Page 25 of Until You

She processes this. I watch her do it—watch the calculations happening behind those glass-green eyes. She’s quick, I’ll give her that. She was quick that night too. Every response a half-step ahead of where I expected it to be.

“So you’re not just visiting,” she says slowly.

“No.”

“You’re moving in.”

“It’s my grandparents’ house.”

“It’s where I live.”

We stare at each other.

“This is a three-bedroom house,” she says.

“I know. I grew up spending every summer here.”

“So you know there’s only one bathroom besides mine.”

“The one in the hall. Yes.”

“And that the other bedroom is also their office and only has a twin-sized trundle bed?”

I nod.

“And the kitchen is⁠—”

“Small. I know.”

“And you’re—” She gestures at me. All of me. Up and down. “—not small.”

I almost smile. Almost. “I’ve been told.”

She presses her lips together. “This is going to be a problem.”

“Doesn’t have to be.”

“Oliver.” She says my name again, and this time it sounds like a warning. “You and I have—history. We have a very specific, very memorable, very naked history. And now you’re telling me we’re going to be roommates? In your grandparents’ house? With shared walls?”

“I’m telling you I need a place to stay, and this is where I’m staying.”

“And I’m telling you that I live here and I’m not leaving.”

“No one asked you to leave.”

“Yet.”

The word hangs there. One syllable, loaded with something I recognize because I’ve heard it before. She didn’t talk about her past much that night, but she mentioned moving around as a kid. She’d used the word “temporary” more than once.

She’s waiting for me to take this from her.

She’s been waiting for someone to take it from her since she got here.

Something in my chest tightens. The same something that tightened that night when she told me about the star tattoo, and I understood, without her saying it, what it meant to her.

“I’m not asking you to leave, Cora.”

She looks at me. Searches my face. Whatever she finds there makes her exhale—slow, controlled, through her nose.