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“Don’t mind if I do.” She surprises me by sitting on the arm of my chair, propping her crutches against the wall. Again, I feel the sense that things are changing—the ground shifting beneath me. I lift my face to her, and she gently slides the glasses on, letting her hands run through my hair after she finishes. Her eyes are on mine, and I’m riveted to her, unable to look away. Is she breathing faster than usual, or is that me?
“Well?” I ask after a moment, because the tension has wound so tightly around me I’m not sure I can take it anymore. “Have I been magically transformed?”
She leans a little to the right, then the left, studying my face in a way that makes me laugh. “They’re good,” she says. “Just right for you. Go look in the mirror so you can bask in my brilliance.”
“And the brilliance of my own face, I suppose.” I don’t really care what the glasses look like, to be honest. If she likes them, that’s good enough for me, but I go through the song and dance of walking to the mirror across from the entryway and looking.
“Well?” she asks, her face shining as she follows me on those crutches, her hot pink cast visible in the mirror.
“They’re glasses,” I pronounce, grinning when she scowls at me. “I like them.” And I mean it. They’re better than the others, and I appreciate the way she looks at me when I wear them. I definitely appreciate the way she put them on. I like the shirts she chose too, although I object to the money she must have spent. “My computer’s going to be incredibly impressed by them. Now, what else do I need to do to be less objectionable for people to look at?”
“You’veneverbeen objectionable to look at.”
I’m relieved she said it, but I say, “I’m going to write that one down for posterity.”
Her lips twitch. “You know what I mean. It’s just…you don’t care about stuff like this, so you need someone to care for you.”
Her words hit me in a way I didn’t expect, maybe because there aren’t a lot of people in my life who care to fill in the details my brain couldn’t give a shit about. There’s Ruthie, obviously, but she’s spread so thin, between being Izzy’s only parent and her attempts to find something for herself. My friends have always helped me too, when help is needed.
“Thank you,” I say through my throat, which feels thick again. I’m emotional, I guess, but I can’t parse what all of the emotions are or why they came to be.
“You’re welcome.”
Then, before I can tell myself no, or remember all the reasons I don’t want to do it, I say, “I don’t really get why you want to do it, but we can have Thanksgiving dinner here. I wasn’t really planning on doing anything anyway.”
Everything in her brightens. Using one hand to balance on the crutches, she reaches out the other to touch my chest, the warmth of her hand sending pulses of energy through me. Pulses of need. “You won’t regret it.”
“I disagree, but I’ll do it.”
Her hand pulses against my shirt. Black, chosen by her. “I want us to do this together, Danny. But I want it to be something we can both enjoy. I think we should get a space heater for the balcony so you can go out there to get away from everything. I thought about setting up one of the bedrooms as your quiet place, but I don’t think the soundproofing is good enough because you always seem to hear me when I open the front door. The balcony is quiet, though, and you can go out there with one or two of the guys if you want to hang out but don’t want to be bombarded with all of it at once.”
For a moment, I’m speechless. Her words touch something deep inside of me—the part that’s always thought that to be acceptable I have to pretend I’m someone I’m not. “You’ve given this a lot of thought,” I finally say, when the words come to me. “Thank you, Mira.”
“Thank you,” she says, so close, so achingly close. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything as much as I want to touch her. “You’re doing this for me, aren’t you?”
“For my Pygmalion.”
“I haven’t changed you,” she insists. “I don’t want to change you. The clothes and the glasses are just window dressing.”
Emotion lodges in my throat, threatening to choke me. So few people have ever offered me that kind of acceptance. The part of me that still wants to be different riles from it, and the rest of me is comforted in a way I can’t put to words. She hasn’t moved her hand, and the heat of it feels like a promise. A benediction. A trial by fire.
Looking into my eyes, she says, “I want to know you, Danny. All of you. I’ve been trying to piece together what you do all day. I know you work for the man who hurt your sister. You said you did something illegal that gave him some sort of hold over you, and you’re on the computer all day. You’re…you must be some kind of hacker.”
It’s like a bucket of water has been poured over my head. Maybe that’s why she said it—to swerve the conversation away from a road that would lead somewhere she isn’t yet prepared to go.
“Maybe,” I say, looking down at her through the glasses she chose for me, “I can neither confirm nor deny that.”
“Thank you for telling me,” She says, even though I didn’t say much. She seems to know it’s more than I tell most people.
“I’d like to know more about you too,” I admit. “Why aren’tyougoing home for Thanksgiving? I figured you were going to your mother’s place. Burke mentioned something about it the other week.”
“My mother’s going off to Europe with some guy she just met. It’s a relief, honestly. There’s nothing she loves better than pointing out other people’s faults, and she’s worse with Delia because she knows it hurts her more. Honestly, this rich European dude is a godsend.” Her gaze sharpens on me. “I guess you understand all of that since you put yourself on the line for your sister.”
I nod, because I do understand. The need to protect Ruthie is written into my DNA. I admire Mira’s devotion to her sister—and did before I even knew her.
“Do you have any other siblings?” she asks.
“No, our parents decided not to bless anyone else with being their child.”
