Page 47 of Graceless

I surfaced when the bed took his weight and got one eye open at the clock — an hour and ten minutes, which for a man who said an hour is either impressive or suspicious and I was too far gone to decide which — and he said "go back to sleep" against my hair, and I did, and when I woke up on Sunday he was still there. Awake. Watching the ceiling like it owed him money.

"Well?" I said.

"Nothing," he said.

I called Nina at noon, from the kitchen, with the door shut.

"So," I said.

"So what." A pause, and I heard her put something down. "Caterina Rosa. So what."

"So I have information."

"I'm sitting." A chair scraped. "I'm sitting on my kitchen floor, that's how fast I'm sitting. GO."

"He stayed over."

The sound Nina Costanzo made is not in any language. It went up at the end.

"Nina—"

"Is he there? Is he there RIGHT NOW?"

"He's in the other room. Keep your voice down."

"HE'S IN THE OTHER ROOM?"

"Nina, I swear to God⁠—"

"I'm whispering," said Nina, at full volume. "This is me whispering. Go."

"Friday," I said, "and then also Saturday, and I'd like to say that Friday was not the plan⁠—"

"Nobody CARES about the plan⁠—"

"—and he slept on my couch first, which lasted about two hours⁠—"

"Two hours."

"—and then I went out to the living room at three in the morning and told him he was not sleeping on my couch."

"YOU DID NOT."

"I did."

"Cat." Her voice dropped into the register she uses for miracles and hospital news. "You asked him?"

And that stopped me, because she was right, and she'd found the actual thing under all of it in about eleven seconds, the way she has since we were seven.

"Yeah," I said.

"Okay." Nina was quiet for a second. When she came back her voice had gone thick. "Okay. Details. Now. Everything. I want it in order and I want it slow."

"He looks better with his clothes off than on."

"MADONNA."

"Nina—"