I want to argue. I want to close the distance between us and kiss him until he forgets all his noble reasons for saying no. I want to be the kind of woman who takes what she wants without caring about the consequences.
But I'm not that woman. I never have been.
"Goodnight, Cole."
"Goodnight."
I turn and walk back down the hallway, and I don't run, because I've spent eight years learning that running is a concession to the thing chasing you. I close my door with a soft click and lean against it with my palms flat on the wood and I breathe.
He said no.
He was hard. I saw it, straining against his pants, undeniable. And he said no. Not because he didn't want me. Because he wanted me to want him for the right reasons.
Adrian never said no. Adrian took what he wanted when he wanted it. He called it love. He called it his right. He called it what I owed him for the house, the car, the ring, the life he'd given me, and if I didn't feel like giving it he took it anyway and told me I'd wanted it, told me my body had wanted it even if my mouth said otherwise. And I believed him because what did I know? I'd only ever been with one man before him and that man had left me.
Cole is sitting twenty feet away behind a wall, watching screens, because he told me no.
If I touch you right now, I won't stop.
NotI don't want you.Notyou're not enough.He wanted me so badly his hands were shaking with the effort of not taking and he chose to sit in a chair and watch a screen instead.
Not my parents. They chose the family name. Not Adrian. He chose his own entitlement. Not even Sal, who freed me so he could own me differently.
When did anyone ever choose me over themselves?
I slide down the door until I'm sitting on the cold hardwood, my back against the wood, my father's medal pressed between my palm and my chest.
Twenty-three more days.
Twenty-three days, and the man in the other room chose my clarity over his need.
I don't know what to do with that. I don't know how to file it away or cross-examine it or reduce it to something that makes sense in the framework I've built for understanding men.
So, I sit on the floor in the dark and let the tears come, silent and hot against my cheeks, and I don't know if I'm crying because he rejected me or because he didn't.
twelve
Cole
"Ineed poster board. For a project. It's due tomorrow."
Chesca rounds the corner into the kitchen at six forty-three in the morning, backpack already on even though pickup is over an hour away, hair half-brushed, a fistful of crumpled papers in one hand. She drops into the kitchen chair with full weight and total commitment and zero doubt that the chair will hold.
"Good morning to you too," I say, setting a glass of juice in front of her.
She takes it without looking up, already smoothing the crumpled papers across the counter. "It has to be blue. Not light blue. Real blue."
Footsteps on the stairs, deliberate, someone who has learned to control her entrances. Angelina comes into the kitchen with her hair twisted up and blouse buttoned to the collar, armor halfway assembled. Her feet are still bare, heels waiting by the front door. Her gaze sweeps the counter, the juice glass, her daughter's head still bent over the papers.
"Chesca. What do you say?"
Chesca glances at the juice, then at me. "Thank you." Back to the papers. "It's due TOMORROW, Mom."
Angelina reaches for the counter where her mug sits every morning, the blue one with the chip on the rim she refuses to throw away because Chesca picked it out. Her coffee is already made. Oat milk, one sugar.
Beside her mug, a second one. White ceramic, no pattern. She set it out for me sometime between last night and this morning, and neither of us is going to mention it.
Her eyes close over the first sip for one second, and her shoulders drop a quarter inch.