Chapter Thirty-Two Brielle
The morning is ordinary in the best way.
Jase is at the stove. Evan is at the table with his laptop and his coffee. His ribs are nearly healed, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.
Max is by the window with his phone. The distance he’s been keeping for weeks is entirely gone, replaced by something settled and present that I feel across the kitchen without having to look at him.
I pour my coffee.
Jase looks over his shoulder at me with the expression he gets when he’s deciding how to ask something.
“How are you?” he says. “After yesterday.”
Evan looks up from his laptop.
I consider the question honestly.
“I’m good,” I say. “Really good, actually.”
Jase looks at me.
“Like, suspiciously good,” Evan says.
“I stood up to my mother,” I say. “It turns out that feels excellent.”
“And?” Jase says, because he knows me well enough to hear the and.
I look at Max by the window. He’s already looking at me.
“And,” I say, “I’m great.”
Evan makes a sound that is definitely a laugh he’s swallowing, and goes back to his laptop.
Jase turns back to the stove with a smile he doesn’t try to hide.
I take my coffee, my jacket, and my bag.
“I’m heading out,” I say. “To the park. I need some air.”
Jase looks up from the stove. “You okay?”
“I am. I need to think about something,” I reply.
***
The park is four blocks from the apartment and mostly empty on a Tuesday morning, the November cold keeping the casual visitors away. I find a bench facing the small pond and sit down. I wrap both hands around my coffee cup, set my gaze on the grey water, and I let myself think.
Not the managing kind of thinking where I’d run through every possible outcome and find the safest path between them. Just thinking. The honest kind that follows the feeling rather than trying to get ahead of it.
Three men.
Three entirely different people who have, in the space of a few weeks, made me into someone I recognize.
I take out my phone and call Callie.
She answers on the second ring.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hey,” I say.
“What’s up?”
“I’m good. I’m at the park near the apartment,” I say. “And I’m thinking.”
She lets out a laugh. “About?” she asks.
A pigeon lands on the bench beside me, regards me with indifference, and leaves.
“I want to tell them,” I say. “All three of them. That I’m falling for all of them, and that I want them.”
“And?” Callie says.
“It still feels terrifying,” I say. “But I want it anyway.”
Callie doesn’t speak right away.
“Do you remember what I said on the beach?” she says.
“You said the world was never going to give me permission,” I say. “That’s not how permission works.”
“Yeah,” she says. “So stop waiting for it.”
I look at the pond.
“What if things end up badly—” I start.
“Brielle,” she says.
“I know,” I say.
“You already know, it won’t,” she says. “You’ve known for a while.”
I close my eyes for a second.
She’s right.
“I’m scared,” I say.
“I know,” she says. “But you have to do it anyway.”
I open my eyes.
“Okay,” I say.
“Okay?” she says.
“Okay,” I say. “I’m going to do it.”
Callie makes a sound on the other end of the line that is equal parts relief and delight and something that might be pride, and I sit with that for a second before I say goodbye and put my phone in my pocket and look at the pond one more time.
Then I get up and go home.
The apartment is quieter when I get back.
Evan has gone to the station for a half shift, his first since the fire.
Jase is in his room. Max is at the kitchen table with the budget spreadsheet he’s been working on for three days, and he looks up when I come in, and our eyes meet, and I think about last night and feel the warmth of it move through me.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey,” I say.
I put my bag down, keep my jacket on, and go to the kitchen to pour myself a fresh coffee because my hands need something to do. Max watches me without comment and goes back to his spreadsheet.
After I drain my cup, I head on to my bedroom to catch a quick nap. Evan’s at the station and won't be back until evening. Everyone has to be present for the conversation to happen.
***
It’s early evening and all four of us are in the kitchen.
“I need to tell you something,” I say.
Nobody moves.
“I’m falling for all three of you,” I say.
“I’ve been falling for all three of you for weeks, and I’ve been waiting to feel certain enough to say it out loud, but the certainty isn’t coming, and I don’t think it’s going to, so I’m going to say it.
” I hold each of their gazes in turn. “I don’t want to choose.
I know that’s not how things are supposed to work.
I know it’s unconventional and complicated, and that the world has a lot of opinions about it.
But this is what I want. You are what I want.
All of you. And I wanted you to know that. ”
The kitchen is very quiet.
Jase moves first. He crosses the space between us and takes my face in both hands and looks at me. His eyes are warm and certain and entirely without performance.
“I already told you I was falling for you,” he says. “That hasn’t changed.”
He kisses me, brief and warm, and steps back.
Evan sets his water glass down. He looks at me across the kitchen, and the easy surface of him is entirely gone, just him, the real version, the one I’ve been catching glimpses of since the park in October.
“I meant what I said about being in it,” he says. “Whatever shape it takes.” He pauses. “I’m in it.”
I look at Max.
He is sitting at the kitchen table with his hands around his mug, and he is looking at me with the expression he had in the office yesterday, open and direct and decided.
“I said invite me next time,” he says.
I stare at him.
“That was weeks ago,” I say.
“I know,” he says. “I’ve been patient.”
Jase makes a sound somewhere behind me. Evan glances up at the ceiling.
I look at Max, and Max looks back at me, and suddenly the kitchen feels too small to contain all of it—the warm evening light, the weight of everything we’ve survived, the slow, undeniable thing that’s been building between us since the fire in that church in Brooklyn Heights finally settling into place.
“Okay,” I say.
He doesn't say anything back.
He reaches across the table and takes my hand. He turns it over and presses his mouth to the inside of my wrist, and I feel it everywhere.