“How long?”
“How long since what?” I ask, feigning ignorance.
“Come on, Noelle, we all know you’re sleeping with Shay.”
I hold up my hands. “Says who? None of you knows that for sure.”
A throat clears, and I turn to look at Quinn, whose cheeks are pink. “Actually, I saw you the other night. You really should consider closing your blinds.”
Well, then.
“Thank you, Quinn. Great advice,” I say through gritted teeth. “Fine, yes. We’ve been sleeping together since last week, but it’s just sex. Nothing else.” There are skeptical faces all around the table, so I continue. “She wants to keep things casual. Apparently, she wants to be friends with me. And anyway, I think she’s caught up on the age gap.”
I sound… bitter. It’s not a good look, but I can’t pretend to be happy about it. And I don’t want to talk about it. Not here, in front of everyone, anyway.
“It’s all good. Things are fine. Hey, at least we’re getting along, right?”
I change the subject, asking Quinn and Abigail about their parents instead. Their dad is sick, and a sick parent trumps a situationship conversation-wise.
I sit back and let everyone else talk, fading into the background, thinking about Shay. She didn’t seem enthusiastic about visiting Nico tomorrow. I wanted to invite her for dinner, wanted to show her how family can feel. But that’s not casual.
As the night wears on, everyone filters out of the kitchen—Felix takes Abigail out back to show her my dad’s new garden swing, Quinn sits with my mom and dad to watch the new episode of some crime show they like, Rora and Uncle Henry take Sunny upstairs to change her since she spilled milk all over herself during dinner.
I get started on the dishes. There’s something soothing about the repetition of a job like this. I complain about having constant dishes to do at work, but clearing up after a meal my dad made for us, a meal we shared as a family, feels like a privilege.
“Hey. You okay?”
I look over my shoulder to find Rora, my uncle Henry, and Sunny.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” I dry my hands on a towel and turn to face them fully.
“We thought you might want this,” Uncle Henry says, passing a wriggling Sunny over. “I’ll get the dishes.”
My niece soothes me immediately; she has the little polar bear blanket she carries everywhere clutched in her hand. I take a seat at the table and hold her close to me, running my hand over the soft peach fuzz covering her head. She grins at me, a toothless smile that feels a lot like staring directly at the sun.
“I needed this. Thank you,” I say, smiling as Rora takes a seat opposite me. “I don’t know what I’m going to do when she’s too big to cuddle like this. You’re going to have to give me another one.”
She rolls her eyes. “We’re working on it.”
“What happened to the three of you going traveling when Sunny’s six months?” I ask, raising my brows. I’m not surprised they’re trying to have another baby, but I am happy it means they’ll probably stick around a little longer.
“I don’t want Sunny to be an only child. We’ll travel once she has a sibling—we don’t want to wait too long.” She nods toward my uncle Henry and whispers, “Old.”
“I heard that, sugar.”
Rora shrugs it off. “You were supposed to. I’ve got to keep you on your toes. Speaking of old… You want to talk about this situation with Shay?”
I snort, surprising a hiccup out of Sunny. “What a segue. Honestly, there’s not much to say. I really like her, but that doesn’t mean much if she just wants to be friends who sleep together.”
“Have you considered, I don’t know… communicating a little?” Rora asks, raising a brow.
Communication: a novel concept. It’s a nice idea, in theory, but communicating how I feel and what I want means risking Shay telling me she doesn’t want the same. And right now, I’m not sure I could handle that. It’s stupid and masochistic, but I’m finding it hard to care about that when keeping my mouth shut means I have at least a little part of her.
“Do you think it’s your age that’s stopping her wanting more?” Rora prods when I say nothing.
I shrug. “I think that’s part of it. And yes, I know I should talk to her about all of this. I will. Eventually.”
Shay is more complex than I think I even realize. Between her strained relationship with her brother, her deep-rooted trauma about Georgie, and her spending almost two decades married to someone she wasn’t in love with purely forconvenience’s sake, it’s a lot to unpack. And it’s a lot to ask her to unpack, considering it’s only been a week since I kissed her.
