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Table of Contents

•Chapter 1. A Paper Cap and a Touched Hand

•Chapter 2. Mulberry Stains and Synchronized Treadmills

•Chapter 3. Cold Window Glass and a Shared Shake

•Chapter 4. Behind the Dumpster and Underwater Hands

•Chapter 5. A Changing Room Bench and a Night-Bus Kiss

•Chapter 6. Sticky Cake Floor and a Dark Kitchen Fall

•Chapter 7. Fry Bread, Trampled Grass, and Grey Bedding

•Chapter 8. Dawn Freckles and a Walk In Cooler Threat

•Chapter 9. A Sidewalk Argument and Two Pink Slips

•Chapter 10. A Laundromat Chair and a Dark Diner Front

•Chapter 11. A Pressed Flower, a Knocked Door, and a Paddleboat

•Chapter 12. Orange Geometry Bedspread at the Two-Letter Motel

Chapter 1. A Paper Cap and a Touched Hand

(Mabel’s POV)

The paper cap sat in my palm like something borrowed, stiff and white and too small to cover anything that mattered. I folded the brim twice the way I always did, then settled it over my hair—copper strands already escaping, already imperfect. The striped shirt smelled like last week’s syrup and the industrial detergent Mrs. Patterson used in the laundromat across from my window. I tugged the hem down over my hips and pushed through the Frost Spoon’s front door.

The black and white checkered floor had been walked soft long before I started here. The white squares were grey now, the black ones closer to charcoal, and somewhere near the shake machine a piece of tape held down a lifted corner. The machine itself rattled like it had something stuck in its throat, frost gathering around its spindle in thin white crusts. Through the propped-open door, pollen drifted in pale clouds, and I caught the smell of cut grass and the green of something just mowed.

Jax stood behind the counter with his palms flat on the cool laminate, watching the ceiling fan wobble through its cycle. He nodded when he saw me. Just a nod, but his eyes did that thing they always did—saw too much, said nothing. Claudia was already spinning on the red vinyl stool nearest the register, her ponytail perfect, her fingers tapping against her thigh in a rhythm she probably didn’t notice.

“Morning,” I said, and the word came out warm enough.

Claudia glanced at me. “You look tired.”

“I look like me.”

She didn’t argue, which meant she agreed. Behind us the shake machine rattled louder, a sound I’d stopped hearing most days but today felt like a small animal chewing through something. I tied the strings of my apron and took my spot near the syrup pumps—chocolate, strawberry, caramel, all of them sticky and warm from the morning sun through the window.

The counter had hairline cracks where syrup had seeped in years ago, dark lines like veins. I ran my thumb along one while I waited, and I thought about Percy. Not because I wanted to. Because his absence was a hole in the shape of someone I barely knew. Out on health leave for months, Claudia had said once, and I’d nodded like I cared, but I didn’t. I’d seen him maybe four times, always in that too-big black t-shirt, always avoiding eye contact. I thought about him now because the space behind the shake machine where he used to stand was empty, and the emptiness felt like a question I hadn’t asked.

The morning rush came in waves. A woman with a toddler asked for a vanilla shake, and I made it while the little boy pressed his sticky hand against the glass display. A man in a ball cap ordered a chocolate malt, and his eyes didn’t look at my face once—they moved down, rested, moved back up. I smiled and handed him his change, and I didn’t let my hand touch his. He didn’t notice. They never noticed.

But the next one did. Older, maybe fifty, with a gold wedding band and a polo shirt tucked into khakis. He ordered a strawberry shake, and when I gave him his cup, his fingers wrapped around mine instead of the cardboard. He held on for a second too long, and his thumb pressed into the soft skin between my knuckles.

“Thanks, sweetheart,” he said.

I pulled back. My smile was still there—it was always still there—but my chest went tight the way it did, the way it had been doing since I was sixteen and a man told me I was sweet while he unbuttoned my shirt and left before my coffee finished. “You’re welcome,” I said, and my voice was warm, unhurried, because I had learned to make it that way.

Inside, the echo started. Too much. Not enough. Too much. Not enough. I heard it in the rattle of the shake machine and the wobble of the ceiling fan and the man’s footsteps as he walked away without looking back. Was I enough like this? The question lived under my ribs, and I had never found an answer that stuck.

Jax appeared beside me without a word. He took the man’s cup—already half-empty, the straw bent—and wiped the counter where condensation had pooled. Then he looked at me, and I saw that he had seen everything. He didn’t ask if I was okay. He just took my spot, his broad shoulders blocking the counter, and I stepped back into the space near the syrup pumps where the fluorescent light flickered every seven seconds.

Claudia shot the man a look from the register. Not a glare—something sharper, cleaner, a surgical cut that said I see you. The man didn’t notice her either. They never did.

Later, during the lull between lunch and the after-school crowd, we sat in the fourth booth—the one with the rip in the teal vinyl patched with duct tape gone tacky at the edges. Claudia tapped her fingernails on the table. Jax sat with his palms facing up, the way he always did when he was listening. I pulled my knees up on the seat and pressed my back against the cold wall.

“I starved myself once,” Claudia said. “In high school. So no one would look at my body like it was currency.”

Her voice was sharp and fast, the way it always was, but underneath it I heard something else—something that sounded like the year she didn’t eat. I didn’t ask questions. I just listened.

“Did it work?” I said.

“No. They looked anyway. They always look.” She tapped her fingernails again, then stopped. “But I stopped caring about what they saw. That’s the only part that worked.”

