“To be seen with me.”
The sentence lands fully now.
Cold.
Wrong.
My hand presses flat against the counter.
For a moment, I don’t understand what she means.
Embarrassed.
The word doesn’t belong anywhere near her. It doesn’t attach to anything real. Not to her face when she laughs. Not to the way she moves through a room like she has every right to be there. Not to the quiet certainty of her standing beside me like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
“Why would you think that?” I ask.
I’m not defensive.
I’m genuinely lost.
She hesitates.
“I don’t know,” she says. “It’s probably nothing.”
Nothing doesn’t sound like that.
Nothing doesn’t sit in silence like this.
“I just…” She exhales softly. “Sometimes when other people are around, you seem different.”
Different?
I try to understand what that means.
“I don’t mean in a bad way,” she adds quickly. “Just quieter. More careful. Distant”
Distant.
The word settles somewhere uncomfortable.
I picture the last few days automatically. The pub. The Manor. The street outside her shop. Nothing unusual. Nothing wrong. Just ordinary moments, unfolding the way they always do.
Nothing I would ever associate with shame.
“I thought maybe,” she says, her voice smaller now, “it was because of my race.”
The word hits harder than anything else she’s said.
Race.
The idea that she could believe that. That something I’ve done has allowed that thought to exist.
“Christina,” I say immediately. “No.”
The certainty is absolute.
“I am not embarrassed of you.”