Our Seattle apartment cost more than five people could comfortably manage, and still there wasn't room for all our furniture. Livia kept the schedule for the one full bathroom. The second was barely a room at all: toilet, pull-chain bulb, and an air that sent you straight back out.
The floorboards sagged beneath our secondhand chairs. Windows stuck for days, then opened without warning. When the rain softened the evenings, a stale trace of smoke seemed to rise from the walls. The building had outlasted everyone who had lived there before us; it would outlast us, too.
Rhys and I had kissed in the cellar that summer. I assumed we'd satisfied our curiosity and could put the crush away. But once we were alone in our room at the lodge, he lifted me against him and kissed me as if the hours since the cellar hadn't happened.
We didn't rush. We stayed close for a long time before either of us began to undress. He paused to ask if I was sure. I was. I asked whether we'd still be friends afterward. He smiled and told me I had never been only a friend to him.
The bed complained beneath us, so we moved to the floor and kept our voices low, trying not to give ourselves away. After that, each night followed the same pattern: easy company while the door stood open, then something private once it shut.
When we moved into the apartment, I expected the feeling to fade. I was starting my veterinary residency at Cascade; Livia was beginning law school in Seattle; Bianca had found work at a community farm nearby. We were all stepping into new lives, and Rhys and I seemed too tentative to survive the change.
Instead, being around our friends made us more careful and more inventive. We'd find a moment alone, brush a shoulder or hip, let a hand catch the bare strip of skin beneath a shirt. When the apartment emptied, Rhys would pull me into his tiny room. I shared mine with Bianca, so his was the only place we could stop whispering. We told each other what felt good. We didn't pretend our secret was a secret from each other.
Maybe hiding it was part of what he liked.
One evening, with the others out, we lay together in his bed. He turned a curl around his finger, then let it spring back.
“If we're not just friends, what are we?” I asked.
In the dim room, he brushed my hair away from my forehead. “I don't know. I just want more of this.”
He kissed me slowly. For once, there was no need to hurry. I settled over him, his hands resting at my waist, our eyes on each other. Our breathing changed together. He said my name against my mouth, quiet and full of wonder, as if he'd waited a long time to be allowed to say it like that.
The feeling was so large I nearly cried. I couldn't explain it. It was unlike anything we'd done before.
“I've changed my mind,” he said. “I think you're my best friend.”
I laughed against his cheek. “Better than Dane?”
“By a lot. He can't compete now.”
“You should know Bianca and Livia are my best friends.” I kissed his elbow. “But you're my favorite man I've ever met.”
He smiled and kissed the inside of my arm. “I can work with that.”
We never named what we were or asked how it might end. We talked about everything else, texting from opposite sides of the same room. During his bookstore shifts, Rhys sent photos of new mysteries to see if I wanted one. From the boat shop, he sent samples of sailcloth and boat canvas, especially the abstract patterns that looked unmistakably anatomical.
I sent him veterinary diagrams, invented diagnoses for the fabric samples, or shared cowboy pictures and asked whether any could be distant relatives. He always had an answer. One, he claimed, had enough gold teeth to leave Rhys an inheritance someday.
When he went home to see his family on the Washington coast, he came back with cheap secondhand paperbacks promising mountain deaths and western murders. One had been shelved by its cover, though it turned out to be a vampire story. If he stopped at the grocery store after work, he'd bring me blueberry or maple ice cream.
I spent a lot of my life waiting for the next piece of him. Even the waiting felt good.
After months of sneaking around, he offered me a spare movie ticket while everyone was home. A coworker had canceled, he said. Outside, he took my hand and held it firmly. His pulse beat against my palm.
I asked what film we'd see.
“There isn't one,” he said. “I wanted to take you on a date.”
A date. I hadn't known I wanted one until he said it. Happiness came with a faint ache, as if I were already missing the evening. Whenever he let me have more of him, I wanted everything.
We wandered through Pike Place and the nearby streets for hours. I sampled pastries and ice cream; Rhys tried a few bites but had never cared much for sweets. His family had grown up on hearty dinners, he said, and he named their favorite sandwich spread as if that completed the portrait.
“Have you always loved sugar this much?” he asked.
“Always. And you did it again.”
“Did what?”
“You gave me one small piece of yourself, then turned the conversation back to me.”
He rubbed the back of his head, frowning. I asked why he avoided talking about himself.
“Remember when you said you thought you were slow-release hot?”
“I'd finally stopped reliving that embarrassment in my sleep. Now I have to start over.”
He drew me closer as we walked beneath the winter lights. After a while, he said, “I think I'm slow-release boring.”
“Why would you say that?”
