Not the first night, when she came home late, eyes glassy, hair smelling faintly like a stranger’s perfume and something else I couldn't place.
Not the next afternoon, when I asked if she needed me to file a no-contact request “for a friend,” and she said, too fast,No. I'm fine.
Not the third time, when I found her at the kitchen table long after midnight, phone facedown, sketching spirals into the margins of a grant application.
“We can share the weight,” I said quietly.
She didn’t look up. “I need to carry this one alone.”
Everything in me wanted to pry it open, to push. But I knew that tone. It was the same one she used when we were sixteen, and the only way out was through. So, I folded a blanket over her shoulders, made tea with too much honey, and sat on the floor, my back to her chair, as the radiator clinked and the wind worried the window.
Jack sent a text three days before Christmas, a picture of a sunrise from a high apartment, the city spread out like a chessboard.
Jack
Starting sooner than planned. Be good.
Remi stared at it for a long time, then tucked the phone under a stack of intake forms and said, “We need more gloves for the shelter.”
We did Christmas without him this year.
Harlan showed up on the 24th with a tree tied to the top of his truck and a box of ornaments that looked like they’d lived three lifetimes, his father’s glass bulb with a crack down the side; a felt star somebody’s small hands had stitched crooked; a wooden badge with a year burned into it that made my chest ache.
“It’s too big,” I said, laughing, as he shouldered it through our door.
“Not for this year,” he said, dead serious.
We decorated to an old playlist with more static than melody. Remi made my mom’s cinnamon toast the way she always did... too much butter, a sinful amount of sugar, her eyes finally softening when she burned the second batch, and I heckled her for it. Harlan hung the crooked felt star at the top like it was a crown, then stepped back and slid an arm around my waist like it was the only place he wanted to be. I leaned into him without pretending I didn't agree.
We ate on the floor, picnic-style. He carved the ham, and Remi told him about the time we tried to make fudge and glued the saucepan to the stove. He laughed so hard he had to wipe his eyes.
For one day, it was easy.
For one day, we let ourselves believe the holes we kept patching would hold.
Remi napped on the couch with the tree lights blinking softly over her. I watched her chest rise and fall and wanted to shake Jack for leaving and Teresa for whatever she had drug her into and the world for being the world. Harlan squeezed my hand once, like he knew. Maybe he did.
New Year’s Eve was just the two of us. Remi took the overnight shelter shift and texted me a single fireworks emoji at eleven fifty-seven. I sent back three hearts and a picture of Harlan and me.
We stood on Harlan’s balcony while distant fireworks popped over the river, small, scattered flares, not the big city kind. He tucked me into his coat like a secret, his stubble rough against my temple. Somewhere in the neighbourhood, a wind chime fussed, and a dog objected to midnight like it was personal.
When the clock on his phone clicked over, he didn’t make a show ofit. He just tilted my face up and kissed me slowly, no rush, no claim. Like a vow, you say with more than your mouth.
I almost saidI love youinto his mouth, the bubbled up so quickly I barely held them back. He pulled away a breath and rested his forehead to mine, smiling like he’d heard the words anyway.
We curled up on his couch after, the heater kicking on with a shudder, the cheap champagne forgotten, his thumb tracing idle circles at the base of my spine like he had all the time in the world.
New Year’s Day, the town was quiet and a little hungover. Cedar pollen was already starting to needle the air, and Harlan sneezed twice in a row and swore he didn’t have allergies. I made black-eyed peas the way an old neighbour taught me, good luck, she’d said, as if luck could be coaxed like a stray cat.
We didn’t do resolutions. We did dishes. He washed; I dried; we bumped hips and pretended we weren’t smiling.
Later, in the soft gray of late afternoon, we tangled back under his blankets. The radiator clanged once and settled. His breath warmed the nape of my neck, his palm spread over my ribs, steady as always.
Then he said, "You can stay here, with me, as long as you want.”
I wanted to say something brave.
Something permanent.
