“Four.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but stopped.
Her gaze drifted down to the space between us—the peanut butter jar, to the crumpled wrappers—the strange domesticity of it all, and her ears turned red again.
Finally, without looking at me, she said, “You didn’t haveto do that earlier.”
I tilted my head slightly. “Which part?”
She threw a chip at me. “You know exactly which part.”
I caught it and ate it. “Ah. That part.”
She buried her face in her hands. “I cannot believe we’re having this conversation.”
“Ignoring it seems worse.”
She peeked through her fingers. Something vulnerable sat behind the embarrassment—something she was clearly trying very hard to keep hidden.
“You didn’t ask for anything back,” she said.
“No.”
“Why?”
The question was quiet, as if she were genuinely confused, like she’d been turning it over in her head for hours and still didn’t understand.
I looked at her for a moment: the tiredness around her eyes; the way her hands were still trembling slightly against her face, even now, hours after the worst of it; at the way she kept bracing herself—for disappointment, for cruelty, for the catch.
“You needed it,” I said. “That was enough.”
She stared at me.
I watched the words compute, watched them move through her—confusion first, then something softer, that broke through the careful walls she’d been holding up all day. Her eyes brightened for just a second before she blinked hard and looked away.
She grabbed another granola bar, tore the wrapper with more force than necessary.
“Well,” she muttered, not quite steadily. “This apocalypseis off to a very strange start.”
I let the moment pass.
“Just wait until tomorrow when we start relocating sharks.”
She groaned, letting her head fall back against the couch, but when she turned to look at me again, there was something different in her face, that hadn’t been there yesterday, or any of the days before that.
Almost as if she trusted me.
* * *
We pushed the couches together until the cushions met, forming something that looked like an oversized crib for two grown adults who had absolutely no business sharing a sleeping arrangement.
I stepped back and looked at it.
Ridiculous.