14
She woke before either of them, which felt right, somehow, like the day owed her that.
The kitchen was grey-gold with early light when she got there, and she stood for a second in the doorway the way she had the very first night, taking in the room before it knew she was in it.
Darcy's pendant light, off. Darcy's plant on the windowsill, doing fine, because Whit watered it.
The mismatched mugs on the open shelf. None of it had changed. She had.
She made the coffee herself this time. Measured the grounds, ran the water, stood at the counter while it dripped through and let the smell fill up the kitchen the way it did every morning at six-fifteen, except this morning she was the one making it.
Whit appeared at the doorway in sweatpants and nothing else, hair doing something complicated from sleep, and stopped when he saw her there.
"Hey." He said it the same way he'd said it six weeks ago, leaning back against the doorframe like he'd been expecting her, except this time he had been. "You're up early."
"You're not surprised."
"I'm a little surprised." He came in, crossed to the counter, close enough that she could feel the heat off him before he even reached for a mug. "Pleasantly."
"There's a whole pot," she said. "I made extra."
"You remembered I take it with nothing in it."
"I pay attention," she said, "occasionally," and he almost smiled the way he had that first morning, except this time it wasn't a recalibration, it wasn't him adjusting to a new variable in the apartment.
It was just a smile. He poured a mug and stood next to her at the counter, shoulder a few inches from hers, and neither of them moved to put more distance between them, and she noticed that and didn't do anything about it.
"You okay?" he asked. Not loaded. Just asking.
"Yeah." She thought about it for a second, honestly, the way she hadn't let herself in a while. "Yeah, I think I actually am."
Darcy came in a few minutes later, hair a wreck, wearing one of Whit's t-shirts that fell to mid-thigh, and stopped in the doorway the way they all seemed to do, taking the room in before stepping into it.
She looked at the two of them standing at the counter with their coffee, unhurried, easy, and something in her face went soft and a little stunned, like she'd hoped for this and hadn't quite let herself expect it.
"You made coffee," she said to Leah.
"I live here," Leah said. "I'm allowed to make coffee."
Darcy laughed, the real one, and crossed the kitchen and got in between them at the counter, not choosing a side, just folding herself into the space like it had always had room for exactly this. She took Leah's mug out of her hand, drank from it, made a face, and handed it back.
"You make it too strong."
"I make it correctly."
"She does," Whit said.
"Don't take sides," Darcy said, delighted, and reached for the second mug, and the morning light came further into the kitchen and lit up the plant on the windowsill and the mismatched mugs and the three of them standing there with nowhere particular to be,
and for the first time since she'd walked into this apartment crying with a duffel bag that wouldn't zip, Leah wasn't watching the room from somewhere outside it. She was just in it.
Later, after Darcy left for a run and Whit disappeared into a work call with his shoulder against the wall and no shirt on, conducting himself with total professional composure, Leah went down the hall to the room that was supposed to have been hers for one night.
The duffel bag was still in the corner. Half-unpacked. It had been half-unpacked for six weeks, the zipper still straining slightly around whatever was crammed at the bottom, a soft, slouching reminder that some part of her had been keeping its bags packed the whole time, just in case.
She looked at it for a moment.
Then she crossed the room, unzipped it the rest of the way, and started putting her things away.