Jax said nothing. He just sat with his palms up, and the light from the window caught the edge of his crooked nose, the one he never fixed because he liked the way it looked. I thought about my body—pear-shaped, soft, round in a way that felt like home to me and like an invitation to everyone else. I thought about the men who had touched me without asking, the ones who left before the coffee finished, the ones who said “you’re sweet” and meant you’re easy.

“You two are the only warm light in this whole cold world,” I said, and I hadn’t meant to say it out loud.

Claudia looked at me like she was about to argue, then didn’t. Jax’s lips moved in that silent laugh of his, just a breath.

“That’s pathetic,” Claudia said, but her voice was soft, and she reached across the table and tapped my hand once with her fingernail.

________________________________________

Three days later, the farmers market smelled like raw honey and fried pie dough and cilantro, and the bindweed behind the milkshake stand smelled green and slightly bitter when I brushed against it. I was working the outdoor shake stand with Jax, the trailer parked on cracked asphalt behind the old train depot. A bluegrass trio played somewhere near the flower tents, banjo and fiddle slightly out of tune. Bees worked the cut flowers, and the sun was warm on my arms, and I had almost forgotten the man who touched my hand.

Then Percy arrived.

He walked up to the stand with his hands in the pockets of his worn jeans, his charcoal hoodie zipped halfway despite the heat. His black hair was messy, overgrown, curling at the collar. His eyes were brown-hazel, warm but hesitant, and when he looked at me—really looked, at my face, not at my body—I felt something catch in my throat.

“Hey,” he said. His voice was gentle, stumbling a little. “I’m here for the produce order. For the diner.”

Jax nodded and went to the cooler behind the stand. I should have said something. I should have smiled and asked how he was feeling, back from leave, welcome back. But I couldn’t. Because the feeling that had caught in my throat was the same feeling I’d had at sixteen, at eighteen, at twenty, every time I thought maybe this one will stay.

And then the flashback came.

A hand around my wrist. A whisper in my ear: easy. A man’s smile that didn’t reach his eyes. The door closing before the coffee finished.

I went quiet. I stepped back from the counter, let my hands drop to my sides, let Jax handle the transaction. Percy picked up the cardboard box of tomatoes and onions and peppers, and he looked at me again—confused, maybe hurt, his brow furrowing.

“See you around,” he said.

I nodded. I didn’t trust my voice.

He walked away, soft-bodied, broad-shouldered, his black t-shirt faded and soft and too big for him like armor he’d been wearing for years. I watched him go until he disappeared between the white tents, and my heart was racing and my chest was tight, and I thought: Maybe I’ll never be ready for someone good.

The bindweed smelled green and bitter.

I pressed my palm against the cold metal of the shake machine and waited for the feeling to pass.

Chapter 2. Mulberry Stains and Synchronized Treadmills

(Percy’s POV)

The delivery entrance of the Frost Spoon was a concrete pad with a yellow scuffed bumper, and the dumpster smelled like sour milk and sanitizer, and I had been unpacking milk jugs from a pallet for forty minutes. My hands were cold and wet, and my back hurt from bending, and the caged light bulb above the door buzzed and drew moths even in the morning. I didn’t mind any of it. The work was simple. The work didn’t require me to be anything except present.

But my mind wasn’t present. My mind was three days ago, at the farmers market, looking at Mabel’s tea-colored eyes and the way she went quiet when I spoke to her.

Does she think I’m weird? I asked myself the question while I stacked milk jugs in the cooler. I asked it again while I swept the floor of the delivery bay. I asked it again while I sat on the ground behind the dumpster, my back against the rough brick, the wild mulberry tree’s branches heavy with unripe fruit above me. The ground was stained purple from previous years, and the brick vibrated with the shake machine’s rhythm, and I could smell my own hoodie—clean linen and something faintly sweet, like warm skin after a shower.

I remembered a woman laughing at me in college. I had been standing near the vending machines, and she had looked at me—really looked—and then she had turned to her friend and said something I couldn’t hear, and they both laughed. I didn’t know what I had done. I still didn’t know. But the word “loser” had been said out loud once, in a different context, by a different person, and I had never fully stopped hearing it.

My body felt like an apology. It always had. Soft, pleasantly plush, not fat but not the kind of body anyone looked at twice unless they were looking to laugh. I wore my 2XL black t-shirts like armor, faded soft from too many washes, and I didn’t take them off in front of anyone because taking them off meant being seen, and being seen meant being judged, and being judged meant hearing the word again.

The mulberries weren’t ripe yet. I picked one anyway and bit into it, and it was sour and green, and I spit it out into the stained purple ground.

________________________________________

A few days later, Claudia dragged me to the ECU Campus Recreation Center. She said the word “socialize” like it was a prescription, and she didn’t take no for an answer, and I found myself standing on the treadmill floor with thirty machines facing a wall of mirrors that showed everything—my red face before I even started, my damp shirt, the way my stomach moved when I breathed.

The rubber floor smelled like cleaner and old sweat, chemical lemon covering something musty. The air was aggressively cold, drying my mouth. Televisions ran silent with closed captioning, and the person next to me was leaner, faster, wearing matching athletic wear that probably cost more than my weekly paycheck.

I hated the mirror wall. I hated the way it showed me what everyone else already saw—a soft, awkward man who didn’t belong here.

Then I saw Mabel.

She was on a treadmill three rows over, her short copper hair falling from its ponytail, her face red, her white sneakers pounding the belt in an uneven rhythm. She wasn’t looking at the mirror. She was looking at her feet, and her expression was the same one I’d seen at the farmers market—withdrawn, guarded, like she was waiting for someone to say something cruel.

