"I need to —" His forehead drops against mine. He's breathing hard. I can feel his heartbeat through his chest, rapid and heavy. "I need to think."
"Don't think. Just —"
"You're twenty-one." He says it like it costs him. Like the words are being dragged out of somewhere he didn't want to go. "You turned twenty-one yesterday."
The heat in my body drops by ten degrees.
"And I'm thirty-two," he continues, "and I have you against a wall and —"
"Don't." My voice comes out flat. The customer service mask. I feel it slide into place, smooth and blank, the face I've been putting on since I was eight years old and learned that showing people what you really feel just gives them something to use against you. "It's fine."
"Dev, that's not what I —"
"I said it's fine." I duck sideways, out from between him and the wall. The evening air hits the places where his body wasand I'm cold immediately. Cold and stupid and twenty-one and exactly as young as he thinks I am. "Don't worry about it."
"I'm not — Dev, listen to me —"
"I'll be at Lucia's at seven." My voice is steady, polite, perfectly pleasant. The voice I use when customers complain about their drinks. The voice I use when shelter staff ask if I'm okay. "If you still want to go. If not, that's fine too."
"Of course I still —"
"Okay. Great."
I turn and walk back inside Haven House. The door closes behind me. The porch light stays on.
The common room is loud. Friday always is. Xbox argument, someone's music too loud, two kids playing cards on the floor. I navigate through it like a ghost and climb to the third floor. Our room. I'm alone with the cracked mirror and the narrow bed and the laundry I folded this morning when I was happy.
I sit on the bed. Stare at the wall. My lips still feel bruised from the kiss and my hip still feels the ghost of his hand and I hate that my body is holding onto something my brain already filed under things that didn't work out.
My phone buzzes.
Silas:I'm sorry. That's not what I meant. Please let me explain.
I read it. Read it again.
Silas:I wasn't pulling away from you. I was pulling away from myself. There's a difference and I did it badly and I'm sorry.
Another one:The date still stands. I'll be at Lucia's at seven. I hope you'll be there.
And then:But if you're not, I understand. And I'll be at the library Monday morning with your coffee either way.
Four messages. I read them all. I don't reply.
It's 6:22. Lucia's is fifteen minutes away. Tyler isn't here to tell me what to wear or to drag me out the door or to say something stupid and right about how I can't hide forever.
I think about Silas's face when he pulled back. I'd read it as rejection, the age thing, the shelter thing, the not-enough thing, the whole constellation of reasons why someone like him wouldn't want someone like me. But his face wasn't disgusted or pitying. It was scared. The way a person looks when they're doing the wrong thing for the right reason.
I was pulling away from myself.
Six homes. Two years of couches. Eight months at Haven House. I've learned to leave before I'm left. To fold small and walk away and not look back. It's survival. It works. It's kept me intact through every foster parent who promised this time would be different and every caseworker who said they'd found a permanent placement and every person who got close enough to matter and then didn't.
But Silas didn't leave. He pulled back, from the kiss, from the heat, from the wall and my hips against his and the sound he made when I moved. He pulled back from that, not from me. And I didn't let him explain the difference because I'm twenty-one years old and I've been leaving people my whole life and it's the only skill I'm truly excellent at.
It's 6:31. Fourteen minutes to Lucia's if I walk fast.
I look at myself in the cracked mirror. Same gray henley. Same face. But the happy is gone.
I look terrified.