21. Cole
Cole
The eggs are burning.
Smoke crawls out of the pan and climbs into the overhead light while I stand there with the spatula locked in my hand, watching breakfast turn from golden to brown to charcoal. The handle bites into my palm. The smoke stings my eyes. I still don't move.
Maya is perched on the counter in her spot, bare feet tucked beneath my sweatshirt, a mug of tea cooling beside her and her laptop open to something I can't see from here.
She hasn't looked up since she came downstairs.
Her fingers keep moving, fast and sure, while the tea goes untouched beside her knee.
Last night, she told us about the calls.
The 413 number, the envelope with the dead name in block letters, the letter, Ashford in Briarcliff, the request to meet.
She sat at this counter and gave it to us flat and clear while I sat at the table with my palms pressed to the wood, my voice steady, my breathing so measured it scraped the inside of my ribs.
Because I already knew.
I'd known for weeks. After I went to Richard, I sat in his office with Dante while Richard filed the parole violation.
Then I sat at that table listening to Maya tell me things I already knew, keeping my hands flat, my voice even, my face arranged around concern.
Dante did the same beside me, his jaw locked, the muscle jumping at the hinge.
Except this time Dante was performing too, and watching him copy the thing I hate most in myself made me want to scrub my own face off.
I scrape the eggs into the trash and start over, cracking three more into the pan before I set the heat lower.
Dante left for a run twenty minutes ago.
He runs every morning now, early, before either of us makes it downstairs.
He didn't run before. Before, he came to my room.
Now the pavement gets what I used to get.
My grip tightens on the spatula. He hasn't touched me since the withdrawal started.
He hasn't touched her either. The mugs came back midweek, but the touching didn't. He gives us the objects and keeps his body out of reach.
The eggs sizzle while I stand over them. Around the edges, the whites firm. The yolks hold their shape.
"Are you making breakfast?" Maya says without looking up.
"Yeah."
"I'm not hungry."
"You haven't eaten since yesterday."
"I had coffee."
"Coffee isn't food, Maya."
"Coffee is a food group. It's the first food group. It precedes all other food groups."
The exchange runs the way it always runs, automatic after nine years of the same warmth, the same rhythm, the same back and forth I installed when I was thirteen and have maintained every day since.
I plate the eggs and set them on the counter beside her laptop. She glances at them, then at me, and takes a bite without stopping her typing.
"Thank you," she says around the fork.
"You're welcome."
Two words. Simple. She needs food, I provide food, she thanks me, and I accept. Maya reaches. Cole delivers. Another plate lands exactly where her hand will find it.
My phone buzzes on the counter beside my keys.
Dad.
Georgetown deposit deadline is May 1. Just a reminder. No pressure.
I lock the phone and set it facedown. Georgetown.
My father's dream for me, disguised as a reminder.
The law degree he's been steering me toward since sophomore year.
The career path that makes sense on paper and tightens every muscle between my throat and sternum.
I'm going pro. The draft is in June. Georgetown is my father's architecture, and I've spent enough years living inside other people's blueprints.
"Your dad?" Maya asks.
"Yeah."
"Georgetown again?"
"Georgetown again."
Her fingers stop. She looks at me, and I force myself to keep my hand away from the phone as her eyes narrow slightly, pulling a thread she didn't expect to find.
"Are you applying?"
"No."
"Have you told him that?"
"I've told him four times. He hears what he wants to hear."
She watches me a beat longer, fingers hovering above the keys.
"Okay," she says, and goes back to her laptop.
She'll come back to it.
I pick up the pan and scrub it in the sink. Hot water runs over my hands, steam climbing toward my face, and the scrape of the sponge against the pan gets louder than it needs to be.
"Cole." Her voice comes from behind me. "What's going on?"
"Nothing. I'm scrubbing a pan."
"You're scrubbing the coating off the pan. That's a forty-dollar pan."
I stop. My fingers stay tight around the sponge for another second before I set the pan in the rack, dry my hands, and turn around.
She watches me with the laptop forgotten and both hands wrapped around the mug of tea Dante made before he left. Barry's, the brand he bought for her, in the only mug he set on the counter at six this morning before walking out the door.
One mug. Hers.
"I'm fine," I say.
"You've been performing fine for over a week. I can see through the performance because I've been watching the performance for nine years."
My fingers flex against the dish towel.
"I'm handling it," I say.
