Page 25 of Redline Baby

He steps back, giving me room, and when I finally turn around, his face isn't doing pity, isn't doing concern-as-performance. It's just open, steady, waiting to take whatever I decide to hand him and nothing more than that.

"Can we just... sit for a minute," I say. "Before we go."

"Of course."

We sit in the plastic scoring booth seats, not talking, the teenagers' noise washing over us from three lanes down.

Soren doesn't touch me again.

He doesn't reach for my hand.

He just sits close enough that I can lean into the warm line of his shoulder if I want to and far enough away that I can ignore it if I don't.

"Thank you," I say eventually, not looking at him.

"For what?"

"Not asking."

"I don't need the whole story to know you're carrying something heavy," he says. "You don't owe me the excavation. Not tonight. Not ever, if you don't want to."

I don't answer that.

I don't trust my voice with it.

But something in my chest, some small, tight fist that's been clenched for eight months straight, loosens by a fraction.

Just enough.

"You want to get something to eat before we go?" he asks after a while, casual, like it's not a lifeline he's throwing me, though it obviously is. "There's a snack bar. I know it's not exactly the sushi place."

"God, yes."

I'm grateful for it in a way that's embarrassing all on its own, grateful to have somewhere to look other than at him.

"Please. Anything. I don't care what it is."

The snack bar turns out to have exactly one thing worth ordering, according to Soren: fries smothered in cheddar and bacon bits, served in a red plastic basket lined with wax paper.

"This is a crime against the sushi we had last week," I say when he sets the basket down between us back at the booth.

"Different night, different crime." He hands me a little plastic fork I don't intend to use. "Eat."

I eat with my fingers, obviously, dragging a fry through the pool of orange cheese.

For a minute, neither of us says anything.

It's a good quiet, the kind that doesn't need filling, and I let myself just chew and not perform anything for a second.

"I'm sorry about before," I say eventually, staring at the basket instead of at him. "The... thing. At the lane."

"You don't need to apologize for that."

"I kind of froze up. In public. Over a bowling ball." I laugh, but it comes out thin, more embarrassed than amused. "That's... I don't know. That's a lot for a Wednesday."

"I've had worse reactions to bowling balls," Soren says, entirely deadpan.

It takes me a second to realize he's joking, that he's actually trying to make me laugh instead of making me explain myself, and something in my chest unknots half an inch. I laugh.