I make it through dinner.
I make it through the forced conversation in the living room. I make it through the moment Alex’s knee brushes mine under the table and my entire body goes tight. I excuse myself early, claim a headache, and shut myself in my room before anyone can follow.
I lock the door.
Then I unlock it again.
I don’t examine why.
The house settles into night sounds—distant television, the low murmur of our parents talking downstairs, the occasional creak of floorboards. I sit on the edge of my bed in the dark with my head in my hands and try, one last time, to pray the ache away.
It doesn’t work.
Every time I close my eyes I feel his chest against mine in the kitchen. The strength in the hand that held my wrists. The almost-kiss that never landed. The quiet way he said
