I shouldn’t have kissed her.
I should have maintained what I’d been maintaining for ten days. I was managing. It was working. Not comfortably but working.
Instead, I kissed her.
She kissed me back.
And I have no clue what the fuck to do now.
Thirty
Piper
The bathroom mirror in this motel is slightly better than the last one.
I stand in front of it with a towel around me and water still on my face. I look at myself the way I’ve been doing all trip, with a curiosity that still surprises me, like I’m reacquainting myself with someone I used to know.
My hair is a mess. There’s a small mark on my collarbone. My face looks… good. It’s bare, but alive in a way that has nothing to do with sleep, though I slept better last night than I have in months.
I think about last night.
I think about the bar and the walk across the gravel and the door and the way he closed the distance.
Something warm moves through my chest.
I made a choice last night.
That’s the thing I keep landing on. Standing in front of this mirror in a motel bathroom somewhere in California, I made a choice with both eyes open, sober enough to mean it, and it felt—for the first time in longer than I can count—like mine.
Not a compromise or an adjustment. Not something I did because someone else wanted it or because it was expected or because saying no would have cost me something I couldn’t afford.
I wanted it.
I chose it.
I’m not ashamed of it. I’m not afraid of it, and I can look at myself in this mirror, which is more than I could say for most of the last year.
That means something.
I don’t know what it means for what comes next. I’m not naive about the complexity of what last night was, or all the things that haven’t been resolved yet and are waiting for me at home. I know all of that.
But last night was mine.
I’m back in the room, pulling my top over my head, when the door opens.
“Got coffee,” Griffin says. “And breakfast.”
“Thank you.” I finish pulling my top into place.
He’s putting things on the small table by the window with his back to me.
He hasn’t looked at me.
Once,I think.Just once, look at me.
“Griffin.”
“Yeah?”
