Page 49 of The Wild Card

She chuckles, soft and warm, and I feel it vibrate through me, through my ribs, through my sternum, straight into whatever’s left of my composure.

I should say something. Make a joke. Deflect. Ease this tension. But my throat is tight and my eyes are burning and if I open my mouth right now I honestly don’t know what will come out.

“Take your time,” she whispers. “We’ve got all night.”

Not all night. We agreed on twenty minutes.

“Is this okay?” she asks. “The position?”

“Yeah.”

“Does it feel good?”

I consider the question. Her weight against me is grounding, somehow. Like an anchor. Like something I didn’t know I was missing.

“Yeah,” I admit. “It does.”

She makes a small sound of contentment, and we lie there in silence for a while. The fairy lights cast a warm glow over everything. Her breathing is slow and even against my chest. I focus on matching it, letting my lungs fill and empty in rhythm with hers.

“Tell me something,” she says eventually. “About when you were a kid.”

The question catches me off guard. “Like what?”

“Anything. A memory.” She tilts her head to look up at me. “I want to know you.”

No one’s ever said that to me before. I want to know you. Like I’m something worth discovering, not a puzzle to be solved or a problem to be managed.

“There was this foster home,” I hear myself say. “Number six. I was maybe eleven. They had a dog—this fluffy apricot-colored thing named Pickles.”

“Pickles,” she repeats, and I can hear the smile in her voice.

“He was ancient. Barely moved. But every night, he’d climb onto my bed and sleep at my feet.” I stare at the ceiling, remembering. “I wasn’t supposed to let him. The foster parents had rules about animals in bedrooms. But Pickles didn’t care about rules, and I wasn’t going to rat him out.”

“Did you get in trouble?”

“Once. They found him there in the morning and said I was breaking their trust.” My jaw tightens. “I got moved two weeks later.”

Emmie’s quiet. Her hand finds mine, fingers intertwining.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “That’s awful.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“Doesn’t make it less awful.” She squeezes my hand. “You deserved better.”

I don’t know what to say to that, so I say nothing. I just hold her hand and let her warmth seep into me.

“Your turn,” I manage after a minute. “Tell me something.”

“Okay, um.” She thinks. “When I was eight, I decided I was going to run away and join the circus.”

“The circus.”

“I was very serious about it. I packed a bag—snacks, my stuffed elephant, and one sock. I don’t know why just one sock, but apparently that was essential.”

I feel my mouth twitch. “How far did you get?”

“The end of the driveway. Then my mom came out with cookies and asked if the circus could wait until after lunch.” She laughs. “I said yes. And then I forgot about the whole thing because the cookies were really good.”