Page 116 of The Grumpy Defenseman
She closed her eyes.
One tear slipped free anyway.
She looked annoyed by it, which made something in my chest loosen.
“I hate crying in cars,” she said.
“Technically, this is a truck.”
She laughed once, weak and real.
“Do not use vehicle classification to avoid emotional accountability.”
“Understood.”
The laugh faded, but it left something warmer behind.
She wiped under one eye with the heel of her hand.
“The last time I trusted someone with the real version of me, he turned it into evidence of his own brilliance,” she said. “He took what was mine and made me sound like the footnote.”
I stayed still.
Some sentences needed room.
“I know you are nothim,” she said.
“Good.”
“But my body does not always know that as fast as my brain does.”
That one landed.
I turned my hand palm up on the console between us.
Not reaching.
Offering.
“Then let me be something else long enough for both of them to learn.”
She looked at my hand.
Then at me.
“That was unfair,” she whispered.
“Was it?”
“Yes. Clean sentence. No visible panic. Devastating.”
“I was panicking internally.”
“That helps.”
A small smile moved over her mouth, then disappeared into something more serious.
She put her hand in mine.
