23. Josie #3
Through the kitchen window, Finn laughs at something Logan said. Head tipped back, the whole unguarded length of it, gold in the light over the sink. A thing I've seen him do maybe twice.
And I sit on Gemma's swing while she rocks us slow, having just been told I'm what her family makes sense around, and I feel the exact size of what I'm going to have to do.
My body picks that moment to remind me it's stopped taking orders. A low pull, rolling through me, with no one touching me at all.
Three days, I think. The old countdown, surfacing on its own. Except there's no reunion to count down to anymore. Just this. Just Sundays getting quieter until there aren't any.
I don't finish the thought. I've gotten this far not finishing certain ones.
They walk me to my car in the blue almost-dark, all three, because nobody suggests doing it any other way, and Cynthia stands in the lit doorway waving like we're shipping out.
Hudson opens my door, because Hudson opens doors, and kisses the top of my head, easy, warm, “drive safe, Josie Porter,” and folds himself off toward the truck.
Logan presses something into my hands. Smaller, a coaster, the same walnut sanded just as smooth, still holding the heat of his pocket.
He made two things. One for Cynthia's stove, out loud, in front of everyone. And this one, quiet, at the end of the night, for me.
“For your desk,” he says. “At school. You always set your mug on the attendance folder.” And he goes red, all the way to his ears, and follows Hudson before I can do anything about my face.
And then it's Finn.
He walks me the last few steps to the driver's door and stops, hands in his pockets, taking me in under the porch light, quiet and unhurried the way he takes in everything.
“Good potato salad,” he says. “Logan went back for thirds while you were on the swing.”
“He had seconds.”
“He had thirds. He hid the plate behind the toaster,” and the almost-smile happens, the quarter-second one, and I have my keys in my hand and my hand on the door and I am one clean exit from making it home before my face does anything unforgivable.
And Finn takes his hands out of his pockets.
He doesn't rush it. He never rushes anything. He tips my chin up with two fingers, careful, giving me the whole slow second to step back, and when I don't, because I can't, because I have never once been able to, he kisses me.
And it's nothing like the side of the house. That one was a dam breaking.
This one is a man who's decided something. Unhurried, sure, his mouth warm and certain against mine, one hand coming up to cradle my jaw like I'm worth being careful about.
The low pull that's been rolling through me all day surges up so fast and total that I fist a hand in his shirt just to stay standing.
And I kiss him back like I mean it. Because I do. Because I've run completely out of ways not to.
When he pulls back he doesn't step away. He stays close, forehead nearly to mine, and I wait for it. The take-back. The that shouldn't have happened, the flat shuttered face, the sentence that lets me fold this up and put it with the others.
It doesn't come.
He just looks at me, long and quiet, like the looking is the truest thing he's got.
“Goodnight, Josie,” he says.
He opens my door, waits while I get in with legs I don't fully trust, shuts it soft, and steps back with the porch light gold behind him.
He didn't take it back. He kissed me with no audience on earth and he didn't take it back, and now it's just going to sit there, real, with nowhere for me to put it.
Over his shoulder, in the doorway, past Cynthia's oblivious waving, I catch Gemma. Not waving. Just watching, arms crossed, having seen the whole thing, wearing the face of a woman whose brother just did the telling without a single word.
At the stoplight on Main I dig the bottle out of my bag without deciding to. It comes up too light in my hand. Rattling thin, weeks early.
I do not count it.
I close my fist around it and put it back, because counting is a thing you do to a problem you plan on looking at. I am not looking at this one.
Green light.
I drive home too fast in the almost-dark, one hand pressed flat to my sternum like that's going to do anything, like a wall ever held because somebody outside leaned on it.
Because my body isn't reading from the plan anymore.
It's three steps ahead of the whole calendar, warm and certain and climbing, an omega's whole biology waking up around a pack it decided was hers weeks ago, on a kitchen floor and a job site and the shady side of a house. It didn't choose one of them.
It chose all three.
The sweet edge on my scent. The flush that won't quit. The pull that stopped waiting to be touched. Six years, one pill a day, and it flattened everything, and now I'm taking them like breath mints and my body climbs anyway.
There's a name for what that means. I know the name.
I don't finish it. I never do. It's the one household chore I've kept up flawlessly for four weeks, not finishing that thought, and I'm not about to ruin my streak two miles from home.
The thought can wait at the door. It's had practice.