Claudia was on the elliptical, effortless, her ponytail bouncing, her face blank. Jax lifted weights nearby, his movements slow and deliberate, his crooked nose catching the light.

I got on the treadmill next to Mabel. I didn’t say anything. I just pressed the button until the belt moved, and I started walking, and then jogging, and then walking again because jogging felt like too much exposure. She didn’t look at me. I didn’t look at her. But our paces synchronized without planning—left foot, right foot, the same rhythm, the same breath.

We didn’t speak for twenty minutes.

Afterward, we sat on the wooden bench in the locker room corridor. The tile floor was slightly slick, the cinderblock walls painted pale blue and chipped. A water fountain that didn’t get cold, the water metallic-tasting. Fluorescent lights spaced far apart, creating dim pockets where shadows pooled. Mabel sat with her knees pressed together, her hands in her lap, her hair still falling from its ponytail.

I noticed when a loud voice echoed from the gym—a man shouting, maybe laughing, something sharp and sudden. Mabel flinched. Just a small movement, a tightening of her shoulders, but I saw it. I saw it because I had flinched at the same sound a thousand times.

She’s been hurt, I thought. She has scars like mine.

Jax sat with us, quiet, his palms facing up on his knees. Claudia stood near the bulletin board with the faded flyers for intramural volleyball, her arms crossed, her eyes sharp.

“This town wants us to hate our bodies,” Claudia said. Her voice was fast and precise, but not unkind. “We don’t have to.”

Mabel smiled. It was a small smile, barely there, but it reached her eyes for a second before disappearing. I watched her, and the chemistry between us hummed like the fluorescent lights—present, constant, something you could feel in your teeth.

But I didn’t act. I couldn’t. Because acting meant risking, and risking meant hearing the word again, and I had spent too many years learning to expect nothing.

She’s been hurt, I thought again. I won’t be the next one who hurts her.

So I stayed on the bench, observing, waiting. The water fountain dripped. The fluorescent light flickered. Mabel tucked a strand of copper hair behind her ear, and I watched her fingers tremble, and I thought: Why would she ever want me?

I didn’t have an answer. I never did.

Chapter 3. Cold Window Glass and a Shared Shake

(Mabel’s POV)

That night, I sat on my windowsill with my knees pulled up to my chest and my forehead pressed against the cold glass. The dusty street below was empty except for a stray cat picking through the storm drain. The tired oak tree’s branches moved in the breeze, their leaves just starting to fill in, still that pale green of early spring. The laundromat sign across the street blinked its missing letter—LAUND MAT, the O burned out, the light buzzing even from here.

I replayed the gym encounter with Percy. His hesitant voice. The way he hadn’t looked at my body once—not at my hips, not at my chest, not anywhere except my face and my feet and the space between us on the treadmill. The way his pace had matched mine without either of us saying a word.

Men don’t stay, I told myself. I pressed my palm flatter against the glass, and the cold seeped into my skin, and I remembered a specific memory: a man who said “you’re sweet” while unbuttoning my shirt, his hands warm and sure, his mouth on my neck. I had let him. I had let him because I thought wanting to be wanted was the same as wanting. And then he had left, and he had never called, and I had drunk my coffee alone in my kitchen while the morning light came through the blinds and showed me everything I didn’t want to see.

Is the rest of me worth anything, or just this?

I asked the question to the window, and the window didn’t answer. The stray cat disappeared into the storm drain. The laundromat sign buzzed. A car passed, its headlights sweeping across my room, illuminating the pressed flower prints on my wall, the clear nail polish on my vanity, the mismatched cotton pillowcases on my bed.

I felt crippled by my past. I felt unable to imagine a real future with Percy, even though I wanted one, even though I wanted him—his gentleness, his soft voice, the way he stumbled over his words like he wasn’t sure he deserved to speak. I wanted him, and that was exactly why I couldn’t trust it.

I stayed on the windowsill until my knees ached and the laundromat sign finally shut off at midnight.

________________________________________

Days later, at noon, I worked the milkshake stand again. The sun was high and hot, and the asphalt behind the old train depot shimmered with heat. The bindweed smelled green and bitter, and the bluegrass trio was playing somewhere near the honey tent, and I was sweating through my striped shirt.

Percy showed up with a small paper bag from the pet store. Gerald’s food, he said, holding up the bag like I might not believe him. His cheeks were flushed from the heat, and his black hair stuck to his forehead, and he was wearing the same charcoal hoodie, which I was starting to realize he never took off, even in May.

“Can I sit?” he asked, gesturing to the overturned milk crates behind the stand. One had “JAX” written in smeared marker. The other was blank.

“Okay,” I said, and my voice came out softer than I intended.

He sat on the blank crate. I sat on the one with JAX’s name. Between us, the ground was damp from the condensate drain, and the fence behind us was overgrown with bindweed, and the noise of the market became a hum—voices, banjo, the shake machine rattling.

Percy pulled two straws from the dispenser on the counter. He stuck them both into the shake I’d been drinking—strawberry, nearly gone, mostly melted—and took a sip without asking. I should have been annoyed. Instead, I felt something I hadn’t felt in years: a quiet safety, like sitting in a warm room while a storm passed outside.

“Gerald blinks slowly,” Percy said. “Like, really slowly. Sometimes I think he’s judging me, but mostly I think he’s just content. He sits on his warm rock under the lamp and stares at nothing, and I think maybe that’s the goal, you know? Just being warm and staring at nothing.”

I laughed. I hadn’t meant to. The sound surprised me, and Percy looked up, and his brown-hazel eyes went wide like he’d accidentally said something wrong.

