“Mm.” He turns another page. “No pressure.”
The thing about Jack is thatno pressurein his mouth is actually no pressure. It’s not the manipulation of no pressure that meansI have calculated this will make youstay.It’s genuine and I can hear the difference.
I stay for dinner.
Dinner at the pack house is… different.
It’s not formal. It’s not a display of false welcome. It’s just five people around a table eating very good food like they’ve done so for years. Tristan made something with pasta and something slow-cooked and the bread from his café backup batch. It’s the kind of food that requires your full sensory attention and rewards it. We’re all talking, or not talking, in the easy rhythm of people who’ve eaten together many times.
They make space for me without making it an issue. My glass gets refilled. The serving dish gets passed without me asking. Archer is at one end and Ryan at the other. Tristan is opposite me and Jack is to my left. I’m surrounded by the pack and I don’t actually mind.
I eat more than I’ve eaten in a single sitting since before the whole Amber incident.
I’ve been eating to function all week—Tristan’s interruptions aside—and tonight I eat because the food is good and the table is warm and the light is low and the argument I’ve been making to myself has gone quiet for the duration of the meal.
I don’t examine the quiet.
I eat the pasta.
After dinner I’m on the couch again.
I looked at the door at nine-thirty and I thought about the walk back to Doris Harrow’s and the pine-scented room and the ceiling I’ve been staring at, and I sat backdown.
Convenience. The late summer night air is cold and I don’t have a jacket light enough for comfort and it’s warm here and that is the entire reasoning.
Ryan is back in the window chair.
Archer has finished the structural repair and is now sitting, which is unusual, he tends to stay in motion in the evenings. He’s at the far end of the couch with something in his hands. I think it’s a length of leather cord, some maintenance thing I don’t have context for, and he’s working it with the patience he applies to physical tasks.
Jack is at the table now, doing something on his laptop.
Tristan sits beside me, close enough that his warmth is constant and present, and he has his own cup of tea. He’s reading something and the lamp is on. The rest of the room is dim and the fire in the corner is crackling with flames.
This is a lot of warmth.
The layered scent of the building has deepened over the evening with all of them in it, which I’m thinking about from a position of detachment, which is not convincing anyone, least of all me.
I close my eyes for a moment.
Just a moment.
Sometime later, I become aware of the following things, in this order: The fire has gone to low coals. The lamp is off. The room is quiet, no one is movingwith purpose. I am horizontal on the couch. There is a blanket on me that was not on me before.
My head is at one end. There is a warm solid something at my feet, not weight, just presence, and when I orient my brain I realize it’s Archer, sitting at his end of the couch. My feet are near his thigh, not touching, but near, and he hasn’t moved to create more distance. He has decided not to disturb me.
Tristan is gone from beside me.
Ryan is still in the chair. I can see the shape of him in the low light, turned toward the room rather than the window now, and I can’t tell if his eyes are open.
Jack is at the table with his head on his arms and his laptop still open.
I have been here since six o’clock and it is now? The clock on the wall reads 2 a.m., which means I have been asleep on this couch for hours without deciding to be.
I should leave.
I lie still. I try to locate the urgency of leaving—the practical arguments, the strategic reasons, thethis is temporary and I know what I’m doing—and what I find instead is the fire going low, and Archer solid and still at the far end, and the rhythm of Jack’s breathing across the room.
I still should leave.
