Page 73 of What We Don't Say: Part One

I don’t go to the den. The closet is wrong for this; the closet was small and dark and secret, built around the first terrifying relief of having Callie’s scent close enough to breathe. This feeling needs air and light and a place where she might find me without having to search too hard.

The sunroom is warm with gray afternoon light. Rain taps lightly against the glass roof, and the long window bench sits beneath the plants Callie keeps forgetting to water until she remembers them with dramatic guilt and brings them back from the edge. There are cushions under the bench, folded blankets in the wicker trunk, and an old green throw Idris uses when he reads in here late at night.

I pull everything down with hands that won’t stay steady. The green throw goes across the bench first, then one of Sloane’s sweatshirts along the back, soft and heavy where my shoulder can press into it. Garrett’s blanket from the leather reading chair goes near the entrance, and I smooth it twice before I let myselftake Callie’s cardigan from the hook by the doorway and place it in the center.

It isn’t enough, so I add one of her scarves from the basket by the stairs, then the little pillow she uses behind her back when she grades. The mug she abandoned on the plant stand this morning goes near the edge, empty except for the faint smell of vanilla tea clinging to the ceramic. By the time I climb in, the nest looks open and obvious and strange, like a question made out of fabric.

I curl around the cardigan anyway. The rain softens above me, and the house moves around me, and I press my face into her sleeve until honeyed pear and vanilla tea fill my lungs. My body settles for one breath, then surges again around Garrett’s calm voice saying far, good, earned, and I grip the cardigan harder.

A floorboard creaks outside the sunroom.

I stop breathing, but the scent reaches me before fear can. Callie comes into the doorway with a stack of student papers tucked under one arm and a pen caught between her fingers. Her hair is pinned up badly, curls already escaping around her face, and she stops when she sees the window bench.

“Theo,” she says, very softly. Her eyes move over the blankets, the scarf, the mug, the cardigan in my arms, and then they come back to my face. “What is this?”

Heat climbs up my throat. I look down at the cardigan and reach for the mug, trying to move something so the nest doesn’t say everything at once. My hand shakes before I reach it, and Callie’s face changes before her voice does.

“No, don’t fix it.” She sets the papers on the plant stand and crouches near the edge of the bench, keeping both hands where I can see them. “Can I come in?”

I nod, but she waits. My fingers tighten in the cardigan, and I force the word out before she has to ask twice. “Yes.”

Only then does she step over the edge of the blanket and sit beside me. She moves slowly, giving me room to shift away, but I make space for her with my knee instead. The nest changes around her immediately, turning from a pile of stolen things into somewhere she belongs.

Callie looks over the bench again, then at me. Her expression stays warm, but her worry is there too, tucked carefully around the edges. “Did something happen?”

My mouth opens, and nothing useful comes out.

She reaches for my hand without taking it. When I uncurl my fingers from the cardigan, she turns my palm up and brushes her thumb over the red line the compass left behind. Her brows draw together, and I wish I’d hidden that part better.

“It’s okay now,” I say.

Callie’s eyes lift to mine. She doesn’t believe me, but she doesn’t make me defend it. “Do you want me to stay?”

I nod too fast. “Stay.”

“I’m staying.” She shifts closer, folding one leg beneath her so her knee brushes mine. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

I shake my head.

“All right.” Her thumb moves once more over my palm before she lets my hand rest between us. “Do you want me to stop asking?”

I nod, and shame follows it because she’s only trying to help. Callie sees that too, because she’s Callie, and her voice gentles until it feels like a hand over the sore place in my chest.

“Okay, Star.” She leans back against the cushions, close enough that her shoulder almost touches mine. “I can stop asking.”

The quiet should help, but it doesn’t. She’s beside me, warm and real and home, and the thought of far opens under my ribsagain. My body moves before I decide what I’m asking for, and then my mouth is on hers.

Callie inhales softly, surprised but not pulling away. Her free hand lifts to my jaw and stays there, not holding me in place, only feeling me choose it. The kiss is supposed to explain that I don’t want far, that I don’t want good if good means gone, that I’ve only just learned the shape of her mouth and I can’t stand the idea of it becoming something I remember instead of something I reach for.

It doesn’t explain enough. I pull back with a frustrated sound trapped in my chest, and Callie keeps her hand on my jaw, her thumb still, her eyes searching mine.

“Color?” she asks.

“Green.” My voice shakes, but the word is true.

“Do you want me closer?” she asks, already still enough to let me be the one who chooses. I nod, then make myself answer because she listens so carefully when I manage words. “Yes.”

She moves closer until our legs touch fully and the side of her body is warm against mine. I breathe her in and shake harder, and she watches me like every answer I give matters more than the fear sitting in the middle of my chest.