Page 107

My fingers went still.

“And you don’t owe me obedience because you’re tired,” he added.

I thought of last night. My hand on his shoulder. “I know.”

“I wanted to say it.”

“Good.”

I drew a new heading on the paper.

Cash.

He leaned forward.

“Patience,” he said.

I wrote it.

“Never anger.”

“You’re allowed to be angry.”

“Sure. But I don’t use this arrangement while I am. We pause. Talk as ourselves.”

I added the clarification.

“Aftercare,” he said next.

I looked up.

“Checking in afterward. Whatever helps you feel settled. Water, food, quiet, company. You tell me what works. I don’t assume.”

“Sometimes I might want space.”

“Then space. With a time to check back, if you want one.”

I wrote that too.

“No cancellations without conversation,” I said.

He considered it. “That one’s mine. I don’t disappear on you. I don’t go cold to make a point. If I need to stop something, I say so out loud and you get to hear why.” He tapped the page. “Doesn’t mean either of us has to finish a conversation before we’re allowed to stop. Stopping comes first. But I don’t get to just go quiet.”

I amended the sentence.

He read it, then held out his hand for the pen.

“One more thing,” he finished.

I surrendered the pen.

He bent over the page, sandy hair falling toward his forehead, and added a sentence beneath the tidy rows I had drawn.

She gets to play.

The last word wandered uphill. Apparently his handwriting had discovered ambition.

I read it twice.