“Mm.”
“Mm,” I echoed.
Brooklyn moved outside the window. The city did its Sunday morning thing. Traffic. Sirens. The ambient thrum of millions of people existing in proximity to each other. Somewhere out there, my mom was doing whatever she did on Sunday mornings. Living a life that didn’t include me. A life that had been cleaner, simpler, less complicated since she decided I was too much of a contradiction to hold.
But Ellis was here. Real and warm and actual against me. His breathing uneven because he wasn’t quite awake but wasn’t quite asleep either, existing in that in-between space where you didn’t have to perform wakefulness yet.
I could’ve woken him properly. Talked about the future. Made plans. Made coffee. Done any of the practical things you were supposed to do after a pause like ours ended. Instead, I stayed in that moment, in that bed, with that person, his hand on my hip and his breath on my neck.
Ellis stirred. His eyes opened. He looked at me, half expecting me to disappear, the past three weeks having trained him into believing in impermanence.
“Hi.” His voice came rough with sleep.
“Hi.”
He reached up and touched my face, checking that it was real, to verify last night hadn’t been something he’d dreamed in a moment of weakness.
“You’re real. You stayed.”
“Always.”
He pulled me closer. We just lay there in the morning light, not moving, not talking, not needing anything but that. The coffee could wait. The plants could wait. The city could wait. The world could wait. For now, we were there, choosing each other in the morning when it would’ve been easy to leave.
In a small square of light and warmth, in bodies that remembered how to fit together, that was everything.
Chapter thirty-six
The first week back together, we moved with precision. Too much precision, maybe. Two people handling something they’d already broken once, terrified of shattering it again.
Ellis came over Thursday after work. Stood in my doorway with Thai food and an expression I hadn’t seen before. Something between nervousness and determination, something he’d no doubt practiced the whole subway ride and was still terrified he’d forget his lines.
He set the containers down. Lined them up. Straightened the chopsticks parallel. His hand rested there a beat too long, something he needed to anchor to.
“Dr. Osei had me do an exercise.” He didn’t look up. “Pick a specific moment. A real one. Don’t generalize.”
“Your therapist gives homework?”
“Dr. Osei gives homework.”
“Dr. Osei sounds intense.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. Didn’t quite make it. He uncapped the pad see ew and set it aside, uncapped the green curry, paused with thelid still in his fingers.
“August twelfth.” His voice stayed quiet. “You remember?”
I didn’t, right away. Then I did. The Sunday after Calliope’s birthday. He’d been weird all morning, answering texts in one-word bursts. I’d shown up at his apartment with a bodega coffee and a bit I’d built on the train: Calliope’s birthday DJ had played four Coldplay remixes in a row, like the man had lost a bet. Raven had threatened to walk into traffic by the second one. I worked it for ten solid minutes. He’d laughed in the right places. I’d taken that as a win and left.
“You remember what I was going to tell you that day?”
“Ellis.”
“It’s okay.” He finally looked up. Blue eyes, serious, nowhere to hide. “Your routine was good. Genuinely funny. I laughed. And I was so relieved not to have to say the thing I came home to say that I let you leave.”
My stomach dropped. Not because he was accusing me. Because he wasn’t.
The smell of basil and coconut milk. His hand still curled around a takeout lid like a prop he’d forgotten how to put down.
“What was the thing?” My voice came out smaller than I had meant.
