"I know about processes," I said. "I'm in one too."
His public interactions were getting longer. I took him shopping again, not to a cleared fashion house this time but to an actual store with actual people and actual noise. He lasted forty minutes before his hand went to the sanitizer. I counted it as a victory. He counted it as torture.
"Forty minutes is remarkable," I said.
"Remarkable is a word people use when they mean barely adequate."
"You're learning my language."
His mouth twitched. I kissed it.
The weekends were ours. He read on the couch with my feet in his lap, his free hand tracing lazy patterns on my ankle while the other held a book, and the image of him, glasses on, hair falling across his forehead, fingers absently on my skin while he read, was so quietly devastating that I grabbed my camera and photographed him before he noticed.
He looked up at the sound of the shutter. "What are you doing?"
"Documenting."
"Documenting what?"
"You." I took three more shots while his ears turned pink. "Hold that. The blush is perfect."
"I'm not blushing."
"You're the color of a sunset and I have photographic evidence."
I met his family properly. Sunday dinner at Coral Gables. Catherine held my hands at the front door, her eyes filling, and said "thank you." I didn't understand at first. Then I did. She meant her son. The version of him that came home from CedarKey with sand in his shoes, peace on his face, and the ability to hold someone's hand without gloves.
Richard studied me across the dinner table with a thoroughness I recognized immediately. After a long moment, he nodded once and returned to his steak. Apparently I'd passed.
Mona tackled me in the hallway. Full-body hug, no warning. "You're the sister I've been requesting from the universe," she said into my shoulder. "I've put in formal applications. Manifestation boards. Candles. The whole thing. And here you are."
Priya was there too. Standing by the kitchen door with a glass of wine, watching the scene with a quiet smile, as though she knew a secret that was slowly becoming less of one. Mona reached for her hand as she passed and Priya took it. Catherine, from across the room, smiled at them both like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Miles sat beside me at dinner and launched into a college story about my first week—the professor who made me cry over a composition assignment, and how I went back the next day with a photograph so good he put it on his office wall. I laughed, and Jace went rigid across the table.
"Move," Jace said.
Miles looked at him. "I'm at a normal distance."
"The normal distance is larger."
"This is a dining table, Jace. There's a fixed amount of space."
"Find more."
Mona leaned toward me and whispered, "This is the greatest show on earth." Priya, beside her, was biting her lip to keep from laughing.
Catherine told her children to behave. Nobody behaved. Richard ate his roast in silence and looked like a man who'd survived decades of this and had made peace with it long ago.
My brother flew in from North Carolina for the weekend. Caleb, gangly, too smart for his own good, and completely incapable of acting normal around attractive women.
We gathered at Miley's place.
I watched from the couch as my brother, who'd been rehearsing a casual greeting the entire flight based on the fourteen texts he'd sent me about what to say when he saw her, opened his mouth and produced: "Hey. Miley. Hi. You look. Hi."
Miley raised an eyebrow. "You said hi twice."
"Did I? I don't think I did. Did I?" He looked at me. I nodded. He went red from his collar to his hairline. "Cool. Great. I'm going to put my bag somewhere. Anywhere. A room. Where's the room?"
