Page 344 of Ripe

I looked away.

She came anyway.

Now she’s asleep upstairs after spending nearly forty minutes this morning learning how a shower works and another twenty staring into the refrigerator.

She cried over ice.

Actual fucking ice.

Rhett cried because she cried.

Then he denied it for the rest of the afternoon.

I was beginning to think immortality was easier.

The house is quiet now.

Too quiet.

I stand at the kitchen counter staring into a cup of coffee I haven’t touched when footsteps sound behind me.

I know who it is before she speaks.

“You’re doing it again.”

I close my eyes.

“Doing what?”

“Avoiding me.”

I turn.

Sage stands in the doorway wearing an oversized shirt and shorts, her hair piled messily on top of her head. The red ribbon is gone, but sometimes I still see it around her wrist.

Usually when I’m tired.

Sometimes when I blink.

“I’m not avoiding you.”

She gives me a look.

I take a drink of coffee.

Her eyes narrow. “That’s fascinating.”

“What is?”

“You’ve been alive for over two hundred years and somehow still suck at lying.”

“I told you that already.”

“No. Rhett told me.”

“Rhett talks too much.”

“Also true.”