“Yeah. They might keep us far back.”
“Right.”
They moved around each other with careful, stiff precision. No accidental brushes. No comments. No familiar work banter. It was all formal phrases and clipped instructions, like they were strangers assigned to a group project.
She hated it.
She dropped a battery pack. It clattered to the floor.
Tilly glanced over. “You okay?”
“Fine.”
They didn’t push, and somehow that made it worse.
Everything they’d been since the two-day snowstorm had calcified into something brittle and breakable. Every avoided glance made her stomach twist. Every silence made her want to crawl out of her skin.
“Ready?” Tilly asked when everything was packed.
“Yeah,” she said, even though she didn’t feel ready for anything.
The SUV smelled like winter jackets and stale coffee. Savannah clicked her seatbelt and stared forward while Tilly started the car.
“I’ll take first shift,” they said.
“That’s fine.”
The first stretch of the drive was painfully quiet. The radio crackled between stations until it settled on some soft rock song she didn’t recognize. Snowbanks slid past the windows, gray and uneven.
Savannah could normally handle silence. She liked the calm of long drives. But she’d never done one with Tilly before. Not like this. Not when the air between them felt like it was vibrating with something she couldn’t name.
Her knee bounced. She pressed her hand on it to make it stop.
Tilly cleared their throat. “Seat warmer works.” They clicked hers on. “In case you’re cold.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
They didn’t say anything else.
Five minutes later, the quiet settled over her like a weight.
“You know we don’t have to act like this,” she said finally. “We can talk.”
“We are talking.”
“No, we’re exchanging noises.”
Tilly’s jaw tightened. “I’m trying to keep things normal.”
“This doesn’t feel normal.”
“What do you want me to do about that?”
“Anything,” she said. “Look at me. Or don’t look at me. Pick one and stick with it.”
Tilly let out a low breath, the kind that sounded halfway to frustration. “I’m not avoiding you.”
“You haven’t looked at me all morning.”
