Page 50 of Smoke and Glitter

Instead, I press my lips together.

"This works because it's easy," Sam says. "She doesn't need me rearranging my life, and I don't need her rearranging hers. Neither of us is building anything around the other."

Bex goes quiet long enough that I think she might be done.

Then she asks, "And if she wanted more?"

Sam doesn't answer.

"If Autumn stood right in front of you and told you she wanted this to be something more than casual, what would you say?"

"Bex."

"What would you say?"

The pause comes again.

Shorter this time.

Still long enough.

"It's not that deep."

For a second, I stop hearing everything else.

Not the radio. Not the refrigerator. Not the movement behind the wall.

Just him.

It's not that deep.

There is an envelope on his back bar that I built over two nights because he once told me about his dream for a place in Pilsen and I remembered.

I turned down London because fourteen weeks away felt too long to leave whatever was happening between us unattended.

He has no idea what either one cost me.

Then my brain does what it always does when something goes wrong.

It starts building the case for everyone else.

Sam doesn't know about London. He never asked me to research Pilsen. And when he says I never asked him to be more than this, he's right.

I didn't.

I was proud of that.

I told myself Sam moved slowly and that giving him room was kinder than making him define something before he was ready. I made sure he knew Chicago wasn't about him. I never asked where this was going because I thought what we were doing was enough to get us there on its own.

Maybe I made myself too easy to misunderstand.

For a moment, I can almost make that explanation work.

Then Bex's question comes back.

If Autumn stood right in front of you and told you she wanted this to be something more than casual, what would you say?

She asked him.