“Sorry,” he said. “That was weird. I’m weird. I know.”

“No,” I said. “It wasn’t weird. It was—” I paused, looking for the word. “Sweet. It was sweet.”

He looked down at his hands. They were resting on his knees, broad and soft, the nails trimmed short, a small scar near his thumb. “I read a lot of library books,” he said, like he was confessing something shameful. “I like the ones with maps in the front. Fantasy novels, mostly. The maps make me feel like the world is bigger than Ada, you know?”

I did know. I had pressed wildflowers between book pages since I was fifteen, and each pressed flower was a promise that something beautiful could be preserved, could stay, could be held onto. I didn’t say that. I just nodded, and I took a sip of the melted shake, and I let the quiet sit between us.

He said, “I’m a loser, basically.”

The words came out with a self-deprecating laugh, but I heard the wound underneath—the word said out loud, the pause before an answer, the women who laughed.

“Maybe we all are,” I said.

He looked at me then. Really looked. His eyes searched my face, and a faint line appeared between his brows, and I saw him see me—not my body, not my softness, but the part underneath, the part that asked was I enough and never got an answer.

I didn’t look away.

The bindweed smelled green. The banjo played. A bee landed on the rim of the shake cup, walked in a circle, and flew away.

“I thought you were going to ignore me,” Percy said. “At the market. Last time.”

“I was scared,” I said. The words came out before I could stop them. “I’m always scared.”

“Me too.”

He didn’t reach for my hand. He didn’t move closer. He just sat on his milk crate, drinking my melted shake through his straw, and I sat on mine, and the market hummed around us, and I thought: Maybe I’ll never be ready for someone good. But maybe that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try.

I was cautious. But I didn’t look away.

Chapter 4. Behind the Dumpster and Underwater Hands

(Percy’s POV)

The ground behind the dumpster was stained purple from years of fallen mulberries, and I sat on it with my back against the rough brick, my knees pulled up to my chest, my whole body shaking like I had a fever I couldn't sweat out. The brick vibrated with the shake machine's rhythm, that constant rattle I usually tuned out, but today it felt like someone was drilling into my skull. The dumpster smelled sour, and the caged light bulb above the delivery door buzzed and flickered, and the wild mulberry tree's branches hung low over my head, heavy with fruit that wasn't ready yet.

The customer had called me "plush."

Not fat. Not chubby. Plush. Like I was a stuffed animal, like my body was something soft meant for children, like I wasn't a real person standing behind a counter trying to do my job. She had been thin, athletic, wearing matching workout clothes that probably cost more than my weekly paycheck, and she had looked at me the way people look at something they've stepped in accidentally. "You're a little plush for this job, aren't you?" she had said, and her friend had laughed, and I had handed her the shake with a smile that felt like it was cracking my face open.

I had finished my shift. I had unpacked the milk jugs. I had swept the floor of the delivery bay. And then I had come here, behind the dumpster, where nobody ever came except employees hiding or crying, and I had sat down on the mulberry-stained ground and started shaking.

The word "loser" echoed in my head. The pause before a woman answered me when I asked for her number. The laugh. Always the laugh.

I thought of Mabel. Her tea-colored eyes, the way she had said "Maybe we all are" when I called myself a loser. Her soft voice, unhurried, like she had all the time in the world to sit on a milk crate and drink a melted shake with me. She hadn't laughed. She hadn't looked at my body like it was something to comment on. She had just sat there, quiet, present, and I had felt, for the first time in years, like maybe I wasn't completely disgusting.

My phone was dead. I had forgotten to charge it again, because I always forgot, because nobody texted me anyway. But I needed to see her. I needed to hear her voice, or see her face, or just exist in the same space as her, because the customer's words were still crawling under my skin and I couldn't make them stop.

I got up, brushed the purple stain off my jeans, and walked back inside. Jax was behind the counter, wiping down the shake machine with a rag that had turned grey from too many uses. His movements were slow, deliberate, his crooked nose catching the light from the window.

"Can I borrow your phone?" I asked.

He didn't ask why. He just pulled it out of his pocket and handed it to me, his palm facing up like always, like he was offering something fragile.

I texted Mabel. Can I see you? The words felt too small and too big at the same time. She replied within a minute: Group swim at the campus pool. Day after tomorrow. Evening. Come. I stared at the screen, and my chest loosened a little, and I handed the phone back to Jax.

"She said yes," I said.

Jax nodded. "She usually does."

________________________________________

The ECU Campus Pool smelled like chlorine so strong it stung my nostrils, and the air was thick and warm, almost heavy, like breathing through wet cotton. The deck was painted concrete worn off where wet feet had walked for fifty years, and the fluorescent lights in metal cages cast greenish light that made everyone look slightly ill. I arrived in plain black swim shorts, nothing special, nothing that would draw attention, and I got in the water as fast as I could.

The cold stole my breath. It was the good kind of cold, the kind that shocked your system and made you forget, for a second, that you had a body at all. I sank down until the water reached my chin, and I stayed in the shallow end near the corner where the wall was rough concrete instead of tile, where the filter intake made a distant sucking sound like the building's mechanical heart.

Claudia was doing laps in the lane next to the diving blocks, her ponytail slicked back, her movements precise and efficient. Jax floated on his back near the middle of the pool, his arms spread wide, his eyes closed, looking like he could stay there forever. I watched them and tried not to think about Mabel.

Then she came out.

She was wearing a rose pink swimsuit with soft frills along the neckline, one piece, the fabric clinging to her curves in a way that made my throat go dry. Her short copper hair was damp already, plastered to her forehead, and her skin was pale with faint freckles across her nose, and she was walking toward the edge of the pool with her arms wrapped around herself like she was cold even though the air was warm.

