Page 59 of What We Burn

“Getting there.”

I sit. The chamomile’s in front of me, steaming. Jamie’s got both hands wrapped around a mug of something in an alarming shade of gray-purple.

“You didn’t,” I say, nodding at it.

“It’s a lavender latte. It’s avant-garde.”

“It’s a melted candle.”

“It tastes like someone dissolved a bath bomb in espresso and I am, regrettably, into it.” He sips, winces—which undercuts the whole thing—and Amy laughs, and for a second it’s easy. So easy I could cry.

Jamie does a quick, careful sweep—my face, the silk scarf at my neck, the bruises it doesn’t fully hide—and then his eyes move on, deliberately light, landing nowhere near my throat. He’s good at it. Kind about it. Doesn’t make me feel looked-at. I’m so grateful I nearly cry about that too.

The conversation wanders. Amy’s newly single life. My guys—Jamie wants to know if they fight over me; I tell him they fight over the remote; he’s openly disappointed. A date he went on so catastrophic he considered faking his own death to escape it. I laugh until my throat catches and burns and I don’t care. I steal his biscotti and dunk it in my tea so it’s soft enough to eat. This is the most normal I’ve felt in weeks, and I’m hoarding it like contraband.

Then Jamie sets down his mug and his face goes soft and serious, and I feel it coming a half-second before he says it.

“Hey. I want to say one thing, and then I’ll never bring it up again.” He looks at me—earnest, kind, unbearable. “Whatever happened. Wherever your head was at. I’m just glad you’re still here. And if it ever gets that dark again, you call me. Three a.m., whenever. I’ll pick up.” He shrugs, a little embarrassed. “That’s the whole speech.”

It’s so gentle and so wrong that for a second I can’t breathe.

Beside me, Amy goes rigid. “Sage, I can’t keep⁠—”

I put my hand over hers on the table and squeeze, and I catch her eyes, and I let her see me ask. Please. Let it go.

It takes a second. Maybe two. Jamie glances between us, mildly puzzled. I watch Amy fight herself—the truth right there behind her teeth, the need to defend me so strong her jaw’s tight with it—and then she swallows it. For me. Because I asked her to.

“—it wasn’t your fault, is what I meant,” she finishes, turning to Jamie, her voice gone flat and careful. “None of us saw it coming. That’s all.”

“No,” Jamie agrees softly. “I don’t think anyone could have.”

He has no idea what just happened. He pats the back of my hand, the one still covering Amy’s. “Anyway. Offer stands.” And he goes back to his melted candle like he didn’t just make me choose between the lie and my best friend’s loyalty.

I chose the lie. I’ll keep choosing it. But God, it costs.

A while later his gaze drifts past me to the window, to the street, and snags on something. I follow it.

Milo. On his bench. Pretending to read a newspaper he’s holding upside down.

“Is that one of yours?” Jamie asks. No edge to it. Just curious.

“That’s Milo.”

“He’s been there the whole time.”

“He has.”

Jamie nods slowly, and a quiet kind of understanding moves across his face. “Good,” he says. “After everything, you should have someone watching out for you. I’d want that, if you were mine to worry about.” He lifts the ruined latte toward the glass in a small salute. Milo, two lanes of traffic away, does not salute back, because Milo believes he is invisible.

We stay another half hour. Amy loosens up again, the near-miss folded away, and by the end the three of us are laughing like nothing happened.

When we leave, Amy hugs me hard. “Call me. Not because you have to. Because I miss you.” And quieter, just for me: “I won’t slip again. Promise.”

“I know. Thank you, Ames.”

Jamie hugs me too—solid, warm, uncomplicated. “Anytime you need normal,” he says into my shoulder, “I’m your guy.”

I cross the street and Milo meets me back at the car. He opens the door for me and I slide into the passenger seat.