The kitchen at odd hours had become a language between us.
Darius learned it without being taught — when I cooked without a plan, I was processing something. When I cooked from a recipe, I was grounding myself. When I cooked for someone else specifically, without occasion, without crisis, just because — that was the version of *I love you* I'd been saying my whole life without a word for it.
He sat on the stool and watched me work and did not offer to help, because he'd learned that too: the cooking was not an invitation to participate. It was an invitation to be present while it happened. Those were different things.
"Something true," I said, without turning from the stove.
"I already gave you one."
"You gave me one in the corridor. I'm in the kitchen now. The rate changes."
I heard