I looked away. Then I looked back. Then I looked away again, because looking felt like trespassing, like I was seeing something I wasn't supposed to see.

She lowered herself into the water at the shallow end, just a few feet from me, and she gasped when the cold hit her. "Oh my God," she said, her voice breathless and uneven. "That's freezing."

"It wakes you up," I said.

"I didn't want to wake up. I wanted to be warm."

She ducked under the water anyway, and when she came back up, her hair was darker, slicked back from her face, and she was smiling—a real smile, the kind that crinkled the corners of her eyes. I watched her, and I forgot, for a moment, that my body was plush and wrong and something to be commented on. I just saw her.

Our hands brushed underwater.

It was accidental at first—my fingers against her wrist, the soft skin there, the pulse I could feel even through the cold water. I pulled back, embarrassed, but then her hand found mine again, and this time it wasn't accidental. Her fingers curled around mine, just for a second, just long enough for me to feel the heat of her skin despite the cold.

We didn't say anything. We just swam badly in adjacent lanes, neither of us good at it, both of us splashing too much, moving too slow. Claudia passed us twice, shaking her head.

"You two are pathetic," she said, not unkindly, and then she kept swimming.

Jax smiled silently from where he floated, his eyes still closed.

Mabel's hand found my shoulder when I stumbled getting out of the pool to adjust my goggles. Her fingers brushed the strap of my suit, adjusting it without asking, and the casualness of the touch made my chest ache. Later, when she climbed the ladder to get out, I put my hand on her back to steady her—just above the swimsuit line, just the warmth of her skin through the damp fabric.

She looked back at me. Her tea-colored eyes were soft, and her lips parted like she was about to say something, and then she didn't.

I can't stop myself, I thought. And I didn't want to.

I noticed the scars showing through her careful distance—the way she flinched when someone splashed too close, the way she kept her arms wrapped around herself even in the water, the way she looked at me like she was waiting for me to leave. I wanted to be the one who didn't leave. I wanted to be the one who stayed, who saw her, who touched her gently and meant it.

We stayed in the pool until the lifeguard blew the whistle for closing, and when we climbed out, shivering, our skin wrinkled from the water, Claudia tossed us both towels without looking. Jax gathered our things. And I walked next to Mabel through the locker room corridor, our shoulders almost touching, and I didn't say anything because I didn't have the words.

But I thought them anyway: I want to stay. I want to stay. I want to stay.

________________________________________

Chapter 5. A Changing Room Bench and a Night-Bus Kiss

(Mabel’s POV)

The mall in Ada had a fountain that hadn't run in years, and the carpet was grey and walked flat, and the fluorescent lighting was merciless from above, showing every shadow under my eyes, every imperfection in my skin. I didn't know why we had come here—Claudia had suggested it, something about needing new running shoes, and Jax had shrugged, and Percy had looked at me like he would follow me anywhere, so we had followed.

But by sunset, Jax and Claudia had wandered off toward the pet store, and Percy and I were standing near the fitting room area of a clothing store neither of us would ever buy anything from. The long mirror on one wall showed our reflections—two soft people in worn clothes, his charcoal hoodie zipped halfway, my striped shirt untucked, both of us looking like we didn't belong.

"Should we wait for them?" Percy asked.

"No," I said, and I didn't know why I said it, except that I wanted to be alone with him.

We ended up at the changing room doorway—the last door on the left, Room 4, the one that didn't latch. The door had a half-inch gap at the bottom, and the walls were dark grey, almost purple in this light, and the floor had a dark stain near the corner that was probably coffee. I sat on the wood veneer bench outside the fitting rooms, the one scratched with keys and gum wrappers. Percy sat on the floor, his back against the wall, his knees pulled up.

The store was quiet. Someone was folding shirts in the next section, the rustle of fabric, the soft beep of a register. The air smelled like new clothes and dust and polyester blend, and the fluorescent lights hummed overhead.

"I found a new pressed flower yesterday," I said. "Queen Anne's lace. It's delicate, all those tiny white petals. I put it in a book I'm not even reading, just because I liked the way it looked between the pages."

"That's not weird," Percy said. "I talk to Gerald. Out loud. Full sentences."

"What do you say?"

"I tell him he's a good gecko. I ask him if he's warm enough. Sometimes I apologize for being boring." He picked at a thread on his jeans. "He doesn't answer, but he blinks. That's enough."

I laughed, and the sound echoed off the cinderblock walls, and I thought: This is what safety feels like. This is what it means to be seen without being watched.

Then Percy asked, "Why don't you trust people?"

The question wasn't pointed. It was accidental, like it had slipped out before he could stop it, and his eyes went wide like he regretted it immediately. But I didn't want him to take it back. I was tired of carrying the answer alone.

I hesitated. My hands were in my lap, and I looked down at them—my fingers, the clear nail polish, the way my thumb was pressing into my palm hard enough to leave a mark.

"There was a man," I said. "I was eighteen. He said I was sweet, and he touched me, and I let him because I thought wanting to be wanted was the same as wanting. He left before my coffee finished. I never heard from him again." I paused. "There were others. They always left. They never asked what I was thinking. Just touched me and left, like my body was something to rest in for a night."

Percy didn't say anything for a long moment. The fluorescent light hummed. Someone's footsteps passed the fitting room area and faded.

"That's not your fault," he said.

His voice was gentle, and his brown-hazel eyes were soft, and I felt something crack open in my chest—something I had been holding shut for years.

