“I’m bringing food.” She picks up her sneakers. Sits on the couch to put them on. “I’m bringing my mom’s chicken.”
“You’re going to steal your mom’s chicken.”
“I’m going to ask for leftovers. She always makes too much. It’s a cultural obligation.” She ties her laces. Stands up. She’s in my sweats and my shirt and her sneakers and she looks like a person who belongs somewhere that isn’t here and she’s coming back tonight anyway.
“Teague?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m going to meet your parents someday too.”
“I don’t talk to my parents.”
“Then I’ll meet whoever matters. Because you matter to me. So, just...heads up. I'm in your life now.” She walks to thedoor. Stops with her hand on the knob. “And Teague? I’m going to tell Keely what happened.”
“Which part?”
“The orgasm part.”
I roll my eyes, but I'm smiling anyway. “Of course you are.”
“She’s going to ask for details.”
“I’m sure she is.”
“I’m going to give her details.” She opens the door. The sunlight catches her face and she’s grinning again, unapologetic, fully Zoe. “Bye, Teague.”
“Bye, Zoe.”
She leaves. The door clicks shut. Her footsteps go down the stairs, light and fast, and then the street door opens and closes and she’s gone.
I sit in the chair with my coffee. The couch still has the indent where she slept. The blanket is folded. She folded the blanket before she left.
I pick up her mug. It’s still warm. There’s a lip print on the rim, coffee and her, and I wash it and put it in the rack and stand at my sink and look out the window at the street and think about a girl who just walked out of my apartment wearing my clothes and told me she’s going to describe my mouth to her best friend and I should be horrified and I’m not.
I’m not horrified. I’m not scared. I’m standing in my kitchen and the apartment smells like coffee and Zoe Kimball and I told a girl to come back tonight and I meant it.
That’s new. All of it. Every part.
I finish my coffee. Start cleaning.
Chapter Seventeen
Zoe
I’m at Station 11 at 5:17 AM.
I got maybe four hours of sleep. Teague's couch is more comfortable than Teague's floor but less comfortable than Teague's bed, which is where I wasn't invited even though I showed up at nine with my mom's chicken and my best hopeful expression. She loved the chicken. She ate it cross-legged on the couch and said "your mother is a dangerous woman" and I said "you have no idea" and then we watched the NWSL highlights and she explained the offside trap to me like I hadn't heard it three times already and I let her because her voice gets different when she's talking about something she cares about, lower and faster, and I wanted to keep hearing it. She kissed me at the door. Slow, careful, her hand on my jaw, her rings cold against my skin. Just that. Just a kiss. And then I walked home at midnight through streets I've known my whole life and I didn't sleep because my mouth was still buzzing and my body was still asking for more and I was up at four-thirty staring at the ceiling thinking about two things at once: Teague's mouth, and Station 11.
Station 11 won. Barely.
Cap said six. Hayes said six. Everyone said six. I’m here at 5:17 because I couldn’t sleep and I couldn’t lie in bed and I couldn’t sit in the kitchen and eat cereal and pretend today is a normal day. Today is the first day of my life. The real one. The one I’ve been building toward since I was nine years old on a playground wall with a granola bar, watching an engine disappear down Haverford.
The bay doors are closed. The street is dark and quiet and cold in that early-morning way where the world hasn’t decided what temperature to be yet. I’m wearing the clothes Hayes told me to wear, pants I don’t care about and a t-shirt I can sweat through and boots that are broken in and ready. My hair is pulled back tight. My badge is in my pocket because I don’t know when I’m supposed to pin it on and I don’t want to get it wrong.
I stand on the sidewalk and look at the station.
Red brick. White number. American flag, limp in the pre-dawn stillness. I’ve seen it ten thousand times. But this morning it looks like the first day of school and Christmas morning and the top of a roller coaster all at once, and my stomach is doing things that I’m choosing to interpret as excitement rather than nausea.