"Handling what?"
"Everything. The same way I always handle everything."
"That's the problem, Cole. That's always been the problem."
She sets the mug down, slides off the counter, and crosses the kitchen to stand in front of me.
Bare feet, my sweatshirt, the woman I've been taking care of since she was a girl with a garbage bag in the back seat of my father's car.
When she puts her hand on my arm, my forearm tightens beneath her palm.
"Talk to me," she says.
"About what?"
"About whatever is making you scrub the finish off a pan at seven in the morning."
"It's not one thing. It's—"
I stop with the rest of it jammed behind my teeth.
The front door opens, followed by keys hitting the counter and Dante's footsteps cutting through the house.
Cold comes off him when he rounds the corner into the kitchen, sweat darkening the black long-sleeve across his chest, his breathing still rough from the run.
His gaze moves from Maya to me, then to the counter, the doorway, and finally to Maya's hand on my arm.
His jaw shifts.
"Morning," he says to the coffeemaker.
"Morning," Maya says.
I don't say anything.
The coffeemaker runs. Dante pours coffee. One mug. His. The rest stay in the cabinet.
Maya is still in front of me, her hand still on my arm, but her attention starts moving between us. The mug in Dante's hand. The cabinet doors. His closed bedroom door down the hall.
"Something is wrong," she says to both of us. "Something has been wrong for days, and neither of you will tell me what it is. I'm standing in a kitchen where the silence is louder than any sound I've ever heard in this house."
"Ask him," Dante says from the counter, coffee in hand.
Maya turns. "Ask him what?"
"Ask Cole what happened on Thursday."
The spatula handle digs into my palm. Dante leans against the counter with his coffee, still in his running clothes, his face the blank wall, the composure that means the pressure underneath has found its line of attack. He puts the question in her hands and keeps his own out of it.
"Thursday," Maya says. She turns back to me. "What happened Thursday?"
"Dante—"
"Tell her."
"This isn't how—"
"Tell her, Cole. Or I will. And my version won't have the context yours does."
The kitchen holds us in three positions.
Dante is at the counter with his back to the cabinets.
Maya stands between us with her hand on my arm.
I'm at the sink with damp hands, a scrubbed pan behind me, and the truth pressed hard against my teeth because Dante knows exactly what the fuck he's doing.
"Thursday," I say. "When Dante was at film. You came downstairs. Without your phone. Without the laptop."
Maya's hand goes still on my arm.
"We were on the couch," I say. "I went down on you. Dante's blanket was on the arm."
Her face holds steady, but her focus cuts to Dante's mug, then the cabinet, then the place where her hand rests on my arm. She hasn't heard it spoken aloud in this kitchen, with all three of us present.
"Okay," she says, steady enough to hurt. "And that's what this is about. The silence. The one mug."
"That's what started it," Dante says. "That's what this is about."
He looks at me now. The blank wall has a crack in it, and the crack is aimed at my chest. I know what's coming because I've been reading this man's body for six years. His posture has the stillness that comes before a hit on the ice, the weight shift before impact.
"Tell her the rest," Dante says. "Tell her how Thursday happened."
"What rest?" Maya says.
"Ask him about the timing. Ask him why Thursday. Why that night. Why the night I was gone."
Maya's hand falls from my arm. The imprint of her palm stays hot through my sleeve.
She turns to me fully, shoulders square, the sweatshirt hanging off one bare shoulder.
"Cole," she says. "Was Thursday planned?"
My throat closes before I answer.
"You're using the wrong word for what I did."
"Then what way?"
My hands hang at my sides. The scrubbed pan sits in the rack behind me.
Morning light lays every inch of the kitchen bare: Maya two feet in front of me, Dante twelve feet to my right, the counter between us wet with coffee.
I've spent nine years hiding in rooms, and now there is nowhere to put my hands, nowhere to look, nowhere to move that won't give me away.
"I chose Thursday because Dante wouldn't be here."
"You chose it."
"I chose the night. I chose the house. I chose the couch."
"Why?"
"Because I've been choosing for nine years, Maya.
I choose everything. I choose when to bring you coffee.
Where to put the mug. Which sweatshirt to leave on the back of the couch.
How many minutes to wait before I text you.
I choose the seat next to you in the dining hall, the angle that puts my body between you and the door, and the exact amount of pressure when my hand lands on your shoulder. "