It started the way most things between us started — fast, warm, the specific velocity of two people who had found their friendship quickly and had stopped being careful with each other the way you stop being careful with someone you trust.
The problem with stopping being careful with someone you trust is that the carelessness cuts deeper when it lands wrong.
We were in the main kitchen. Luna was telling a story — the way she always told stories, at speed, with her arms involved, the narrative building through embellishment toward a punchline she had already constructed and was working backward from. The story involved Cole and a territorial inquiry and a moment where Cole had said something so precisely devastating that the other party had sat in silence for forty seconds before respondi
