One Negative Variable #3
The words didn’t strike her the way compliments usually did.
They didn’t bounce harmlessly off the surface of her understanding while she searched for the socially appropriate response.
Instead, they settled somewhere deeper, somewhere she couldn’t immediately analyse or organise, and that made them far more difficult to dismiss.
Riley’s throat tightened. She tried to respond, but nothing came out cleanly.
“Riley,” Dee said, softer now, but more certain for it, “you’re my person.”
Something in Riley gave way under the weight of Dee’s certainty.
She had spent so long treating relationships as systems that required maintenance, measuring her place within them by what she contributed and how effectively she could minimise the inconvenience of her existence, that hearing Dee speak with such uncomplicated conviction left her without anywhere familiar to stand.
“I don’t stay because it’s easy.” Dee’s voice was quieter now, though no less steady. “I stay because it’s you, because you make my life better. There isn’t a version of my life where you’re not in it.”
Riley felt her vision blur. She blinked, instinctively trying to clear it, but the tightness in her chest only seemed to deepen.
The careful distance she normally maintained from her own emotions had become increasingly difficult to hold throughout the conversation, and now it felt as though something inside her was slowly slipping beyond the reach of logic and structure altogether.
“I didn’t want to make things harder for you,” she said eventually.
The words emerged softer than she intended, stripped of much of their usual precision. “I thought...” Her voice faltered as she searched for the conclusion she had carried for so many years that she had stopped questioning it.
The assumption had always seemed obvious, safe. Yet sitting here now, with Dee looking at her as though the idea itself was absurd, Riley found she could no longer hold onto it with the same certainty she once had.
Dee shook her head immediately. “You don’t make my life harder,” she said, tears slipping freely down her face now. “Riley, you’re the best part of it.”
The words settled somewhere deep enough that Riley couldn’t simply examine them from a distance.
Her throat tightened, her breathing became uneven. She lifted a hand as though she could somehow steady the feeling building inside her, but it had already moved beyond anything she knew how to regulate.
When she looked back at Dee, there was a vulnerability in her expression that rarely made it to the surface.
“Of all the people I have known,” she said quietly, “you are the one I wish had been my family.” The admission hung between them. Riley hadn’t planned to say it. She wasn’t even entirely sure when the thought had formed, she only knew that it was true.
Dee’s face crumpled immediately. “Riley,” she whispered. Her voice broke around the name as she reached for her. “You are my family. I don’t care that we don’t share blood, I chose you eight years ago, and I’ve never stopped choosing you since.”
Riley barely had time to absorb the words before Dee pulled her into a hug.
Usually there would have been a moment of adjustment, a brief calculation while she organised the physical contact into something she could comfortably navigate.
This time she simply let herself lean into it, her forehead pressing against Dee’s shoulder as the emotion she had spent weeks containing finally moved instead of remaining trapped beneath analysis and explanation.
They stayed like that for a long time, holding onto each other while the film continued unnoticed in the background. Neither of them seemed interested in filling the silence. There was nothing left to explain.
Eventually, the intensity eased into something softer. The ache remained, but it no longer felt sharp. It felt understood.
Dee pulled back first, scrubbing at her face before reaching for the abandoned tub of ice cream on the coffee table.
“Well,” she said, staring down at it, “this is fully melted,” her voice still thick.
Riley looked at the melted contents before glancing back at her. “It’s been a while since we’ve made milkshakes.”
The laugh that escaped Dee was wet and immediate. “God, it has.”
They settled back into the couch together, shoulders touching, the melted ice cream balanced between them while the film continued to play.
Riley’s attention drifted back toward the screen gradually.
She watched the Bennet sisters move through their familiar patterns of affection and frustration, misunderstanding and loyalty, and found herself lingering on something she hadn’t noticed earlier.
Their relationships wasn’t effortless, they misunderstood one another, irritated one another, and occasionally hurt one another. Yet beneath all of that was a kind of permanence.
Beside her, Dee leaned comfortably against her shoulder, warm, familiar and unquestionably present. Beside her, Dee remained where she had always been.
And for the first time, Riley allowed herself to believe that had been a choice rather than an obligation.