"What about you?" I asked. "Why don't you trust people?"

He looked down at his hands. They were resting on his knees, broad and soft, the nails bitten short. "Someone called me a loser once," he said. "Out loud. In front of people. And women—they laugh. Not at me, maybe, but near me, and I can't tell the difference anymore. I stopped reaching for people because rejection stopped feeling like an event and started feeling like information about what I am."

"Loser," I said. "That's not what you are."

"How do you know?"

"Because you're sitting on a dirty floor in a mall clothing store, talking to me about your gecko, and you haven't looked at my body once."

He looked up then, and his eyes met mine, and I reached for his hand. He let me take it—warm, a little sweaty, his fingers curling around mine like he wasn't sure he was allowed.

I realized, sitting there on that scratched bench with his hand in mine, that I trusted him. Not the cautious, careful trust I gave to customers and coworkers and landlords who brought me casseroles. Real trust. The kind that meant I could tell him about the men who left, and he would stay.

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Later, the night bus. Route 7, the short one that ran from the mall to campus, painted ECU purple and gold on the outside and smelling like diesel and a fruity air freshener on the inside. The driver had turned off every other row of fluorescent lights, so the back was dim, the plastic seats faded to lavender. We sat in the last seat—the bench seat running the full width of the bus, its folding latch broken, the back window larger than the others.

The engine vibrated through the floor, making my teeth chatter. Streetlights flashed past, orange and then dark, orange and then dark, illuminating Percy's face in pulses. The back window fogged from our breath. The automated voice announced stops in that flat, robotic tone: "Student Union. East Hall. Parking Lot C."

"I think you feel it too," Percy said.

His voice was soft, hesitant, and he was sitting closer than he had been before—close enough that I could feel the warmth of his arm against mine, close enough that I could smell his clean linen and warm skin.

I nodded. "I do."

We hugged first—an awkward, sideways thing, his arm around my shoulders, my face pressed into his chest. His heart was pounding. I could feel it through his hoodie, through my striped shirt, through both of our careful layers of armor.

Then the hug became a kiss.

It was tentative at first—his lips brushing mine, a question. I answered by pressing closer, and his hand came up to cup the back of my head, his fingers tangling in my copper hair. The kiss was sweet, unhurried, the kind of kiss you give someone when you have all the time in the world and you're still scared it's not enough.

The automated voice mumbled a stop. Neither of us moved.

We pulled back, breathless. My lips were tingling. His eyes were dark in the dim light, and his hand was still in my hair, and I thought: I've fallen in love. It terrified me and filled me with euphoria at the same time, like standing at the edge of a high dive and knowing you're going to jump.

"What now?" I whispered.

"I don't know," Percy said. "But I'm not running."

The bus turned a corner, and streetlights flashed across his face, and I believed him.

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Chapter 6. Sticky Cake Floor and a Dark Kitchen Fall

(Percy’s POV)

The farmers market was closing down around me, white tents being folded, card tables loaded into pickup trucks, the smell of fry bread and trampled grass fading into the cooler night air. I stood behind the milkshake stand, wiping down the counters, rinsing the nozzles, counting the cash drawer. The bindweed behind the fence smelled green and bitter in the dark, and the bluegrass trio had packed up hours ago, and I was alone with the rattle of the shake machine and my own thoughts.

The kiss on the bus. Mabel's soft lips, the way she had held onto my shirt like she was afraid I would disappear, the sound of her breath when we finally pulled apart. I was utterly in love with her, and the feeling was so big I didn't know what to do with it, so I just stood there in the darkening market, wiping the same spot on the counter over and over, asking myself the question I always asked: Why would she ever want me?

I didn't have an answer. But I had stopped needing one.

Mabel arrived to help me close. She was wearing a black sweater and dark jeans, and I realized, looking at her, that we had both worn black—her sweater soft and slightly oversized, my hoodie charcoal and faded, the two of us matching in a way that felt intentional even though it wasn't.

"Hey," she said, trying to smile.

"Hey."

We didn't look at each other. Then we couldn't stop looking. The air between us was thick, charged, like the moment before a thunderstorm when the sky goes green and everything goes quiet.

We finished closing in silence, and then we walked to Jax's apartment because Claudia had texted something about a party, a celebration, a reason to be together that none of us really believed in. The apartment was above a garage, accessed by a wobbling staircase, and when we opened the door, I realized the party had spiraled out of control.

There was cake everywhere. Sheet cake, the kind you buy from the grocery store with buttercream frosting, smashed into the carpet and smeared on the walls and dripping from the ceiling fan. A plastic fork stood upright in the frosting on the coffee table, and Jax was face-down on the grey thrift-store couch, snoring, wearing a ridiculous Hawaiian pineapple t-shirt with frosting smeared across his chest. One shoe was on. One shoe was off.

Claudia had left forty minutes ago, someone said, mid-argument with her boyfriend, slamming the door hard enough to rattle the windows. The last guests filtered out around midnight, and then it was just me and Mabel and Jax's snoring and the destruction of the cake fight.

"We should clean," Mabel said.

"We should."

The kitchen was worse than the living room. The vinyl floor was sticky with frosting and soda and melted ice cream, and the sink was full of dishes, and the refrigerator hummed unevenly. I tried to find a mop in the dark—the overhead light had a busted bulb, and the only illumination came from the orange streetlight through the window over the sink. Mabel attempted the dishes, her hands in the soapy water, her back to me.

Then the electricity went out.

Jax hadn't paid the bill. Of course he hadn't. The refrigerator stopped humming, and the streetlight went from orange to nothing, and we were standing in complete darkness, the only sound the distant snore from the living room and the drip of the sink.