He shrugged. “People like me at first. Then they get to know me.”
“Who told you that?”
“Pick anyone.” He laughed, but there wasn't much humor in it. “I've had years to get used to the pattern. People are curious at the start, but it doesn't last. That's why I said I don't date friends. Once someone really knows me, the novelty goes away. It happened in high school with girls who visited for the summer. It still happens.”
He mentioned Alison, the one he thought might be different because they seemed alike and she didn't have grand ambitions. She left him for her yoga instructor, saying they'd found a depth he couldn't offer. Rhys called himself simple, then looked embarrassed for having said it.
I felt the hurt in him and wanted to take it away. I caught the front of his coat and made him look at me.
“Simple isn't a bad thing. It doesn't mean stupid, and you're not stupid. Stop trying to convince yourself otherwise. And you're not boring. I like you more now than I did when we met. You answer me instead of turning every question into a joke.”
He raised an eyebrow. “And the other reason?”
“Everything.”
I told him I liked his face and hair, his warmth, the way he couldn't sit still unless he was concentrating on someone. He fixed things without waiting to be asked. He took the trash out before it spilled over, and whenever he went to the store, did laundry, or made breakfast, he checked whether anyone else needed something. I could tell when he was about to text me from across the room because of the look that crossed his face.
He laughed against my cheek. “The look that says I want to go down on you?”
“I hadn't named it until now.”
At the corner, the signal changed. Rhys turned us down the next block instead of crossing, then kissed me against a brick wall. I forgot the street and the cold. A group of drunk students called out from nearby. We kept kissing, laughing against each other's mouths, our hands tight on one another's coats.
When we finally paused, he rested his forehead against mine, breathing hard.
“I think I love you, Mara.”
Love. The word changed the shape of the night. Without thinking it through, I answered honestly.
“I know I love you, Rhys.”
His hand trembled slightly as he touched my chin. He brought his face close to mine.
“I love you so much.”
At home, we gathered our friends around the dining table Rhys had rebuilt from salvaged wood. Everyone looked worried. So did we.
“We're together,” Rhys said. When no one reacted, he tried again. “Mara and I. Together.”
Livia rushed to the refrigerator as if she might be sick. She came back with sparkling wine and mismatched glasses. Dane stood and hugged Rhys, then squeezed me hard enough to lift me off the floor.
“About time he finally told you how he felt,” he said.
Livia filled the glasses. “Now that you're together, you can't ever break up.”
“Don't put that on them,” Bianca said.
“The pressure is there whether we say it or not,” Livia replied. “If they split, this whole group falls apart.”
“People can stay friends after a breakup,” Bianca said, then quickly added to me, “Not that you're going to break up.”
Dane sided with Livia. She turned to him in mock disbelief, asking whether the sudden agreement meant the world had changed. He said she was right this time; this had been coming for years.
Then he put his hands on my shoulders. “Don't you dare break my delicate angel's heart.”
Livia snorted. “Rhys had better not break hers.”
“There's no need to make this a threat,” Bianca said.
“Rhys would never hurt her,” Dane insisted, passing us each a glass. A moment later, he and Livia were back to bickering.
Livia said I'd been secretly obsessed with Rhys for years. He waved his glass at them and asked if they wanted us to leave them alone with their own tension, or if they could finish the argument.
“Gross,” Livia said. She clarified that the idea of her and Dane together was gross, and that another romance in the group would be too much. “This is my family,” she said, gesturing with the bottle.
It was mine too. I wasn't worried. I already knew I'd love Rhys for the rest of my life.
That night I slept in his room for the first time. We stayed awake after, the sheets pushed aside, while he played with my hair.
“It's a mystery what you're thinking,” he murmured.
“Eighty percent of the time, I'm imagining you naked.”
He kissed my damp forehead. “I'm serious.”
“So am I.”
“You're a mystery to me, Mara Ellery.”
My smile faded. “I'm a mystery to myself. I didn't understand how little I knew about who I was until I met Bianca and Livia. They always seem so certain.”
He drew one curl straight, then let it go. “We should get to know you better.”
“Where would we start?”
“Something small. Why do you like cozy mysteries?”
I shrugged. “They're gentle.”
He laughed softly. “Gentle?”
“The awful thing happens at the beginning,” I explained. “After that, the story feels safe. You know the mess will be sorted out by the end. Life has enough surprises. I like having something I can count on.”
His expression changed. I worried I'd given him the wrong answer, that he'd see me as less interesting than he'd imagined.
“You can count on me,” he said.
The words reached a place in me I hadn't known was closed. He pulled me against his chest. Our heartbeats settled together. I had never felt so sure, so right, or so safe.