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Why me? I asked.

Because you showed me yours.

An exchange. That’s what it was. The things we carry as currency. Him waiting for the right person to trade with, deciding it was me, and offering something he’s never offered anyone.

I am very good at receiving vulnerability. I know how to hold it carefully and not make it weird and give someone back the dignity of having told me something real. It’s a skill I’ve developed over years of being the person people tell things to — the easy one, the safe one, the one who won’t make it a whole thing. But I’ve always been on the receiving end. I hold. I don’t offer.

Nobody has ever looked at what I was carrying and said here, me too, now we’re even. Because I’m the easy one, and easy people don’t get to have an equal weight on the other side of the scale. Easy people give, and they receive, and they manage the difference, and that’s just how it is.

Theo doesn’t do it that way.

Fourth moment. The Tab on his phone screen. There.

I look at my hands.

Pre-law brain. I build cases. I review evidence. I reach conclusions after establishing facts. It’s a thing I was doing before I knew it was a thing, and law school is just going to give it a credential.

Here are the facts:

He told my father I deserved to be chosen, in the house where nobody ever chose me. He told my ex-boyfriend I was his — plainly, on a porch, in language that left no room. He stood in a shower at midnight and held me while I fell apart and didn’t ask for anything back. He showed me the number on the phone because I showed him the weight I carry. He said you don’t have to be the version of you you’ve had to be for your family, not with me — and he meant it in the specific way Theo means things, without performance, without waiting for a particular response.

There is a shell in my coat pocket. From the beach where I put my hand in his without being asked.

I know what the evidence points to. I’ve known for a while. I’ve been performing not yet, and the arrangement works, and named things can be lost — I’ve been the secret-keeper in our own story, doing the cowardly move and calling it care. The difference between cowardice and care is what you tell yourself about why you’re not saying the true thing.

I know why I haven’t said it. I’ve been scared.

The thing about fear, though, is that it runs out. You keep the secret until the keeping costs more than the saying would. And I’ve been sitting in front of a corkboard for twenty minutes, and I can feel exactly what the keeping is costing me, and it costs more than the saying would.

I want to find out what’s on the other side.

I write back soon on a sticky note for June. I leave notes. That’s a Margo thing.

I find my coat. Shell still in the pocket. I find the key — on my keyring, where it’s lived since he slid it across a library table and called it practical and meant something else entirely. I put on the shoes that are not designed for walking because I’ve walked in them twice today, and a third time doesn’t scare me.

I don’t text him. I don’t plan what I’m going to say. Planning is the enemy tonight. Planning is the version of me that qualifies things, softens edges, builds the case before she makes it. I’m done building cases for an audience of one.

The March night is cold. Clear. Stars doing what stars do over a college campus at eleven-thirty, which is existing without caring whether anyone’s watching. Four minutes across town.

Raven House has a light on in the kitchen. I can see it from the street. But there’s no movement inside, so I take a steadying breath and stand on the sidewalk for exactly three seconds — I allow myself three seconds, which is one for each time I almost turned back on the walk over — and then I use the key.

The house is quiet. The front door eased shut behind me. The stairs are ahead, just off the living and dining room. Third step creaks; I step wide left, testing my weight. I know this because I’ve been up these stairs before, late, in the dark, for reasons I was calling something other than what they were. Fourth step. Fifth. Sixth.

You know what you’re going to say, I tell myself on the seventh. You’ve known for a while. You’re going to say it once, without the qualifications, without the softening. You’re going to hand it to him the way he handed you the number on the phone. Because you showed me yours. And now I’m showing you mine.

His door. Second on the left. Light underneath it — thin, warm, the specific quality that means someone awake and not pretending otherwise.

I lift my hand.

I knock.

Chapter 18

Theo

The knock comes at eleven forty-seven.

I know it’s her before I open the door. That probably sounds like something I’m adding in retrospect, but it isn’t — I’ve been reading her for months and I know the specific quality of her knock. She knocked on this door once before, back in January, and it was a different knock. That one was decisive. This one is decided, which is not the same thing. Decisive is someone who hasn’t thought about it much. Decided is someone who has thought about it too much and finally came down on a side.