"I can't see anything," Mabel said.

"Me neither."

I stepped forward, one hand outstretched, trying to find my way to the counter. My foot came down on something slick—a glob of frosting, cold and greasy—and my legs slid out from under me. I fell hard, my body crashing into Mabel's, both of us landing on the sticky floor with a impact that knocked the breath out of me.

"I'm so sorry," I said, immediately, mortified, scrambling to get off her. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean—I shouldn't have—"

But Mabel didn't push me away.

Her hands found my shirt in the dark—the soft fabric of my hoodie, bunched up from the fall, the skin of my stomach exposed where it had ridden up. Her fingers pressed into my sides, and I felt her feel my body—the softness, the warmth, the weight of me pressing her into the sticky floor.

She didn't flinch.

She pulled me closer and kissed me.

I froze for one second. One heartbeat. And then I gave in. I kissed her back, my hand finding her face in the dark, my thumb brushing her cheekbone, her jaw. The floor was cold and sticky under us, and the orange streetlight flickered back on through the window, casting everything in a dim, hazy glow, and I could see her—her copper hair spread on the linoleum, her tea-colored eyes half-closed, her lips parted.

I kissed her throat, and she made an adorable sound that I felt in my chest. Her hands moved under my hoodie, palms flat against my back, pulling me closer. My hips pressed into hers through our jeans, and I felt the heat of her through the fabric, the softness of her body, the way she arched up to meet me.

"I want this," she whispered. "I want you."

I couldn't speak. I just moved against her, slow at first, then faster, desperate and uncoordinated. Her hands tangled in my hair. My face was buried in her neck, and I could smell her—vanilla and clean cotton and something else, something that was just her. Her hips rose to meet mine, and I felt the friction through both layers of denim and cotton, and it was too much and not enough, and I was going to ruin everything, I was going to—

"Mabel," I breathed, and it came out like a prayer.

She gasped my name, and her body tensed under mine, and I felt her shiver, and then I was gone too, the sensation shuddering through me, sudden and embarrassing, over too fast, too soon.

I rolled off her and stared at the dark ceiling. The sticky floor was cold against my back. My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it in my ears.

"I'm so sorry," I said. My voice cracked. "That was—I shouldn't have—I'm sorry."

I was mortified. Convinced I had ruined everything. Convinced she would see me as disgusting now, as someone who couldn't control himself, as the loser I had always been afraid I was.

Mabel turned her head toward me on the sticky floor. Her hair was tangled, her sweater was bunched up around her ribs, and there was a smear of frosting on her cheek that I hadn't noticed before.

"I wanted that," she said. "I chose that. I chose you."

I didn't answer. My heart was still pounding. My hands were shaking.

She rested her head on my chest. Her weight was warm and solid, and I put my arm around her without thinking, and she curled into me, and we lay there on the cold, sticky kitchen floor while the refrigerator hummed back on and the orange streetlight flickered and Jax snored in the next room.

She said she chose me.

But I couldn't believe it. Not yet.

The floor was cold. Her body was warm. And I held onto her like she was the only thing keeping me from falling apart.

Chapter 7. Fry Bread, Trampled Grass, and Grey Bedding

(Mabel's POV)

The treadmill belt moved under my feet in a rhythm I wasn't feeling, my sneakers hitting the rubber in a pattern my body knew by heart even when my mind was somewhere else entirely. The mirror wall showed me everything I didn't want to see—my red face, my damp shirt, the way my ponytail had slipped sideways and was leaving copper strands stuck to my forehead. The air was aggressively cold, drying my mouth, and the person two treadmills over was doing intervals at a speed I had never reached in my life. But I wasn't really there. I was on the sticky kitchen floor three nights ago, feeling Percy's trembling hands on my back, hearing him whisper my name like it meant something he was afraid to say out loud.

I wanted more. Not just the physical part, though that had been something—the weight of him, the warmth, the way his body had fit against mine even on that cold, sticky floor. I wanted to know what we were now. I wanted a word for it, a shape, something I could hold onto when the old voices started whispering that he would leave, that he was already pulling away, that I had given him what he wanted and now he would disappear.

Claudia appeared on the treadmill beside me, her ponytail perfect, her breathing even, her face blank in that way that meant she was about to say something sharp. She didn't look at me for a full minute, just matched my pace and stared at the mirror wall like she was having a conversation with her own reflection.

"You're not even breathing hard," she said. "Which means you're not paying attention."

"I'm paying attention."

"To the belt or to whatever's playing on a loop in your head?"

I didn't answer. The treadmill beeped cheerfully when I pressed the speed button down, slowing to a walk. Claudia slowed with me, because of course she did.

"Are you in love with him?" she asked.

The question was blunt, surgical, the kind of question Claudia always asked because she didn't believe in softening things. I could have lied. I could have said something vague about liking him, about seeing where things went, about not wanting to rush into words that felt too big. But I was tired of lying to myself, and Claudia had starved herself in high school so no one would look at her body, and she knew what it meant to carry something heavy in silence.

"Yes," I said. "I think I am."

"Then stop waiting."

She said it like it was simple. Like love was a decision you made, not a thing that happened to you while you weren't looking. I watched her in the mirror—her sharp blue eyes, her sun-bronzed skin, the way she held herself like someone who had learned to take up space even when she didn't want to.

"What if he doesn't—"

"He does." Claudia pressed a button and her treadmill sped up, leaving me behind. "Trust me. That boy looks at you like you're the only warm thing in a cold world."

