sun was fully up and I'd given up on sleep entirely. By seven-thirty, I'd showered, dressed, and consumed enough coffee to qualify as a health hazard. And by eight o'clock, I'd picked up my phone and put it down again at least a dozen times.
I needed to talk to someone. Someone who would understand. Someone who wouldn't judge me for spending four hours reorganizing my linen closet while crying.
I called Viola.
She answered on the second ring, her voice rough with sleep but immediately alert. "Daphne? What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong." The lie came automatically, a reflex I couldn't seem to break. "I just—can I come over? I need to talk."
A pause. I could hear her moving, probably sitting up in bed, probably already reaching for clothes. "I'll put the coffee on. Let yourself in."
Viola's home was on the other side of town with her mates. When I arrived she had two mugs of coffee waiting on the kitchen table and a plate of slightly stale muffins between them.
"You look like death," she said cheerfully, pulling me into a hug. "When's the last time you slept?"
"Define 'slept.'" I muttered, feeling how bad I needed sleep but my body didn’t want to listen to me.
"More than three hours of unconsciousness without chemical assistance." She gave me a look, and I winced.
"Then... before the pottery date?" I said unsure exactly when I got really good sleep.
She winced sympathetically and pushed a mug toward me. "Drink. Talk. Not necessarily in that order." I wrapped my hands around the mug, absorbing the warmth, and tried to figure out where to start. The date? The kiss? The way I'd spent the hours since in a fog of confused feelings and inexplicable behavior?
"I reorganized my linen closet at two AM," I said finally. "And then my kitchen cabinets. And my nightstand drawer. And I don't know why."
Viola's eyebrows climbed toward her hairline. "Okay. That's... not what I was expecting you to say."
"I couldn't sleep. I was thinking about Levi, about the date, the pottery, the—" I gestured vaguely, unable to say the wordkissout loud. "…then I got up to make tea, except I didn't make tea. I opened the linen closet instead. And the towels were wrong."
"The towels were wrong," Viola repeated carefully.
"I know how that sounds. I know it's crazy. But theywere. They were in the wrong order, on the wrong shelves, folded the wrong way. And I couldn't—" My voice cracked. "I couldn't leave them like that. I had to fix it. Ihadto."
Viola was quiet for a long moment, her dark eyes studying my face with an intensity that made me want to squirm. Then, very gently, she asked: "Daphne. When's the last time you nested?"
The word hit me like a physical blow.
Nested.
I opened my mouth to answer. Closed it again. Opened it.
"I don't—" I shook my head, the denial instinctive. "I'm not—that's not?—"
"Daphne." Viola reached across the table and took my hand. "Honey. You're an omega. Nesting is part of who you are. It's not something to be ashamed of."
"I don't nest." The words came out sharper than I intended, edged with something that felt dangerously close to panic. "I've never—I mean, I haven't?—"
Even as I said it, memories were surfacing. Fragments of a childhood I'd spent decades trying to forget. The first foster home had been my first taste of how it felt to not have my own home. Building a fort out of couch cushions and every blanket I could find, crawling inside and refusing to come out for hours. The foster mother had been annoyed, had called it "attention-seeking behavior" and dismantled my creation while I watched, helpless and devastated in a way I couldn't articulate.
The second home… rearranging the shared bedroom I slept in with two other girls, until one of them complained and the foster father made me put everything back. "This isn't your room to decorate. You're just passing through."
The third home. The fourth. The sixth, the eighth, the tenth. Every time, the same message:This isn't yours. Don't get comfortable. Don't put down roots. You're not staying.
And Margaret and Tom. The last home, the only one that had ever felt like home. I'd been sixteen when I arrived on her doorstep, sullen and suspicious and so starved for stability that I ached with it. They had given me a room of my own, small, simple, with faded wallpaper and a window that looked out over her garden.
"Make it yours," Margaret said, pressing the key into my palm. "However you want. This is your space now." I hadn't believed her. Not at first. I'd waited for the catch, the condition, the inevitable moment when she'd take it all away. Days turned to weeks turned to months, and Margaret never wavered. She let me rearrange the furniture six times. Let me hang picturesand string fairy lights and pile the bed with so many pillows there was barely room to sleep. She never complained, never criticized, never once made me feel like I was asking too much.
I'd stayed with Margaret and Town until they passed. Then I learned, one final time, that nothing was permanent. Nothing was safe. Everything you loved could be taken away.