I slowed my treadmill to a stop and stood there, breathing, watching the mirror show me a girl who was scared and in love and maybe, finally, ready to stop waiting.

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The Barbecue Place on Main was a converted house with four tables and red plastic tablecloths and air so heavy with hickory smoke it got into my hair and clothes before I even sat down. The parking lot was gravel that crunched under my sneakers, and a grey tabby with a torn ear watched me from the foundation vent, its eyes yellow in the fading light. Darlene took our order without writing it down—two pulled pork sandwiches, fries, sweet tea—and then it was just me and Percy at the picnic table behind the building, the one with "T + M" carved deep into the wood, the letters darkened with dirt.

The honeysuckle on the fence was just starting to bloom, the sweet smell cutting through the smoke, and the gravel here was finer than out front, almost sand, squeaking under our shoes when we shifted. I could see the Frost Spoon's dumpster from here, the mulberry tree, the back door where we used to clock in. The tabletop was sticky with sauce baked into the wood, and I kept touching it with my thumb, feeling the tackiness, needing something to do with my hands.

Percy wasn't eating. Neither was I. The sandwiches sat between us on their red plastic baskets, the fries going cold, the sweet tea sweating through its Styrofoam cups.

"I can't focus," he said.

"Me neither."

Our hands touched across the red plastic tablecloth—his fingers brushing mine, then pulling back, then reaching again. I turned my palm up and he took it, his hand warm and a little sweaty, his thumb pressing into the soft skin between my knuckles the way I had started to recognize as his, as something he did without thinking.

"Let's go," he said.

We left the sandwiches half-eaten and walked to the Outdoor Festival Grounds, where the Chickasaw Annual Meeting was happening in a field that was empty fifty-one weeks a year. White tents in rows, grass flattened to mud near the food vendors, the smell of fry bread and smoked meat and trampled green. A main stage echoed with a half-second delay, someone singing in a language I didn't know, the sound bouncing off the white canvas and coming back muddy. The sun was setting, the light underneath the tents yellow and harsh, and people walked slowly, fanning themselves, eating corn on the cob with both hands.

Neither of us was paying attention. Not to the music, not to the vendors, not to the line for fry bread that stretched past the hay bales. Percy walked close enough that his shoulder brushed mine, and I felt each touch like a small electrical current, like something sparking under my skin.

He stopped near the shaded tree line at the edge of the field, where blackjack oaks created a strip of shade maybe fifteen feet wide. A hay bale from yesterday's demonstration served as a seat, straw poking through my jeans when I sat down. The trees muffled the stage to a distant thrum under the cicadas, and from here I could see the whole festival—white tents, food trucks, the line for fry bread, the sun going orange behind the oaks.

Percy brushed a strand of hair from my face. His fingers were gentle, hesitant, like he was touching something fragile. I took his hand and held it in my lap, and he didn't pull away.

"Let's leave," I said.

He nodded.

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Percy's room smelled like old paper and clean laundry gone stale, and the single overhead light had one bulb burned out, so the corners were shadowed. The grey bedding was half off the bed, tangled from the last time he had slept here, and Gerald's tank glowed orange from the heat mat in the corner of the desk. The desk chair was black mesh, the armrests worn smooth where Percy's elbows rested, and a stack of library books sat on the floor with their due dates passed.

Percy cornered me gently against the door. His body was warm and soft, his hands pressed flat against the wood on either side of my shoulders, and I could smell him—clean linen and warm skin and something faintly sweet, like the vanilla I wore but different, like him.

"I don't want to mess this up," he said.

His voice was quiet, hesitant, and his brown-hazel eyes were searching my face like he was trying to memorize it, like he was afraid I would disappear.

I kissed him.

It was different from the kitchen floor. Slower, surer, less desperate. His hands came up to cup my face, and my fingers found the hem of his hoodie, and we fumbled with clothes more confidently this time—his hoodie over his head, my sweater following, the cool air of the room hitting my bare arms. My heart-shaped pendant pressed against his chest when I leaned into him, the metal warm from my skin, and he made a sound—a small, surprised sound—when it touched him.

We moved to the bed. The grey bedding was cool at first, then warm where our bodies pressed into it. His hands traced my sides, my hips, my thighs, not grabbing, just feeling, like he was learning me by touch. I unbuttoned his jeans and he unbuttoned mine, and we both laughed a little—awkward, elbows bumping, the way his zipper caught on the fabric of his boxers.

The sex was fuller than before, slower, less awkward. We stayed in our clothes mostly—his black t-shirt bunched around his ribs, my striped shirt pushed up to my collarbone—but the fabric was thin enough that I could feel the heat of his skin through it, the softness of his body, the way his breath hitched when I moved underneath him. He whispered my name once, and I whispered his back, and Gerald blinked slowly from his tank like he had considered everything and found it acceptable.

Afterward, we lay tangled in the grey duvet, not talking, just feeling. My head was on his chest, and his arm was around my shoulders, and the room was quiet except for the hum of Gerald's heat mat and the distant sound of traffic on the street outside. I traced the silver chain on Percy's neck, the metal cool against my fingertips, and he pressed a kiss into my hair.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"I think I'm more than okay."

His chest rose and fell under my cheek, slow and even. I felt his heart beating, steady and warm, and I thought about what Claudia had said—stop waiting—and I realized I had stopped without even noticing.

We fell asleep holding hands, his fingers tangled with mine, the grey duvet pulled up to our chins, the orange light from Gerald's tank the only illumination in the room. I didn't dream. I just slept, warm and safe and chosen, and when I woke up hours later, Percy was still there, and his hand was still holding mine.

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